My Husband Left Me At 60 To Have A Baby With A Younger Woman. Here's What It Taught Me.

"But, then again, falling in love is always phenomenal and terrifying. We took care of each other ― little inconsequential things: me, placing a water glass on his bedside table; him, refilling my coffee as I wrote in the morning. We touched each other often, like shorthand: I'm here. I'm here. I never doubted we'd spend our later years holding hands, having better sex than ever, kissing our way around the world, then... eventually... in the distant future... the way distant future... face dying together."

"But then, at 60, my husband announced he wanted to have a child with a younger woman. Immediately my hips widened, my breasts sagged and my wrinkles deepened. Every internalized belief and vision of what it meant to be an old, unwanted, irrelevant woman became me. A few years earlier, I'd started talking about death. I'm not obsessed ― I'm practical. Although I didn't"

I fell in love again at 47 and married for the second time at 52, experiencing small acts of care and frequent touch that confirmed presence and intimacy. I imagined a future of holding hands, improved sex, travel and eventually dying together. At 60 my husband said he wanted a child with a younger woman, which triggered intense bodily and emotional reactions: I felt suddenly aged, unwanted and irrelevant. I had been proactively preparing for mortality by completing wills, proxies and funeral preferences, while he resisted discussing aging and death, finding the topic personally affronting.

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