Hello and welcome to Dear grief guide.
A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, stuck,
heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I'm a grief coach and author and I'm here to help you create a life you love from the
life lost forced you to live.
Let's get to today's letter.
Dear grief guide, I lost my wife of 32 years a month ago to breast cancer.
We had a close intimate relationship and were physically affectionate often.
Now I haven't had any sexual intimacy for two months and I feel like I'm starving for
it.
This craving is adding another layer to my grief, making me feel even more isolated and
alone.
I don't know how to navigate this aspect of my loss or how to address these feelings
in a healthy way.
It feels wrong to even think about moving on, but the loneliness I physically feel is overwhelming.
Do you have any ideas on how to cope with this and find some balance?
Signed Starving for Connection.
Hi there Starving, thank you so much for writing in with this letter and I am so sorry
about the loss of your wife and just the recentness of it too.
This is coming from a place of very fresh loss and I want you to know that I see you and
I am just so glad that you felt willing enough to share your letter with me.
Sex is super under-disgust in the grief space.
It is such a significant and important part of so many of our lives.
It is a cornerstone of many of our relationships with others.
But a lot of times, especially after somebody we love dies, talking about sex is often treated
as more taboo than talking about death and that is something that is really frustrating.
We are not going to do that here today.
We are going to talk about sex and touch and a lot of it.
When your wife died, you lost the ability to connect with her physical body as all of
us do when we are grieving somebody who has died.
The secondary element of that or an additional component of that because you shared a sex life
with her is the intimacy that you shared in that way.
I mourn being able to hug my mother.
You mourn probably that for your wife as well but also being able to have sex with her
to share a bed with her to explore each other's bodies together.
That is an additional layer of physical missing, of physical longing that happens when we
are grieving somebody who has died that we had sex with in life.
This physical sense or even the spiritual or soul sense of they were here one minute and
gone the next can be especially painful for spouses and boyfriend's girlfriends partners
of people who are grieving somebody who died that they had a sexual or intimate relationship
with.
I do not think you're crazy for feeling like you are starving right now.
32 years of marriage and then this loss.
It's like metaphorically being cut off at the knees in some aspect or having something
that was always available to you for more than three decades with consent of course and
with the relationship that you'd built together and the trust and the understanding and everything
that you fostered between the two of you now just gone.
And in a moment with her last breath, I think this grieving for sex and this longing for
physical touch is an extraordinarily normal part of grief and at this point in your life
having this awareness that you have having written to me, you get to mindfully choose how
you would like to cope with these feelings right now knowing full well that your needs
and desires and emotions will change because they always do as time continues to pass and
as you continue to have more experiences and just live more life in life after loss.
Before we get to the practical ideas, I also need to tell you that you can hold your grief
for your wife and your need for sex together.
Having sex with another person if that's something you choose to do does not mean you've
moved on.
It certainly does not mean that you've forgotten your wife or that you've magically gotten
over her.
I think that is a huge myth that society tells oh, they're having sex with someone new that
must mean they've moved on.
God knows at least for me and for so many other grieving people that I talk to as Dorothy
says in the golden girls.
I can't believe I'm making golden girls reference on the podcast, but here we go, especially
in relation to sex.
Our beds are crowded.
When we have relationships with multiple people throughout the course of our lives, especially
sexual ones, we enter into new ones with our beds metaphorically crowded.
We are remembering past experiences.
We are holding memories of fondness and love for people we've slept with before.
We are remembering ways that maybe things didn't go so well in the past and trying to prevent
that.
We bring all of our vulnerabilities and memories and anxieties and desires into bed with
us.
We're remembering everyone that we've ever had any sort of intimate relationship with.
And especially loudly people we've had relationships with that feel the most deep or that lasted
for the longest.
So it makes sense that on an emotional mental, physical, spiritual level, you are going
to have your wife with you in some capacity as you have these new experiences.
Again, if this is something you choose to pursue, I think you can absolutely initiate
a relationship with a new person while holding your connection with your wife close to your
heart.
I think people who don't know what this kind of grief is like might think that's weird,
but I've heard from so many grieving people who say that thinking this way, allowing them
to have the experience of remembering their person while initiating a relationship with
a new person helps them feel like they get to release the pressure of metaphorically
closing the door on the relationship they had to somebody who died before they can enter
into a new relationship with somebody else.
That's just it's so much pressure and honestly, it's so robotic and inhuman.
This insistence that something be done and complete and wrapped up in final before you begin
something else.
That's not how life works.
Things spread, they fold, they bleed, they come over into all of our experiences.
We don't close something and then go off to find something new.
We are constantly building on the foundations of everything that has come before in our lives,
including our sexual relationships with other people.
I want to give you, as we're wrapping up here, a menu of options based on how you're feeling
right now and how you think you would like to approach these feelings of physical longing
in this moment in your life.
I'm going to give you three categories.
If you want to explore your feelings first, the emotions you're having, the longing you're
having, the aching and missing for your wife, absolutely, meet with a grief therapist, especially
if you can find one that regularly sees people who are grieving the death of a spouse because
this will not be new information to them.
They will not judge you.
They will not tell you that you're crazy or that you're need fixing.
They're not going to analyze you.
They are going to welcome that experience and say, "Oh, yeah, I've heard that one before.
Let's talk about it."
You could also certainly meet with a sex-positive therapist, maybe not a grief therapist, that can
help you put language to the feelings that you're experiencing right now and explore
what kinds of touch that you might be interested in later down the road.
Then lastly, under this category of exploring feelings first, you might join a grief support
group in person, so you're physically in the room with other people, which can be shifting
or validating for your nervous system on some level, that discusses spouse or loss.
To talk to other people who are having similar experiences or grieving similar things and to
know that you are bringing this up in a room of people who will not think you're weird or
crazy, for having these thoughts can be enormously validating and helpful at a time like this.
Simply googling grief support groups, loss of a spouse near me might be a really
helpful place to begin.
Category number two.
If you know you're interested in touch, but you do not feel ready or comfortable having
sex with somebody new, that feels like way too big of a leap, way too much vulnerability,
way too much unpacking, way too much work.
I hear you.
I would consider exploring touch that is non-sexual, touch that can help you feel seen and loved
and cared for and taken care of as a human being, but touch that is inherently non-sexual in
nature.
Something that I often recommend especially to men or male identified people who write
into the show are looking into contact sports, opportunities to block or tackle or high
five or slap each other on the back.
These are always to access not just touch, but community as well.
And the aftermath of loss, whether you're celebrating a huge win or you're strategizing
together or you're trying your best to move a ball down a field, these are marvelous ways
to get in touch with your body and to be an awareness of the bodies of others without
a sexual component.
Another fantastic way to do this and this is something that I pursued in the aftermath
of my mother's death because I missed being able to hug her.
So this is my own parallel to your experience is to set appointments with explicitly non-sexual
body workers, people like massage therapists, acupuncturists, hair stylist, facialist, chiropractor
physical therapists, people who work on the body as a part of their job for whom touch is
inherent.
And just practicing what it's like to receive touch from another person letting yourself
be cared for by somebody whose job it is to care take for your body, addressing aches
and pains, relaxing through a spot experience, maybe getting a haircut if you haven't gotten
a haircut, a sense your wife's death might be something really interesting to consider.
And just knowing that that sexual component is off the table but the touch component is
on the table can be an easy way to sort of reintroduce your body to remembering what it is
to be touched by other humans in the world.
Finally, last category for you.
If having sexual intimacy right now is your top priority, that is the thing you need.
I've got two options for you here.
Number one, make an online dating profile.
I know that's all the rage these days and everybody's tired of the apps and the swipes,
but one of the wonderful things I love about online dating is that you get to say something
about yourself before you meet somebody.
So you can set rules of engagement and boundaries and disclaimers before you meet somebody in
person.
So I would recommend making an online dating profile and explicitly stating that you've
recently experienced a loss that you're not looking for anything serious, but that you're
looking for a caring relationship with someone who can respect the fact that you are recently
and currently grieving.
I know of a lot of grieving people who find each other in the aftermath of their own losses.
So even if this doesn't lead to anything that looks like a long-term relationship and that
may not be what you're looking for right now, you might be able to connect with somebody
new whether or not they are grieving.
They will know based on what you put on your profile that they are entering into relationship
with someone whose heart is fragile and for whom sexual experience might be a thing
that they are re-exploring for the first time and really vetting people as you're messaging
or as you're texting for the first time or even making initial phone calls before you go
out on that first date before you meet up in person can be a really helpful way to gauge
like is this person going to be a good steward of my grief as relationship column this
Dan Savage says we should all be practicing the campsite rule in that we should always
be leaving people whom we are in relationship with better than we found them whether that
means leaving them better sexually leaving them better mentally emotionally physically
we should be leaving them in a better state than when we found them which on a very
base level means no abuse no mistreatment but it also means learning and growth and progress
and a mutual respect and honoring and that's the bar that's what you're looking for in relationship
with somebody as you're looking into having sex in the aftermath of loss and finally if
meeting somebody and going on the dating apps feels too overwhelming for you you might
consider depending on where you live and depending on if you have access to these resources
hiring a sex worker definitely disclose the fact that you have had a recent loss professional
sex workers are really incredible at helping you outline clear boundaries for what you would
like to happen in an experience with them and how you would like things to unfold together.
tangentially there was movie released in 2022 called Good Luck to You Leo Grande I haven't
personally seen it but the plot revolves around a recent widow who hires a sex worker to
help her explore her body and explore herself and connect to herself on a physical level
after the death of her husband.
This watching this movie might be a really great introduction to the idea of hiring a sex
worker or finding a sex worker near you or it might just also be worth watching to see
if you resonate with the characters or the things that they're desiring or how they would
like things to unfold in the aftermath of loss.
The thing I want you to know the most starving is that you are not crazy you are not alone
you are not weird for having this be a component or a dimension of your grief especially
having it be the loudest thing right now and you are not you are not solo you are not
solitary you are not alone I just want to say this over and over and over again you are
not isolated in this being a component of your grief right now and looking for things
to do next what to do with these emotions what to do with these feelings what to do with
these desires this is something that is so normal in the aftermath of loss and I wish
more people talked about it I'm hoping that this podcast is a first step I'm hoping that
you're writing into me has normalized it on some level and I'm hoping that people listening
are recognizing that even if this is not a loss that they're grieving right now someone
in their life is grieving this or will grieve this in the future.
I am sending you so much love and luck wishing you well.
That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide. Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of your own grief
check out my free workshop Grow Through Grave. Three ways to stop feeling stuck and start
moving forward. I'll give you three easy actionable tools for navigating life after loss and show
you how you can create peace, stability and compassion right there in the middle of
grief's confusion and uncertainty. You can find the workshop link in the show notes.
If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone in your grief, please subscribe and
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share Dear Grave Guide with a friend because you never know what someone you love is going
through. You can submit your anonymous letter for the show and find additional grief support
at shallbeforsitia.com Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing
by Ruth Spence of Celebio. Until next time, I see you. I am so proud of you and the work
that you're doing in the world and I love you because even through grief, we are growing.
Music for Dear Grave Guide.