Sexuality As I Approach 40

[mandysee_mandydo]

For the most part my age is just a number. Hooray me for surviving yet another trip around the sun! I suppose it's cause for celebration. I'm not at all really conflicted or feeling like I'm reaching some milestone where now I need to freak out about my age. At the same time I'm feeling like I'm pushing my comfort zone once again on my sexuality and coming into a new way of feeling about sex and how I interact with others.

I know it's painting in broad brush strokes, but I'm looking back and thinking about past decades. I'll spare the really young stuff, but I see my 20s as a time when I was far too... shall we say exuberant? ... and trying to live in blissful ignorance at the same time. By my 30s I was more self-aware and trying to push past internalized shame and weird sexual repression type hang-ups from my upbringing. As I approach my 40s I'm finding myself feeling more like owning and embracing my sexuality and recognizing it as part of my broader whole self, with an inclination toward complete personal sexual liberation.

Ethical non-monogamy has been a big conversation in our home lately. What would it look like for us? What would each of us have to do for self-care and caring for each other to support a non-monogamous marriage? What role would we envision each others' lovers play in our lives and what are appropriate boundaries? How can we communicate better with each other to support our own marriage and maintain the additional romantic and sexual relationships we may build with others? Do we have the capacity for the emotional intelligence and maturity it takes to practice ethical non-monogamy? Do l have that capacity and the self-awareness and self-care strategies to effectively manage any jealousy and loneliness that might bubble to the surface?

It's new territory for me. I trend toward monogamy, but I also recognize it's primarily due to upbringing and the kinds of relationships my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles had and their influence on my perception of functional and dysfunctional relationships. And this all cycles back to shedding the internalized sexual repression (among other societal norms). I know I have the self-awareness to recognize the influence my upbringing has in forming and maintaining that monogamous trend. I can also envision myself being happy with multiple romantic and sexual partners without loving and attending to my marriage and family any less.

On FetLife someone said something in a thread that completely shifted my own internal narrative on sex, relationships, and non-monogamy. Romantic and sexual intimacy for me are things that come with great emotional attachment and trust. I need to really know someone and feel a deeper connection with them before sex and romance are even an option. Casual sex with strangers and acquaintances is pretty much a hard limit for me. I can't do hook-ups. I used to look down my nose at the whole "friends with benefits" idea, too. Then I read this one idea in a thread where someone said that they only have sex with friends. As in friendship is a serious requirement for sex to even happen.

Of course! I wouldn't have sex with anyone but someone I regarded as a friend and trusted quite well. But at the same time, if I really enjoy someone's company and they enjoy my company and we regard each other as trusted friends and there's chemistry, why should sex and romance be off the table? I'm not sure I have any good reason to support withholding that part of myself from anyone other than my legal spouse.

I love Kathy. I love her deeply. She and our child will always be a priority in my life. I don't take offense when Kathy flirts with other people. I'm secure enough in our relationship and my knowledge of her as a person to know that while she may take interest in other people and enjoy flirting, she loves me deeply and our child and I will always be a priority beyond her own self. We let other people into our shared and separate lives all the time and each of those people take up varying amounts of space in our hearts, minds, and spirits without diminishing our relationship together. So how are romantic and sexual relationships beyond our own relationship any different?

My vision for my 40s is to own my sexuality. To embrace it. To be more fully myself and share myself more fully as I am moved. At the same time I'm not feeling any urge to be wildly promiscuous with great abandon. That's not me. And honestly my libido won't support that, either. My libido these days is limited and selective. I'm very comfortable with that, actually. I find that comforting and I'm at peace with having a fairly low sex drive while at the same time yearning for more meaningful and deeper platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships with Kathy and with other friends that are in or come into my life between now and when I die. My life is ostensibly half over at this point (maybe a little less than). I want to live the rest of that with the capacity to be mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually intimate in varying degrees with all of the people in my life to the extent that we are so moved in our relationships, without the exclusion of romance and sex. At least for now that's my vision. My work is in making sure I take care of my self and my relationships in a way that supports that sustainably.