When It’s Not Just Your Libido That Dies

What Happens to Love and Desire When a Partner Dies?

They say that breaking up is hard to do. Lemme tell you, it ain’t nothin’ compared to watching someone you love become totally unresponsive and the EMTs do all the right things but fail to breathe life back into their body. I have had the questionable honor of both having been broken up with during my life and having recently watched a partner drop and stay dead. They both do things to a person. In most cases, part of being a person is possessing a libido. After a traumatic loss, weird things can happen to the libido part of a person.

Grief is a strange and uniquely personal process. Sure, it has those five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; but we all go through the process in our own way, and we experience the stages in our own order.

Likewise, sexuality is a strange and uniquely personal process. Did I mention strange? Many of us were raised to believe that sexuality is a solid line that runs straight. Men are always horny. Women are always righteously frigid except for the sluts, who can never expect to get a “decent” man. Because, of course, all women want a man, especially a “decent” one. And every man wants a woman, especially one who at least cleans up nice for company. These things I was raised to hold self-evident. Until it became obvious that they weren’t.

I can not tell you how many people have asked me why I write about sex instead of something “important.” My usual response is something along the lines of “don’t you think your sexuality is important? Doesn’t it deserve someone who can write?” I feel this even more now that I have begun the process of grieving the loss of my partner of 10 years.

If this were a porn video it would, of course, have a complex plot because, ya know, I’m such a complex chick. But the meat of it, if you will, would be that I somehow manifest, if not my lost love, then a ghostly presence capable of giving me the kind of orgasms they only dream about in paradise.

This is the real world though. A libido that got sluggish from stress and the introduction of COVID-19 to the world stage has not picked up now that one of the people I love most on this side of the veil has passed to the other side of it. And no matter how much I spill tears and hammer on the keys, the only thing I lust for reliably is another nap. No phantom darling emerges from a USB port to wrap me in their confident arms and whisk me away to a land of security and orgiastic delights. I can’t even summon a manifestation that will change the cat litter, let alone perform crazy supernatural sexual acts on my tender flesh.

So, thank the various gods that I don’t believe in, which would be all of them, for porn. And further, thank them for allowing me the opportunity to watch it within a professional capacity. It may not thrill me in the same way it did when this adventure in cinematic voyeurism began, but it reminds me even during these worst of times that life goes on and there is pleasure to be had because of it. If not now, then in time. The enemy to this acceptance of deferred pleasure, of course, is impatience because “in time” always feels like forever. But time is what it takes, and patience is the price we pay if we want to genuinely experience our bodies and therefore our lives.

But we’re taught that taking the time to let our minds and bodies heal enough to feel sexual again or to feel that way semi-consistently, is a luxury and an indulgence. Grief inconveniences other people if we have partners. If we were previously active, our self of identity may become confused. Periods of unexpected celibacy such as that inspired by grief can challenge our internal status quo. It can compel us into crazed couplings with questionable partners or emotional numbing in an attempt to protect ourselves from being hurt again.

But being hurt again is inevitable unless or until we become the cause of grief in others. We only draw breath for a limited time. It’s true that we can’t spend every minute of our lives in a state of bliss, and that’s likely a good thing because joy and happiness would become meaningless with nothing to contrast them against.

Fortunately for humanity, there’s no risk of that happening because, as Denis Leary once said, “Happiness comes in small doses, folks. It’s a cigarette or a chocolate chip cookie or a five-second orgasm. That’s it, okay? You cum, you eat the cookie, you go to sleep, you get up in the morning, and you go to fucking work, okay?”

In my case, going to fucking work means watching people fuck as work. I don’t anticipate doing whatever the female equivalent of fapping is any time soon, but I do take copious notes while I watch a scene and prepare to write a review. Maybe I’ll start a bucket list for when the heavy cloud of grief begins to lift and I can open up once again and pursue my traditional search for questionable partners and unadvisable sexual behavior.