After My Husband Died, I’d Sob For Hours And Take A Break To Masturbate. I Finally Figured Out Why.

“My first reaction was shame – profound, all-consuming shame. How could my body do this to me?”

When my husband Tom had a massive stroke and died, I expected to feel devastated. I expected to feel a rollercoaster of emotions – joy for the 12 years we had together, despair over never seeing him again, full-body laughter remembering how he took up knife sharpening as a hobby after his stroke, seemingly unending tears over my imperfections as a caregiver.

I expected some friends to drift away while others would surprise me with their unwavering presence, showing up with lasagnes and placing late-night phone calls when I needed them most. I was warned quickly about the maddening paperwork.

But nobody mentioned the fire I would feel in my loins less than two months later.

I remember exactly when it happened. I’d spent most of the day curled up on the couch with my phone, scrolling through photos of Tom and me together and bawling my eyes out. And then, with tears still running down my cheeks, I felt a pulsing, urgent need that seemed wildly inappropriate given the circumstances. And yet there it was: desire, burning through me with an intensity that left me breathless.

That feeling stayed with me for nearly a year. For a year, I was horny. All. The. Time.

It was as though my body had suddenly remembered it was alive while my heart was still learning how to beat on its own. The contrast was jarring. I’d spend hours sobbing while sorting through his things and then take a break to masturbate.

I didn’t want anyone in particular; I wanted anyone at all. I wanted the raw physical intimacy of sex, the primal sensation of skin on skin, and the feel of someone’s body heat melding with mine as we crawled inside each other.

My first reaction was shame – profound, all-consuming shame. How could my body do this to me? How could I feel sexual desire when the love of my life was gone? I felt like I was betraying him somehow, as if by acknowledging my own sexuality, I was erasing our love, our history. As if my body had forgotten what my heart couldn’t.

I didn’t have a framework for understanding what was happening. Intense horniness was not mentioned in any of the support group meetings I went to.

Luckily, my dog walker connected me with a widow around my age, who told me about the widow groups on Facebook. I joined several and learned that what I was experiencing had a name: widow’s fire. I also discovered it’s normal – completely, utterly normal – and it can affect people of any gender or sexual orientation.

Some people feel it within months, like I did. Others feel it a year later. Others never feel it.

What’s even more shocking than the fact that it’s totally normal for widows to be insanely horny is the silence around it. When I finally worked up the courage to mention it to my grief counsellor, her matter-of-fact response stunned me: “Oh yes, that’s quite common. Many widows experience that.”

Common? Many? Then how come the Facebook widows were the only ones........

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