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"The bedframe is broken. All the towels are ruined." My husband paid the hotel bill without flinching and said "worth every penny." The woman at the front desk did not make eye contact. She charged us $645 in damages. I stood there in a sundress and flip flops trying not to laugh. He squeezed my hand. We walked out to the car. He put my suitcase in the trunk. Then he leaned against the driver's side door and just stared at me for a full minute. He said "I can't believe we did that." I said "I can't believe we did that either." He said "I never thought we'd do that again." ======== Eight months before that weekend, I'd been a woman who hadn't had sex she enjoyed in four years. I was 50. Married 23 years. I was the woman at bridal showers who laughed along with the sex jokes and changed the subject as fast as I could. Because I didn't have sex anymore. Not really. I'd been going through motions on my back for four years. And I didn't know how to tell anyone. ======== Our marriage was good. That's the part you have to understand. We liked each other. We liked our kids. We liked our neighborhood. We liked going for drives on Sunday afternoons. The only thing we didn't have anymore was us in a bed. Saturday nights had become a ritual. I'd change into the shirt I wore when it was "a sex night." He'd come up to bed with a glass of water. We'd go through the choreography. I'd moan in the right places. I'd move in the right ways. I'd grip his shoulders at the right second. I'd do my best imitation of the woman he married. And then I'd roll onto my side and hate myself for half an hour until I fell asleep. ======== It started hurting at 46. Small at first. Then not small. I went to my OB. She said "estrogen cream, try it for four months." Four months. It didn't help. Second OB said "maybe a different brand." Different brand didn't help either. I spent $280 on a "wellness brand" lube from Goop's website that came in a glass bottle. It burned. I spent an afternoon in the tub with a cool cloth between my legs trying to calm my skin down. Then I threw the $280 bottle in the trash and lied to my husband about what I'd done that afternoon. I don't know why I lied. I just did. ======== The failed solution I went the longest on was a sex therapist. Twelve sessions. $220 each. $2,640 total. Her office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown. She had tissues on every table. She asked me a lot of questions about my father. About my mother. About my body image. About whether I'd ever "felt unsafe." I wanted to scream at her. My father was fine. My mother was fine. My body image was fine. I felt entirely safe with my husband. None of that was the problem. The problem was that my body hurt when my husband touched me. And she wouldn't talk about my body. Every question was about my mind. My mind was not the problem. On session eleven she said "I wonder if you're holding onto something from childhood that's manifesting physically." I paid for session eleven and never booked another. $2,640 and she never asked about my body. ======== Here's what made me furious. My father-in-law had a stroke two years ago. Minor. He recovered. During the recovery his cardiologist asked him at every follow-up: "how's your sex life? Any issues?" He was 79. Fully on top of his sex life, in his cardiologist's office, at 79. Meanwhile my own doctor had never asked me about sex. Not once. I had to bring it up. And when I brought it up she handed me a sample tube of cream and said "some women struggle after menopause." The difference isn't biology. It's priority. ======== I gave up around Easter of last year. My daughter was home from grad school. We'd had a nice dinner. That night I was cleaning up the kitchen by myself. My husband was playing cards with her in the living room. I could hear them laughing. I stood at the sink with my hands in warm soapy water and I said out loud "this is the rest of my life." And I was okay with it. That's the part that scared me. I was ready to be done. ======== The turn happened at a book club. I was in a book club with five women I'd known for 20 years. It met once a month at someone's house. That month it was at Patty's. We drank too much wine. We only talked about the book for about 15 minutes. Around 10pm I was in the kitchen refilling my glass and I heard two of the women whispering in the pantry. Patty and Diane. I didn't mean to listen. I was just in the kitchen. Diane was saying "I thought I was done. I genuinely thought that part was over." Patty was saying "I'm telling you, it's the pillow. It sounds insane. I know." Diane was saying "you have to give me the link before I leave tonight." Patty looked up and saw me. She didn't pull back. She said "Sarah, come here. I'm going to send it to you too." I didn't say anything. I couldn't. Patty pulled out her phone and texted me a link. She said "open it when you get home." I drove home that night with my phone sitting on the passenger seat. I didn't open the link until morning. ======== I opened it at 6am with my coffee. It was something called the Moodie Comfort Pillow. I sat at my kitchen island and read the website for 18 minutes. Here's what it said, in plain English I could actually follow. After menopause, vaginal tissue thins. Every doctor had told me that. They hadn't told me the next part. When tissue thins, the geometry of sex changes. Lying flat pushes one specific wall of tissue against bone. That's where the friction comes from. That's where the pain comes from. It isn't dryness. It isn't hormones. It isn't in my head. It's an angle. For four years I'd been trying to fix the friction with creams. Which is like trying to stop a door from scraping by oiling the hinge. When the problem is the door's hanging at the wrong angle. ======== The pillow is made at one exact angle. 27 degrees. It lifts your hips into the spot where sex stops hurting. Firm memory foam that holds under body weight. Soft cover. Looks like a throw pillow. The box just says "Moodie." Nothing else. I ordered it from my kitchen island before my husband came downstairs. ======== The box arrived on a Thursday. I hid it in my closet for six days. On Wednesday night I finally took it out. Put it on the bed. Put it under my hips. Waited. I was more nervous than I'd been on prom night in 1988. My husband came to bed around 10:45. He stopped in the doorway when he saw the pillow. He didn't say anything. He just walked over to his side of the bed. Got in. Reached over and took my hand. Waited. I appreciated that so much I could have cried. ======== I'll tell you what happened carefully. Because I don't want to oversell it. My body didn't brace. For the first time in four years, my body was where it was supposed to be. In the bed. Not above the bed. Not next to the bed. Not already planning tomorrow. About fifteen minutes in he stopped. Pulled back. Looked at me for a long second. And said "stay like that." Just "stay like that." I stayed. He said "don't move." He kissed me. I didn't plan the sound I made. He whispered it again: "don't move." I cried afterward with my face turned into his shoulder. He didn't ask why. He just held me. ======== Week one we had sex three times. Not on purpose. It just kept happening. Week two he came home from work on a Tuesday with flowers from the grocery store for no reason. He said "I just wanted to." He hadn't brought flowers home on a non-occasion in maybe eight years. Week three I moved out of the "sex shirt" phase. The shirt I used to wear to signal a sex night. I threw it out. I started sleeping in an actual nightgown again. Or nothing. Mostly nothing. Month two he started planning things. Little things. A dinner reservation on a random Thursday. A weekend at his cousin's cabin. A concert in the city. He'd stopped planning things years ago. I hadn't noticed him stopping. I noticed him starting again. ======== Which brings us to the hotel. He booked it for our 23rd anniversary. A boutique hotel in a little town about three hours from home. Room with a four poster bed. Clawfoot tub. The kind of place with fresh flowers in the lobby and a woman at the front desk who calls you "darling." We checked in on a Friday afternoon. We did not leave the room until Sunday morning for checkout. We missed the breakfast both mornings. We missed the dinner reservation he'd made for Saturday night. We had sex on Friday night. Again at 1am. Again Saturday morning. Again Saturday afternoon. And then again late Saturday night after we'd ordered room service. Which is when the bedframe broke. Cracked right down the side. Like an actual SNAP in the middle of everything. We froze. Then we started laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. We'd broken the bed. At 51 and 54. We'd BROKEN the bed. There was a lot of water involved on the bathroom floor. I'll leave it there. That's the towel part. ======== On Sunday morning we stood at the front desk. The manager came out. He said "I understand there was some damage." My husband said "yes sir." "The bedframe is broken. And all the towels are ruined." My husband said "we'll cover it." The bill came to $645. My husband paid without flinching. Signed the receipt. Handed it back. And said "worth every penny." The manager's face did not change. I almost died in the lobby. ======== I'm telling you this because somewhere there's a woman reading this who thinks that part of her life is over. It doesn't have to be. It isn't over because you're old. It isn't over because you've been married a long time. It isn't over because your body has changed. It's a geometry problem. There's a pillow that costs $129 that fixes the geometry. That's the whole thing. ======== 👉 https://trymoodie.com/products/moodie-couples-pillow 100-night money-back guarantee. Discreet shipping. The box just says Moodie. If you're about to give up on this part of your life, please don't. Not yet. P.S. We went back to that hotel for my 51st birthday last month. The manager recognized us. He seated us personally at breakfast. He did not bring it up. He also did not give us the same room.