sex

After her divorce, Jackie O was terrified to have sex again. What happened next surprised her.

It's been six years since Jackie O separated from her husband Lee Henderson. Now, the mother-of-one has opened up about intimacy post-divorce, and the anxieties that have come with having sex again.

"I thought 'How am I going to do this since it's been so long since I have been with someone new?'" Jackie said on her new podcast Her Best Life with her best friend Gemma O'Neill.

Watch Kyle and Jackie O on 60 Minutes. Post continues after video.


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Surprisingly for Jackie, 49, she found her first sexual encounter post-divorce "not terrifying at all".

"I just think because I'm older now there were no issues with feeling confident. In the moment I felt confident, I felt more OK with my body.

"Sex is very different now, very different, better, because I'm so much more confident," she added.

As she approaches 50, the radio host also said she is prioritising "self-love," removing the caregiver label she has had in previous relationships, and "putting up boundaries".

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Jackie previously spoke about her two divorces on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. Only 19 when she married her then co-host Phil O'Neil, 10 years her senior, the radio host described their union as "really beautiful".

"It was like a high school romance," she told Mia Freedman. "And so when that ended, as painful as it was, it's very different to the marriage that ends when you have children."

Jackie shares daughter Kitty with ex-husband Lee. Image: Instagram/@jackie0_official

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The pair separated after five years, when Jackie was 24 years old. She met her second husband Lee eight months later, with whom she shares 13-year-old daughter Kitty.

Divorce the second time around was harder for Jackie.

"You might say certain things within your relationship like, 'If we ever split up, I would never do this, I would never ask for this.' And then suddenly, you're alone with your lawyer and your lawyers are going, 'You have to ask for this'," she said on No Filter.

"And then you feel betrayed, and that is incredibly triggering. You think, 'How could they do this? Why do they want this?' So a lot of raw nerves hit during that process."

But with a daughter in the mix, the 49-year-old emphasised the importance of moving on.

"You can't harbour any kind of resentment, because at the end of the day, you're going to be co-parenting and you want to keep that really copacetic. So once you let that go, then the healing starts. And that takes another couple of years. So I would say to anyone going through this. It's a three year process. Easy."

Listen to the full episode below.


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