Is Wanting to be Desirable Outside of Your Marriage Wrong?

Yesterday I had lunch with my mom at my favorite local haunt, John O’ Groats. Best Huevos Rancheros anywhere!

I was a bit dolled up, because that’s how I roll at 49. In my teens and 20s I never wore make-up, dresses, shoes, (or bras for that matter) because I had beauty to burn.

Now I want to squeeze every last ounce of juiciness out of this body, until I salsa out of this life in red stilettos, of course.

As my mom and I were leaving, Paul, the restaurant owner, stopped me to say, “You look so beautiful today.” I halted in my tracks and gave him a big hug. “You just made my day,” I told him.

The other day, when my tomboy daughter squinted critically at me as I waltzed out of the house to go to the grocery store wearing a dress and nice heels, she asked, “Mommy, why do you have to be pretty all the time?”

In her world of softball, soccer and ping pong “pretty” is a bad, shallow, insipid word.

Without missing a beat I answered, “Because it makes me happy.”

At 49 I’m just not ashamed of wanting to be attractive and even desirable anymore.

I don’t care that some people may think desiring to be desirable is an affront to my husband and my marriage. Or that they may think I need to get a life and help build houses for Habitat for Humanity (which I would actually love to do). Or that they may think I’m guilty of the 3 Vs. Vapidity, Vacuousness and Vanity.

I just don’t care.

Feeling desirable is part and parcel of what puts a spring in my step and makes me look forward to every day. It doesn’t mean I’m going to run off with the neighbor’s Guadalajaran pool boy (I think my Cougarosity frightens him a little).

It doesn’t mean I don’t also like to play softball, soccer and ping pong too.

It doesn’t mean I don’t care deeply about other people.

It just means that I’ve gotten to an age where I’m happy with myself, where I’ve given up beating myself up and judging myself. Because ladies, life is just too damn short. And interestingly enough, feeling desirable outside of my marriage actually adds a little kick to my married sex life!

So. My question for the day, and it just might make you squirm uncomfortably, what do you love about yourself right now? What makes you feel sexy, sassy and superlative. And go!