I'm having a late-sixties sexcapade - but am I leading my lover on?
With advice from Tess of the D'urbervilles
I ran into my Heathcliff, a hunk I had casual sex with in my early thirties. It was a joy to reconnect - but after a few months (of unbridled and exquisite sex) I realised that he is quite boring. I am much more Thrushcross Grange than he: sometimes he plays with his PHONE (don't think like that) in PUBLIC, which is nothing but embarrassing. (We're English so embarrassed is our default position). I feel it is unfair of me to toy with him - I should let him go.
BUT
He's a birthday coming up (I've always had a thing for Leos). I am thinking of arranging a mini break - a surprise: a sensual romantic get-away. (We're in our late sixties ... who knew sex could be better when it's nearly too late than it was when it was just a bit too soon?) My internal Catherine is actually feeling a bit guilty - a bit of a user ... but is that just because I am not a man? Can old women get away with behaving like young men? RSVP ASAP ... no time to lose!
I am RSVPing extremely ASAP by bumping your message right to the top of my inbox - sorry, other letter-writers, but needs must for a woman in crisis. And as Leo season has only just begun, I hope this gets to you on time.
Your letter was a joy to receive: firstly because it is so well-written (would you like to come work for this publication? No perks and no salary but lots of fun), but also because it’s delicious that you are having a late-sixties liaison, AND that you assure me the loving is better than ever. So much to look forward to! So much to be embraced!
Given the joie de vivre your situation inspires, I’m desperate to tell you to throw caution to the wind and indulge in your romantic get-away without further soul-searching. But. I’m not sure I can.
Let’s start by working out exactly what it is you feel guilty about. Is it hooking up with someone you find a bit boring? I think that’s okay, so long as they know it’s casual, and you still treat them with respect. Is it having sex with someone you don’t see a future with? Again, I think that’s fine, and I’m going to assume you know it is, because you did exactly that with this very same man in your thirties. So, reading between the lines, I’m guessing a part of you suspects he wants more this time round, and you’re wondering whether it’s okay to pretend not to notice so you can continue to have fun.
It pains me to say it, but I think it’s best to be honest. If I’d been dating someone for three months and then they took me away for a romantic birthday mini-break, I’d assume we were heading in a relationship direction. So my advice to you is: don’t veto the trip idea, but see if you can have a conversation prior to proposing it, that establishes a fun, no-strings-attached kind of tone. If you can pull this off, the trip will be more fun for you too: you can revel in it without worrying all the time that you’re leading him on.
Because nothing is a greater barrier to intimacy (and good sex) than a guilty conscience; a truth heartbreakingly illustrated in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles. You might think this is a strange comparison, but I think Tess’ story speaks to your own in a number of ways. Tess, a sixteen year old living in 1870s Wessex, has a darker secret than you do: she loses her virginity outside of wedlock to an older man called Alec D’urberville, in an encounter Tess later describes as ‘confused surrender’. When she then meets the love of her life, Angel Clare, guilt about her sexual history threatens to divide them. Tess’ anxiety about the truth she is concealing haunts her; so much so that Angel’s marriage proposal draws forth horror: ‘She could hardly see, her eyes having filled with two blurring tears drawn forth by a grief which, to this her best friend and dear advocate, she could never explain.’ Tess avoids Angel, she grows sick, she desperately wants to come clean - and it is only when Angel himself admits, on their wedding night, that he has also slept with someone else before that Tess finally feels joy again, at the prospect of safely revealing her comparable history.
Just as Tess and Angel’s courtship is overshadowed by the secrets that lie between them, I wonder whether the feelings of guilt that have begun to trouble you may fester until you tell your lover the truth. Tess worries her silence is ‘treachery’ - you fear your concealment is its own kind of trap. And look, if you keep thinking this man might use your moonlit walk along the Seine to get down on one knee, you just won’t be able to relax.
However: readers who are familiar with Hardy will know there is a twist in the tale, because Tess’ confession does not go down well. Far from absolving her of an indiscretion equal to his own, Angel’s opinion of Tess is changed forever. His dismissal is cruel and absolute: ‘You were one person; now you are another… the woman I have been loving is not you.’ I find this language such a gut-punch, inducing in me a fear many of us relate to: the fear you will reveal some dark corner of yourself to a loved one, and it will change the way they see you irrevocably.
This is the other way Tess’ story speaks to yours - it illuminates the double standards against which men and women are judged, double standards you touched on in your letter, and which make it tempting to act however you want in protest. In fact, when I told my brother I was going to use Tess’ story to shed light on your own, he said: ‘So what’s the takeaway? Don’t tell men your secrets so long as we live under the patriarchy?’ (Check out my woke brother.) I do see this side of the argument. Should Tess have had to be honest, living in a misogynistic society rigged against her? Likewise, do you really need to come clean, given the sexism that still haunts our culture? The world we live in has a horrible tendency to rob women over fifty of their sexual identity, while continuing to see middle-aged men as heartthrobs: so perhaps it is your just deserts to embrace late life sexual fulfilment, however you can find it.
But I think if you follow this argument through you’ll be in danger of mistaking an individual for a symbol. I have no reason to believe your lover has done anything to hurt you except play on his phone in public (which is lame, I agree, but you know). And while I want you to get what you can while the getting’s good, I also think your Heathcliff deserves maximum time to look for true love, if that’s what he wants to fill his seventies with. But who knows? Maybe he’ll be up for a no-strings-attached situation, especially if you can ask for what you want in a way that is both flattering and kind: ‘Hey X. I’m having the best sex of my life with you. It’s so amazing and everything you do turns me on. But I’m just having fun at the moment and still figuring out what I want from my future, so I wanted to ask whether you’re up for relishing our sexual connection without making any future commitments?’
I hope he says yes, and that you get to go to Prague or Rome or wherever it is. But if he says no, the way you can have one up on the patriarchy is by continuing to unashamedly explore your sex life in your sixties. I hope this adventure has given you the confidence you need to do so. Download Hinge, and Bumble, and Match.com; join whichever clubs and societies give you access to single men; and flirt with anyone who looks interesting. Don’t let anyone make you feel ‘slutty’ or judged for having the fun they probably wish they were having themselves, and at the same time be brave about offering clarity to others. Because if you can combine your sexual liberation with a clear conscience, well - it doesn’t get much better than that.
(P.S. if you are already on your getaway, ignore all the above. Nothing to be done. Just enjoy the prosecco & rose-petal strewn bed, and put the moral blame on me for not being quick enough.)
(P.P.S. I’m sorry I didn’t bring Wuthering Heights into this answer, given your brilliant references to it. I’m ashamed to say it’s a classic novel I've never read! Please can someone in the comments provide analysis of your situation in comparison to the Heathcliff/Cathy dynamic?)
Wise, true and hilarious. If only you had been around to advise Tess, that whole tragic mess might have been avoided! Brilliant.
It is just as well, dear Emma, you didn't mention Wuthering Heights. It is as Ill fated as can get, very romantic for the readers in retrospect, but too tramautic for the characters involved.
Your reader's letter is more Nora Ephron than Victorian era writers in my mind. And very contemporary, given all the proclamations that 60 is the new 40 (it isn't, I ought to know!)
Honesty is, of course, the best option, and guilt is a party pooper. BUT, it is not always an option, and If one has not been throwing caution to the wind all their lives, the sixties rings a bell. That maybe they should.