dreams

I’m a 35-year-old widower with two little girls to look after. It has now been a little over two years since my wife died. Quite suddenly, since last winter, I began having multiple very erotic dreams, always about my late wife. All the medical data seems pointed towards widowers losing their sex drive. Mine has suddenly kicked into over drive.

When my therapist told me in 2012 that I presented with symptoms of PTSD, I was relieved, but also in disbelief.

I don’t remember when I started holding in my stomach. [...] It’s hard to trace a habit so ingrained that I don’t know it exists. Until I’m lying on a table and her hand rests at my solar plexus and she tells me to let go. I can’t. I don’t know how, or not yet.

I’m not saying having children doesn’t change things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t reevaluate our life choices as we build our families. What I AM saying is that we must stop hinting to cisgender women that once they’ve had kids, their lives are laid out for them.

I’d been so busy patting myself on the back for conquering my big fears, I failed to acknowledge that the types of things that scare me had shifted. A lot of the obvious stuff didn’t bother me anymore — but what about all the smaller, more personal things that still scared the living shit out of me?

The sex dreams that have caught me completely off-guard. I don’t generally have much of a sex drive during my pregnancy when I’m awake, but when I’m asleep, it’s a completely different story. I have these incredibly vivid, incredibly-detailed sex dreams almost every night. Often, they involve celebrities.