Plan A

At a doctor’s visit today my dating life was a topic of conversation. Not so strange maybe, but the outcome was unexpected.

My primary care physician, as usual, asked some questions. Am I seeing anyone? One man for 6 months now. He is 50, divorced, has children and doesn’t want more. Me? 44, divorced for an entire year, content to remain childless. I stick to Plan A, which hasn’t changed since I was in my teens and 20s. As usual, the plan is to not get pregnant. Some things change as I get older, but some things do remain the same.

Birth control method? Tracking my fertility by watching mucus–sounds gross but it’s easy–and knowing when I ovulate. Occasional naked sex when it’s safe, but definitely using condoms or other equally entertaining activities when I’m fertile. Am I OK with this, with the risk? Well, yes. It’s been my method for 15 years. And it has some benefits.

My lover is older and has problems maintaining an erection. Is this normal for middle-aged men? I don’t know, I’ve never fucked one regularly before. It hasn’t been a problem so far, other than presenting some condom difficulties. But we’re monogamous, and there are so many ways to have fun, so many options to make him cum, why limit ourselves to latex-sheathed sex?

And it’s simple. Just remember: No Naked Fucking When Fertile.

The only doubts in my mind about the mucus method are two: first, it’s too freakin’ easy. Nothing to prescribe, nothing to insert, no side effects. Why don’t more people do this? Maybe it’s the fact that there’s nothing to purchase, nothing to sell. I mean really, even the stirrups on the exam table in the doctor’s office carry drug company advertisements for birth control pills (as if THAT’S a positive association for a product!). Free birth control seems so, well, anti-capitalist. Is it so radical to know when you’re fertile? Do we really trust a company to control our fertility more than we trust ourselves?

Which brings up the second doubt: do I trust myself to understand my fertility? If it doesn’t work, if my earth-mother, radical feminist tendencies prove wrong, the result is pregnancy. While not a complete disaster in my situation, it could never be considered a desired outcome.

Happily, after asking her questions and listening to my explanations, my physician offered to prescribe a backup, a failsafe, an alternative. I was completely unprepared for it. I had just forgot that it was an option. But now, after hearing about it in the news, listening to people imagine its misuse, and supporting it from afar, I have it. Take the first pill within 72 hours after the “event,” then take the second pill 12 hours later. That’s it.

My Plan A remains solidly in place. I check mucus daily, and my dedication to the NNFWF method grows every bloody month. But it is helpful to know, reassuring in fact, to have a real, workable, actual, Plan B (generic of course).

For more info see:

Planned Parenthood

or

Our Bodies Ourselves

Rules? What rules?

A friend has discovered that her on-again, off-again lover is married. After a small freak-out where she felt stupid and awful, and realized that she knew all along and just chose not to explore it, she got over it. I don’t think she’ll continue to see him, as she’s figuring out she does want a more committed relationship. But the response of her friends has been interesting: one woman forbid her to talk to him again.

Silly. Dating in your 40s is so different from dating as a teenager or in your 20s. I don’t know what it would have been like in my 30s–I was married by then–but I’m sure it too would have had it’s own special flavor. I’m just pleased to be where I am finally. It’s so much easier to be older (in some ways).

There are no rules to relationships post-divorce, post-adolescent, post-trauma. Every situation is distinct and everyone I know is making it up as we go. What else can you do?

40s+ friends dilemmas include: a divorced mother of 1 dating a widower with 2 kids; a widow dating her boss; and a single woman dating a man who is divorcing months after they got pregnant on one drunken night, she aborted the pregnancy, stopped talking to him, then he finally left his wife. And I just met two more women: a single woman living with a divorced man with 3 kids, dealing with his ex-wife who has substance-abuse problems; and a divorced mother of 3 who has been dating a widower with 3 daughters for 1 year, and his eldest daughter is getting married. Then there’s my friend who started this story, living abroad and having (ending?) an international affair with a married, globe-trotting banker. And me of course, divorced woman with a house, job, and cat, helping my boyfriend (is that what he is now?) through his own divorce.

I am so grateful for my friends. Their complicated emotional lives show the incredible capacity of our hearts. Who cares about rules when we are able to love so much?