Demystifying S3x and The Middle-Aged Woman

When I finished writing my memoir, I shared chapters with friends and family. One friend read the first fifty pages and then asked to meet for dinner to discuss it.

As soon as we were seated and nibbling our appetizers, she blurted out, “Arielle, I know we DO these things… but when you become a mother, you don’t TALK about them!”

I wasn’t surprised by my friend’s reaction. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. The majority of women I’d spoken to over the last few years - modern, educated, independent women – still subscribed to the archaic notion that women fell into one of two categories: Madonna or Whore.

I couldn’t blame them, I subscribed to the same outdated concept when I was married. I believed that as a middle-aged mother I was supposed to embody wholesomeness, loyalty and modesty – and ignore that tiny nuisance of a fact that sex was what made me a mother to begin with. 

Even after my divorce, I clung to the idea that my entire identity revolved around being a mother – and ONLY a mother. I no longer thought of myself as a desirable individual; I no longer viewed myself as a WOMAN, capable of possessing sexual inclinations. And even if I had, I didn’t believe it would be acceptable to act on those desires and inclinations.

Needless to say it took me years to change my mindset, to reconcile the disparity between the two clashing identities within me, and to start dating... and even longer to find my sexual confidence.

But once I shifted my perspective, accepting that I could simultaneously be an excellent, devoted, mother, a responsible and respectable middle-aged woman, and also a firecracker-in-bed-lover – and that none of these facts negated the others – it was kind of shocking to think back to my prior beliefs. 

This was one of the driving forces for me to write a tell-all dating and sex memoir; it was THE driving force for including so much graphic sex in the book. I wanted to normalize the controversial concept that mothers and older women can still be sexual beings, even if we aren’t portrayed as such on TV and in movies, on billboards and online ads. 

As a former doula and sexual health advocate, I also wanted to normalize what are often uncomfortable conversations around the topic of sex, such as sexual health, sexual dysfunction, non-monogamous sex, consensual vs non-consensual sex, sex that includes more than two people, or sex that includes fewer than two people, and even outside-of-the (“vanilla”) box sex.

My hope is that publishing my book will give women like myself, like my friend, like the other women in my life, permission to not only accept their desires, but to voice them, to revel in them, to ask questions about them, to discuss them with friends and partners, and, most importantly, to enjoy their lives without guilt or shame.

 

What are your beliefs about middle-aged women and s3x? Comment below!

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