It was a good time for me, to be honest. Set against all this wretchedness was my husband, whom I still loved after 17 years and with whom I could still, on occasion, have excellent sex. I had a lot to be grateful for, I realized. But then, without warning, my miserable divorced friends became…happy. Unbearably happy, happier than they’d been in years, happier than I was. “I’d forgotten sex could be so incredible after suffering through it with James for 10 years,” Susan* tells me one night at dinner with another recently separated friend, Anne. Susan, whose kids are in school with mine, has finally, nearing 40, discovered the joys of sex—with a 32-yearold— and she’s partaking everywhere: from the hills of Prospect Park to the bathrooms at Nobu.
“There’s really been no bad sex since I split from Matt,” Anne chimes in. In her late thirties, she’s dating a hard-bodied musician seven years younger who likes his sex vertical, against a vibrating kitchen appliance. “Married sex can get pretty boring, you know?” Yes, I know. “It’s just so great having sex with someone you’re lusting after instead of someone you’ve been living with for years.” I don’t think Anne is trying to be mean, so I let the comment pass.
But the stories of unhitched bliss won’t stop—even in 2008, divorce, it seems, is the thing with feathers. Jane, a divorced friend from L.A. who never had an orgasm with her husband, is seeing a guy five years her junior who gave her multiple orgasms their first night together, reads poetry to her in bed, and taught her kids to surf. Gale, who lives in my neighborhood, found her inner Sappho upon ending her 15-year marriage. Her relationships with women, she says, are far more physically and emotionally satisfying (multiple orgasms, yet again) than they were with men.
On their child-free weekends, these formerly forlorn women are biking , traveling, shopping, doing yoga, getting facials, and communing with their skilled young paramours. And all that physical pampering—not to mention the afterglow from all that sex— shows. None of my friends are supermodels; they’re just normal women, working women, women with C-section scars and diminishing elasticity, but they’ve transformed themselves into Cougars, big game for twentysomething men. The divorcées in my set are getting ogled, honked at, propositioned.
Meanwhile, I’m enjoying meticulously choreographed weekends of soccer matches and playdates; I’ve reduced my beauty regimen to showering every other day and weekly shampoos. My friends maintain that they’d ultimately love to find someone like my husband—I’m sure they’re lying. “Your relationship is one in a million,” Susan insists.
“You make each other laugh, and you still have sex,” Anne adds. “What more could you want?” How about sex up against a pulsating washing machine and every other weekend without my kids? I want that, and I want the cute daddies at drop-off to check me out, too. I don’t want to have an affair, but I want someone to want to have an affair with me. Despite the prevailing notion, even happily married women can have a midterm sexual crisis, and my divorced friends are goading me toward it.
The irony is, I never liked dating when I was dating. I met my husband when I was 24. Four years later, we married. I was madly in love, and it didn’t occur to me to think anything was lacking in my marriage in those early years. It also didn’t hurt that I was working in Hollywood , where there was always enough extracurricular flirtation to keep things exciting. Breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in the film business provided ample opportunity for charged encounters— harmless pleasure that allowed for an active fantasy life and sated any temptations that might occasionally bubble to the surface. At one point, an assistant of mine, a gorgeous woman who was dating k.d. lang, told me that there were rumors that I’d been having affairs with women. “Which women?” I asked her. My assistant couldn’t say. My secret sex life was even a secret from me.
Another time, after a business dinner, a talent manager came on to me. While flattered, I turned him down. He was incensed. “Why not? I hear you’ve had a bunch of affairs.” I hadn’t had any, but being an imaginary slut was titillation enough.
I always recounted these stories to my husband, because he’s my best friend, and because I rarely censor myself. And he enjoyed hearing them, because his mother is a child development specialist and he grew up to be remarkably secure and relentlessly positive. He liked knowing that other men desired his wife, and I liked being desired. It was a perfect system, and only enhanced our sex life. But then I left Hollywood for New York City and the lonely jobs of screenwriting and raising children. For a while, this was enough. I didn’t spend much time looking in the mirror, pulling back the skin on my face, pushing my breasts into their former position, or lifting my butt. I was more concerned with avian flu and terrorist attacks. I was, for me, happy—until the reproach of my divorced friends’ rebirths.
So I embark on rebirthing myself, which takes more work than I envision. I need highlights, lowlights, injections, peels, Thermage, and hundreds of thousands of squats. After weeks of appointments and thousands of dollars, I’m ready. But for what?
My husband doesn’t notice my shiny new exterior until the Visa bill arrives. He didn’t think I needed the work; he still wants me, anytime. But I’m not in the mood and haven’t been for a while. I decide to blow off date night and go to a trendy bar with Susan and Anne. I tell my husband that I need a girls’ night out, to flirt and cavort. Unthreatened as ever, he gives his blessing.
My first mistake becomes obvious upon entering the bar. I’m wearing multiple layers and knee-high boots, which might as well be a burka. The lust in the room is palpable. Susan and Anne are picked up in short order by sexy young things. Rusty in the art of flirtation, all I get is some mild interest from a 50-year-old Lilliputian hedge-fund manager, but even that is nice. Nice enough to make me want more. So I decide to venture out again. But when I tell my husband, everything becomes trickier. I’m not sure what I’m after, so what do I say? I stick with explaining that I need another girls’ night. He’s okay with it, because of his mother and because, in 17 years, I’ve never given him reason not to be.
I meet Susan, her boyfriend, Adam, and a few of their friends for drinks. I’m immediately attracted to Josh, 29, who has a full head of dark curls and intense green eyes . “Where’s your husband?” Josh asks. “Home. With the kids,” I blurt, and then worry how he’ll respond. It doesn’t faze him.
Josh works on some kind of Internet venture. He’s charming and flirty in that carefree way we all used to be. I blush as we make small talk. I listen intently as he patiently explains the difference between MySpace and Friendster. “You don’t have a MySpace page?” Josh asks, surprised.
“No, but I e-mail and shop online.”
He laughs, and his smile is slightly, delightfully crooked. “You should try Friendster. It’s great for social networking.” “I’m too old for social networking,” I say, not sure what it even means.
“You’re not too old at all,” Josh says, smiling. Is he talking about social networking or something else? His hand brushes my thigh, accidentally, lightly—electrifyingly. The encounter feels dangerous, unexpected, and a little awkward: the antithesis of marriage, so secure and comfortable, with no real surprises. I’m immersed in the moment, which isn’t easy for me. Usually I’m at least 10 moments ahead of myself.
Josh and I smile at each other and lock eyes. My palms sweat, I’m trembling, my heart is beating in my throat. I want this night to bleed into the morning. I want to go home with a perfect stranger and experience that first touch, first kiss. My life can feel like Groundhog Day. Every morning, three sets of feet scamper overhead, screaming, “Mommy.” Breakfast needs to be made, and lunch, and then people need to be dropped off at school. I go to work. I return. I make dinner, put people to bed. Rinse. Repeat. There’s rarely a break in that routine. My divorced friends get regular time off, and, like them, I don’t want to worry about what time I go to bed because I have to wake up at the crack of dawn. I want to saunter into brunch, holding my Josh’s hand, at a restaurant that frowns on children, and then pick up my own brood late in the afternoon at their father’s place.
When dinner is over, we all head outside. Susan and Adam say goodbye and walk off, arm in arm. She nuzzles into his shoulder, he squeezes her backside, they kiss. They can’t stop touching each other as they disappear around the corner. “Wanna get a drink?” Josh is at my side. His hair falls over one eye as he cocks his head and grins. He wants me. It’s a total buzz. “Where should we go?” Josh takes my silence as acquiescence.
I know it’s cliché and horribly un-French of me, but I can’t close the deal. Suddenly, I want to get away from here, from him. It happens that quickly. Yes, my husband has indulged my everchanging moods, but I haven’t touched him in weeks; I’ve been too self-absorbed. Maybe it’s just my guilty heart, but I’m craving my husband, the familiar contours of his body.
With a perfunctory wave to Josh, I jump in a taxi. From the window, I watch as he saunters down the street. I feel a pang of regret as I take one last, lingering look at that adorable ass and wonder what it looks like without the jeans. But that’s not—he’s not—an option. Or at least not one I’m willing to take. My life doesn’t work that way. My life works very well, enviably well, across the river, in a brownstone where I sleep with the same man, night after night. Hopefully, if there’s no traffic on the bridge, I can make it home in time to ravage my husband and still get six hours of sleep before it all begins again in the morning
VIA ELLE
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