A few weeks ago, Nikki Gemmell issued a public apology to fans of The Bride Stripped Bare.
The novel, which was the best-selling Australian book of 2003, told the story of a 'good wife', a 'good mother', who vanishes, leaving behind a diary in which she chronicled her extra-marital sexual awakening. It’s erotic, explicit; so much so that Gemmell initially published it anonymously in order to shield her family from the inevitable backlash.
Yet in her February 18 column for The Weekend Australian, Gemmell wrote that, these days, her own sex life is less The Bride Stripped Bare and more "The Bride Gone Where?" And for that, she’s sorry.
"That raunchy chick of long ago preaching honesty and tenderness and wanting to instruct a man on exactly what a woman wants, precisely where and how; well, too-de-loo," Gemmell wrote. "All she wants now is sleep. And a room of her own. Make that an entire place of her own. While still in a loving relationship. Greedy, I know."
Today, Gemmell, 55, is living what she calls "a post-sex life".
It’s a phase in which motherhood and menopause are beginning to overlap. And quite frankly she can’t be fu— erm, bothered.
"This is a stage I'm at in my life of deep exhaustion," Gemmell said on Mamamia’s No Filter podcast. "I feel like I have to get through this discombobulating, deeply unnerving thing known as menopause.
"It's like this steamroller that has hit me and completely wiped my confidence, my sexual confidence, my energy, my metabolism. I feel like I'm depressed for the first time in my life. I’m forgetful. I can’t write books the way I used to.
"I’m trying to write a novel now, and I can’t remember what the characters are called."
Gemmell said her sexual relationship with her husband was once "mind-blowing". But it has simply tailed off in recent years, a victim of two decades of parenting (they have two adult children and an 11-year-old) and waning libidos.
"We deeply, deeply love each other. But we find our intimacy and our connection in other ways now, besides sex," she said.
"For ourselves, the situation works, because we're both on the same page."
It’s a phenomenon that Gemmell is observing among friends and peers, too (which is precisely why she wanted to write and speak about it publicly). The response to her column was "huge" and stuffed with stories of women reshaping their relationships around their new, post-sexual identities.
"We're starting to split off from the men," she said. "I feel like all around me there are women wanting rooms of their own, bedrooms of their own. There are snoring situations — either the bloke snores, or she snores — but they want their sleep, because they are so tired."
Gemmell notes that previous generations felt obligated to put up with it, but now women are asserting their need for (as writer and feminist Virginia Woolf expressed in 1929) "a room of one’s own".
"[We need it] for our serenity, and our sense of self," Gemmell said. "I find for me, personally, my husband and I are going off in different directions as we age. He's very much the homebody and the family person, and that's beautiful.
"I finally, after like 20 to 23 exhausting years of motherhood, just want to seize the world with girlfriends."
Gemmell knows this post-sex phase may be just that — a phase.
"Give me five or six years. And, you never know, I might be back. My husband might be back," she said. "This is a never-say-never situation.
"I just want to get through it and find out what is on the other side."
To find out more about how Nikki Gemmell is tackling this "post-sex" stage of her life, including how she’d feel if her husband were to look for sex outside their marriage, listen to No Filter.
Feature Image: Instagram.
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