Sex With Mom and Dad

I've had to listen to my dad have sex for the first time in ten years.

 

Not that I try to listen, but you remember hearing those strange sounds down the hall when you were a kid only to look under the door and see a pair of feet hanging off the bouncing bed? Yeah, I heard those. And it was strange; but only kind of gross.

 

I have to preface the rest of this blog by noting that I did not grow up in a house where sex was talked about-ever. Although I wouldn't consider my parents to be conservative, sex and sexuality was never a topic they brought up or one I thought I could even tentatively breach. In fact, I always assumed that sex wasn't a big part of my parent's marriage. So on the rare occasion where I would hear my parents doing the nasty, I didn't know what to think.

 

So when my parents divorced after my mother's ten-year extramarital affair surfaced, I was really thrown for a loop. As the idea of my mother sleeping with another man slowly seeped into my head, I was forced to confront the idea that my mother was actually a sexual being. Go figure. Still, my mother refused to discuss the matter with me and now I'm left with conflicting ideas about my parent's relationship (among so many other things). And because we can't talk about it openly, I find it difficult to accept or even understand a long standing sexual affair when I was under the impression that my mom was prude.

 

Fast forward five months, and now my dad is dating. At fifty-five, he never thought he would be on the market again- and neither did I. As he began meeting women, I would occasionally think about the Sex Part. When people get together, part of the spark is sexual attraction, right? I'd ask myself. This means your dad is going to have sex. Call it creepily possessive or outright naive, but the thought disturbed me. For most of my childhood- as a result of my tight-lipped parents or my own level of disgust- I did not and could not think of my parents as people. People with problems of their own; separate of familial issues, people with sex lives and desires. But as he started seriously dating one woman, the whole thing slapped me in the face.

 

There it was: the creaking bed. I could hear it from downstairs. No, it wasn't the heating vent, no it wasn't her kids running around the house. Here I was, on a surprise visit to my dad's, and he was getting it on. But I couldn't be mad, could I? Sure, I didn't enjoy babysitting the Girlfriend's children in the meantime, but I guess they're only human.

 

While the situation as a whole is pretty sad and/or messed up, my parent's divorce forced me to recognize each as a real person as well as acknowledge their sexuality. Maybe acceptance of these (pictureless) facts is just something that comes with age, but this near immediate change in family dynamics was crucial in helping me jump that hurdle and transition from the mindset of "Ew, my parents are having sex" to "Oh, older people do have sex."

 

Still, I'm out of the house. I hope my little brother is more rational than I was and can accept the sex factor more easily than I could. Then again, he listens to music really loud.