This Happened To Me — Midlife Loss
In 2012, I was well into my mid life crisis at 43 years old. I was married to an amazing woman that I loved but she was going through something I could not understand and she would not go to the doctor to figure it out or to counseling either alone or together.
The crisis for me was caused by the kids not needing me to be daddy much, anymore. Where did the questions about boogers and babies coming from mommies go, what about the trips to the playground?
I looked forward to walking around and telling my two boys not to pee behind the tree because their little butts could be seen on the road. I missed them needing to be cared for and played with. It hurt. I loved coming home and playing with my kiddos but now I didn’t know what to do.
My wife would look at me on dates and say, “It’s okay.” because our two older girls were 16 and 14 years old and legally capable of babysitting. It took time and for a while this worked and allowed us time to be together and with friends and enjoy life again. Life had a different goal though. She started to pull back and push me towards something I was afraid of. She wasn’t a dancer and I had not been due to my obesity and just taking time raising kids. The obesity I had begun working on five years before and continue to battle to this day but I became and stayed muscular with the proportions that looked good in jeans, shirts and italian loafers. Now dancing may not be your cup of tea when it comes to a mid life crisis.
Perhaps you are wanting a wife in a younger model midlife category and I get it but I am also laughing at you when I am walking around Beacon Hill or the Public Garden and see you pushing a baby carriage at 50 years old. Noooo thank you!
Perhaps you are in the muscle car or sports car midlife category and want to drive fast and stop at red lights to see what women are checking you out. Too expensive and for what?
I still don’t get that one. $100,000 to feel good for a moment?
I was in the, get in shape and dance my ass off category and my wife was all for it. Her only rule was, no sex with other women. Now you think that might be a broad category but she understood that dancing meant women would be dancing with me even if they were friends and there would be hands and arms touching, sweat coming off with their perfumes but there was more, women drying you off like in Saturday Night Fever, and women who planted huge kisses and hip and butt rubbing Jersey Turnpikes came on whenever their libidos started firing up. I loved it. I was getting everything from stranger dancing you could get from stranger sex and there was no trying to pick up drunk women which I only do for dancing and I didn’t need to talk much. When I asked my wife if she was clear about the just no sex line she said she knew all the other stuff happened but to come home to her.
I had such a great wife but great situations like being able to go out every Friday night always come with rules.
I could dance for hours and that was no bullshit. When I was on the floor I had super energy and strength and could go for hours just like my wife and I and our amazing sex life. That alone kept me from wanting to taste other women. She knew how to keep me interested and often but it wasn’t the amount it was the quality of it and how rough we became over 20 years. I need a moment…okay.
This went on for more than a year and during that time I had no idea how life through my wife’s actions was preparing me to be without her. She would die in January of 2014 but 2013 was designed for me by her, by god, goddess, both perhaps. I don’t know. I just know it was a long preparation so I wouldn’t be afraid of getting out when I needed to. I just had no clue it would happen.
2013 was an interesting year. My wife and I were pulling apart but we kept cooking, communicating, fondling, and making love all while being there for four children growing up too fast. I worked a lot so I didn’t see the hour to hour she had to deal with and didn’t realize until too late she was taking on the heavy burdens of child raising they don’t tell you about; girls, their sexuality, and suicide desires. Elle and I had some long nights with crying girls worrying about everything especially bullying, boys and their realization they are gay or asexual. These were hard and Elle and I accepted and approved as parents should of their children’s ideas about what turns them on. Believe me it is not comfortable but Elle and I were always open about sex talk and the kids could hear our antics through the walls for years so they knew that mommy and daddy closed and locked the door and made noises. She had that talk with each of them and there was no apology when they asked if we could keep it down. With Elle there was no keeping it down and with the women I danced with there was no keeping it down until I got home and she took care of me.
It was the silent separation that bothered me. The interest in being healthy went out the window with her and the rejection of trying anything new to help us be ready for grandchildren hurt my heart. I don’t think she was pushing me away on purpose. I think when you are a great spirit with love for a higher being, you are guided even into and after your death. They were preparing me to feel like divorcing her. I kept getting close to that line where you think a separation is good, where counseling, which she said no, is important and the ultimate D word. In her spirit, I believed with all my heart, she was trying to push me away and not like her anymore so when she died it would be easy to move on.
She did not commit suicide or in any way want to die. We had no warning and she died in my arms. A year of dancing with other women, especially desperate women who wanted nothing more to be touched physically and never intimately again, could not erase the most amazing 23 years of my life. I had come close to but never had sex with another woman. Losing her was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I knew it could be worse but each child is still around and being loved despite their independence. Every little thing she was is beautifully reminded to me every day even now in 2021.
All of this has woke me up to the reality that I need time alone to heal. I haven’t made big mistakes thank God and my current relationship is good but far from ideal. Time is needed to dance with abandon and be with no one. I can’t seem to get this theme out of my system. You can’t make someone into someone else. You cannot change people.
I just want you to know that life is very short. Those 24 years feel like a blink of an eye. Don’t waste time.
