Sex After Loss
Why some people have it… and some people don’t.
I was 21 when my mom died. A senior in college, an honors student, and yes, a sexually active young woman. I was dating a woman at the time and when my mom died, my girlfriend and I were just two months past our one year anniversary. We were in love and committed to each other. But after my mom’s sudden decline and death, that changed.
I feel like I remember having sex after my mom’s memorial — but grief brain still makes me question that. As weeks passed, my girlfriend and I grew further and further apart, not knowing how to address the sudden emotional chasm that had opened between us. We saw each other a few more times before we finally broke up, unable to connect through my heartache and her inability to help me. Did we have sex then? I’m not sure.
What I do remember — in whirling bits and pieces — is flinging myself headlong into a variety of sexual experiences after that breakup. I felt it then as a newly grieving, anxious, distressed, overwhelmingly lonely girl looking for somewhere to put her aching spirit. I see my 21-year-old self now as a newly grieving girl — carrying a variety of emotions — silently driven by the longing she’d lost: “Find home. Find home. Find home.”
Sex was a place I put much of my energy post-loss.
