Sex and Sleeping Alone

I am feeling particularly discouraged, lonely and sad tonight and the prospect of going to bed alone is even more depressing. I want to be sharing and sleeping in the same bed with a partner every night. To go to bed with someone special by your side and then to awaken with them to start a new day is in my opinion one of the most simple pleasures we can experience. Nothing tops having someone to hold or having someone hold you; especially when you need to feel supported and loved.

The entire year before my husband died, we had sex only once. He was just so sick and in and out of the hospital. There came a point for both of us where his survival became our focus and sex was something we didn't even think about anymore. After he died, I remember regretting not having had more sex - not so much in the final year of his illness but during the healthy years. I remembered all the times when we'd had arguments and gone to bed facing away from each other. I vowed to myself that in my next relationship I would never take sex for granted again, nor would I ever go to bed angry with my partner.

I started dating two and a half years after my husband's death not for any real significant reason other than I wanted to experience sex again. I missed sex. And again I made a vow but this time it was that I would not go for such a long time without sex. But tonight I'm thinking of things other than sex and my need to share a bed and life with a committed partner. It is going on almost seven years since I've had a man next to me in bed on a daily basis (the last year of my husband's life he was in the hospital and not at home and when I remarried, my second husband and I had a long-distance marriage and he only stayed with me on some weekends or over school breaks and vacations).

That is what I am most missing now - not the sex so much but that steady physical presence in my life. And how significant it is that committed partners end and start their days together in bed. That makes my going to sleep tonight in my comfy Queen bed a bit more melancholy.