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I never had to think about whether or not I was sexy to anybody but my husband for at least two decades. It didn't occur to me to care.
He'd tell me I looked hot. I'd roll my eyes or laugh it off or say thank you, depending on my mood. He'd ask if it sucked to be so sexy all the time, and I'd think he was joking, trying to get some. You know, husbands.
We had a healthy sex life, I think. Ups and downs over the years, but never a dry spell that a single person would endure. I've since tried to explain that to my single friends. In the world of married people, a couple weeks is an eternity. Sorry if that's TMI for some of you, but I'm sure the married folks in the audience will relate. At least, the happily and healthily married.
As Bob got sick, we were still fortunate that things remained normal until almost the very end. Damn lucky for both of us.
At the funeral, his closest friends, the frat brothers (keepin' it klassy, as they do), made a mention of me dating. It was the furthest thing from my mind at that time. As time passed, I considered it, but only to think that I'd most likely be dating people my age or older, right?
The thing is, I wasn't really ready to go out looking for people to date. Instead, as luck would have it, because of my very visible life, people found me. And they weren't my age. They weren't older. They weren't homely or even passable. They were kind of hot. They were smart. They were interesting.
So, I started to wonder, was my husband really telling me the truth? It's not that I never saw myself as sexy or interesting or smart. I just never saw myself as that person for anybody but him.
It's been a strange journey reframing my vision of myself as this person independent of another. I like her, this whole, sexy, smart, fully-formed me. She's kinda awesome.
Leah has been writing at Califmom since 2004. She became a 40-year-old widow in April of 2010 when her husband and love of her life for 21 years died from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She continues to live in the Bay Area with her two homeschooled children.
Photo Credit: Califmom.
