Warning: Not for tender readers.

After Cassidy’s funeral, many family and friends were at my home. We played songs, laughed, and enjoyed the good memories. One person I have known since I was a teenager brought his girlfriend to my home. As they were leaving that evening she told me about a ‘support group’ for LDS widows and widowers that other people who lost a spouse told her was helpful. I thanked her for the information and went on about my evening.

It was a few days later, as part of looking up books and resources to help me transition as a widower, that I remembered her comment and looked up the LDS widows group. To my shock, it was a dating site. I found myself in a confusing position, my wife of 20 years, to whom I had been completely faithful, had only passed a few weeks before, and I was looking, albeit unwittingly, at the dating profiles of LDS widows. I absolutely do not feel ready to pursue a new relationship and felt dirty even looking. I closed the website after only a few moments. But those moments illuminated a new challenge for me.

There is no delicate way to put it. I am horny. Despite all the difficulties Cassidy and I had with her illnesses, and in spite of the occasional periods of months where we did not have sex, overall, our sex life was good. Even when we went a few months without copulation, I always knew that we would eventually have sex again. Now Cassidy is dead. That door is forever closed.

As a Latter-day Saint fully committed to living my religion, all sexual expression is limited to the confines of marriage. I don’t look at pornography, I don’t masturbate, and I don’t procure the services of women being prostituted. This created a strange drive in me. On the one hand, I do not at all feel ready to even look at a dating profile, but my sex drive is screaming at me to just pick someone to bang.

Honestly, it feels disgusting to be in this predicament. Nobody warns you that your sexual urges don’t stop just because your spouse dies. I understand now why men tend to remarry fairly quickly after losing a spouse, but I don’t have that desire.

My relationship with Cassidy was often very difficult, and it made me quite leery of romantic relationships. So I have no desire to ever pursue another one, but I am left with my normal sex drive, which I must find a way of incorporating into who I am with the call for sex unanswered.

I have found precious little information on how to manage sexuality in the aftermath of losing a spouse. In an effort to maybe help someone else who finds themselves in this situation, I will post how I manage it here. For right now, I just pray for a wet dream, which always seem to come long after I feel I can’t take the pressure anymore.

To my fellow widowers, hang in there. I will be trying to.