“This concept of an “old lady” is really a stereotype that doesn’t exist anymore. Women my age and older are staying fit and are sexually alive!”

-Marilyn

This quote makes me so happy. Because this is something I feel strongly. As I am reaching my middle age, 40 this year! aging is something that has been on my mind a lot. I grew up seeing the older generations sitting in a chair, wasting away in front of a TV. My mom, in the past few years, has taken to watching her “stories” every day, just like her mom before her. You know the ones. Soap operas that are so bad it’s hard to sit through them with a laptop and earphones plugged in playing music at top volume. Their badness just seeps into the air and makes everything in the room feel hopeless and disillusioned. I feel like once you start spending your days watching TV you have officially accepted oldness into your heart and bones. Is this what I have to look forward to? There is nothing wrong with this if this is what makes you happy. So be it! But the thought of this being my life in 30 years REALLY depresses me. That’s why when I read a book like Secret Lives of Wives, it gives me hope. This book is about lasting marriages, and its number one piece of advice is that women find their own lives, no matter what age.

Marilyn, quoted above, is a seventy-seven-year-old sex therapist for women aged 40-90 who recommends orgasming once a day as a way of maintaining their “independence from depends.” She and several others throughout the book describe the amazing sex lives they enjoy through decades of marriage. This is not the picture painted by our society, but I am so happy that it’s out there. There are also plenty of stories of old marriages being typical and sexless, but according to the book, these marriages are either choosing to stay in this stagnation or the couple never really had the chemistry to begin with.

So the big lesson I take from this book is that marriage is a microcosm of your life and the way you live it: it’s what you make of it.

Magic 78/365, Play, Summer Camp, South Africa, October 29, 2016