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

"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 have a specific illness, I was aware that my life was limited - not in the sense that I could get hit by a bus tomorrow (really, how likely is that?) but in the awareness I had more past than future. I wanted to complete our wills, fill out medical proxy forms and learn his funeral preference - burial or cremation, sweetie? Did he want all lifesaving measures or not to be resuscitated? I needed to take care of these details. So if, God forbid, I did get hit by that bus tomorrow, I wouldn't spend my last moments alive thinking, shit, I never got around to filling out those forms."

I fell in love again at 47 and remarried at 52, experiencing deep intimacy through small caregiving acts, frequent touch, and plans for shared later life. I imagined growing old together, traveling, and eventually dying side by side. At 60, my husband revealed a desire to have a child with a younger woman, which triggered intense bodily and emotional reactions and a sense of irrelevance. I had been pragmatic about mortality, completing wills and medical directives, while my husband refused to discuss death. Both of us felt inexperienced and fearful about aging, leaving unresolved practical matters.

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