Sex File: I am jealous of my divorced friends' new sex lives

I don't want to leave my marriage, so why is seeing them so satisfied with their sex lives making me question the strength of mine?

Mon, 23 Jun, 2025 - 07:52

Suzi Godson

I am in my mid-forties and I've been happily married to my husband for eight years. However, several of my close female friends have divorced over the past few years and experienced a kind of sexual awakening since then. I don't want to leave my marriage, so why is seeing them so satisfied with their sex lives making me question the strength of mine?

Comparison is the death of contentment. Seriously. From the confines of your stable, happy marriage with a regular sex life, envying your friends for their post-divorce sexual awakening is pointless. You say that you want what they have - novelty, not having to answer to anyone - yet you don't seem to be fully considering that they had to go through divorce to find their freedom.

Divorce is no picnic for anyone. When you and your friends meet up you will probably be getting the glossy edit. The absence of marital stress. The younger guys. The experimentation. It's a compelling narrative - so compelling that a Brown University study in 2014 found that when someone divorces, their friends' risk of getting divorced increases by 75%. But do try to remember that it's an edit. You don't hear about the downsides of dating again: the ghosting, the no-shows, the weirdos.

Finding new sexual partners is full of trepidation, and the honest answer is that no, you can't inject that kind of nail-biting stimulation into an eight-year-old marriage. You can, however, find newness by digging deeper into your existing sexual connection. Depth is the opposite of newness. Newness is about novelty and it exists in the present. Depth is about exploring the past to find potential for the future.

You may think you have already covered all this ground, but there is always, always more that you can learn about each other.

Simply talking more about your past, for example, and how you got to be who you are will deepen the emotional connection between you, and that in itself will strengthen your sexual connection. However, finding a way to share specific sexual desires is helpful too.

One way you can do this is to draw up a 'Yes/No/Maybe' list with a detailed list of sexual activities - types of kissing, touching, sensuous body parts, foreplay, sexual positions, new locations or sex toys you might like to try. It can be as vanilla or as kinky as you like, and it can also include feelings. Next to every item, you need three boxes with individual headings: one for 'Yes', one for 'No', and one for 'Maybe'. It is important that you complete your lists independently so that you can see where you merge, diverge and might meet in the middle.

Start with the shared 'Yes' items, then begin to unpack the items that have one 'Yes' and one 'Maybe'. You'll be surprised how sexually exciting it is to be able to access such detailed information about mutual preferences and possibilities. It also creates a wish list that will keep your once-a-week sessions interesting for the next ten years or more.

On that note, it's worth thinking about how you can keep the rest of your marriage interesting too. Marriage is a dynamic state that needs to keep moving forward. Whether it's a big trip, a house move, a pet, learning a new language, climbing a mountain or running a marathon, working together towards a shared goal will give your relationship momentum, and that, plus a decent sex life, is about as good as any marriage can get.