Widow’s Fire and Sober Sex: Nicky Wake

 

“Widow’s Fire and Sober Sex: Nicky Wake”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Nicky:

And it was a kinda horrible and very sad realization that, you know, I’ve not been present. I had a thought of my goodness, How on earth am I gonna have sober sex? How am I gonna allow myself to be naked and vulnerable and raw and open without the numbness that, alcohol gave me?

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Nicky Wake is a businesswoman and founder of two different apps that are inspired by her personal experiences with heartache, sobriety and sex.

She told me she first became aware of sex and sexuality in her early teenage years.

Nicky: In the UK, which is where I’m from, there was a very famous teen magazine called Just 17.

And of course, as always happens, you start reading just 17 when you’re just 14. Really? ‘Cause you always aspire to be that bit older. And I remember, you know, they’d have kind of romance sort of scenes with, boys and lots of chatter about how to flirt with boys and and things like that.

August/narration:

Around that time, she read a Judy Bloom novel…

Nicky: …about a love affair and a, loss of virginity. And someone calling their penis Ralph, as I remember. That was the kind of standout fact really.

August/narration:

Another thing that stands in Nicky’s memory is a particular image she saw. She’d been flipping through a magazine, and…

Nicky: …there was an advert for baby oil. And it had a naked woman, sat with her back to the camera. And I remember being sort of strangely drawn to this image, and it sort of haunted me for a bit. And I think that was the first realization that actually maybe I was bisexual, that sexuality was more complex than just a linear man and woman.

August/narration:

She said her first proper relationship unfolded at age 16.

Nicky: The typical schoolgirl teenage love affair with my then, first boyfriend, who I’m still ironically in touch with on Facebook, the power of social media These days. It was very, gentle and tentative and loving, and I was head over heels in love. It was a really positive first experience, actually, until obviously he clearly broke my heart.

August/narration:

He moved away and the relationship ended. Nicky’s next serious relationship formed during college….

Nicky: …with, a fabulously attractive pavement artist who was creative and wild and dangerous and dark and brooding and, and looked a bit like Morrissey from the Smiths.

That was the music of the time and we inter-railed Europe together and, again, had a really rather beautiful love affair.

Until we started going to, indie music clubs. we moved to London. He was still doing pavement art. I was drifting around through retail and college, and he was into this specific music and a dj and we ended up at a, gay indie music night and started acquainting around the gay scene and he was identifying as bisexual. and so there was a lot of kind of experimentation and things going on, and he was encouraging me to flirt with girls, with the kind of  fantasy of engineering a threesome.

And I fell head over heels with, a beautiful Portuguese girl called Claudia. and I was utterly besotted and I left him and broke his heart terribly. and then me and Claudia had a relationship for a while.

August/narration:

Then Nicky moved to Manchester, one of the most populated areas of the UK, known for its vibrant city life. Straight away, she ended up at a famous nightclub called the Hacienda.

Nicky: On my very first night there, I met the man who is now my gay best friend and every girl in the world needs a gay best friend.

And we partied in the Hacienda, and, I had the night of my life. In terms of dancing all night. And I ended up going back to the Hasi endo time and time again, and every time I went back I wore less and less clothing and in the end I was, I was offered a job as a semi-naked podium dancer at the Hacienda, which was a fabulous first career move I think. And a great way to, to explore sexuality and have a lot of fun.

I was a 24/7 party girl, and I ended up promoting a gay nightclub in Manchester called Paradise Factory. So I had a string of lesbian, relationships. Then, eventually, realizing that I needed to sort of start to concentrate a bit and find the love of my life. I resorted to online dating in 2002 and, met Andy Wake, the love of my life.

August/narration:

Nicky was 31 at the time. Here’s what she told me about Andy and their relationship:

“He was a real renaissance man, a musician, a writer, an artist,” she said. “He was an introvert to my extrovert, he was my rock, my anchor, he completed me, he was my soul mate. We lived and loved to travel enjoying fabulous holidays together.”

And, drinking was always a part of the relationship.

Nicky: So me and my husband, we were enablers of each other’s drinking. I think. We both were quite heavy drinkers.

August/narration:

Both of their lives changed in every way 15 years into the relationship, when a crisis unfolded.

Nicky: My husband suffered a heart attack, which resulted in a catastrophic brain injury in 2017, and he was left profoundly disabled for three years and in a nursing home requiring 24/7 intensive care. He never came out of hospital.

During that time, I suffered a period of anticipatory grief. The consultant had said to me, “Mrs. Wake, your story doesn’t have a happy ending.” And he was right. He basically said that Andy will die. He will have no hope of meaningful recovery. We just don’t know when. And then sure enough, we lost him to COVID in 2020.

August/narration:

Nicky’s grief escalated her drinking. Meanwhile, her libido skyrocketed, too.

Nicky: My life was out of control. And my early dating as a widow was fueled by something called Widows Fire. It’s a known phenomenon that affects people when they’re grieving, and basically it means that you get really horny when you’re grieving because you are aching for physical comfort.

I mean, if you think about it, I spent 20 years teaching Andy how to make love to my body, you know? And he got pretty good at it in the end, you know? So all that trust and time and effort and when you’ve got somebody who can just turn you on like that and it’s amazing, and then all of a sudden that’s ripped away overnight.

We had a very healthy sex life, and all of a sudden that’s gone and you ache for physical comfort as a widow. It’s not just the kind of physical sex, it’s the intimacy the holding. I remember going for a massage as a widow, in the early stages of grief, and sobbing when someone touched me because I’d missed that physical comfort so much. And so I made some very bad drunken decisions around sex and relationships. I was quite chaotic in that period of widow’s fire and early grief.

August/narration:

As her drinking and related challenges increased, Nicky knew she needed help.

Nicky: I kind of had two sort of rock bottom moments.

I fell the morning after a very heavy night. I was in, a supermarket car park. It was very unglamorous and, I literally face planted and was terribly bruised and battered. a horrific injury. I had to stay inside for like six weeks and it was a real low point. I realized that, that I was chaotic. I was out of control. And I wasn’t making good decisions and I was putting myself at risk. That was very worrying for my friends and family around me.

I decided that I needed to stop drinking and I tried to stop drinking on my own without medical supervision, which is really dangerous. And I had a seizure and I ended up in hospital again.

I did continue drinking after that, but eventually I got to the point, about a month later where I just, I woke out one morning and thought, this has got to stop. This got to change, and I knew I couldn’t do it on my own because I’d obviously, ended up in hospital the previous time.

So thankfully I have medical insurance, so I, checked myself into rehab the next day.

August/narration:

Through rehab, Nicky realized a lot about herself and her relationship with alcohol.

Nicky: I mean, I’ve always liked to drink. I’ve always been a party girl. I grew up in, the late eighties, nineties. And in the UK it was very booze culture, very ladette. You know, you were expected to drink as, as hard and as fast as the men. There was a kind of badge of honor drinking.

I was consistently a heavy drinker and a daily drinker, probably realistically from about the age of 17 onwards. In fact, the only time I wasn’t drinking daily was when I was pregnant. And they were the longest nine months of my life.

And when I was pregnant, I wasn’t having sex because, we tried long and hard to have Finn, our son. He was an IVF baby in the end. So I’d invested a lot of money and a lot of heartache in getting pregnant, so I wasn’t about to, jeopardize that in any way, shape or form.

August/narration:

Sex is usually safe during pregnancy, outside of some high-risk cases, but still. Nicky wanted to be as careful as possible. So she and Andy avoided it. Plus, sex and alcohol had always gone hand in hand for her. When she wasn’t pregnant-

Nicky: I was drinking daily from kind of 5:00 PM daily and very often, in my thirties and forties, I would have business lunches I run an awards company as well.

So I’d be flying around the world putting on big, glamorous award shows, sipping champagne on business plus flights. So drink was very enmeshed in every aspect of my life. And therefore, every time I had sex. I was drunk. I don’t think I was ever sober and present for sex.

When I went into rehab, I realized that I was a very highly functioning alcoholic. They handed me a leaflet that had the word “sober sex.” And I thought, I’ve never had sober sex. It was a kinda horrible and very sad realization that I’ve not been present.

I’d not been, mentally and physically in the room because my senses were dulled with alcohol. Now, whether that was a confidence thing or whether that was just habitual, it became that way, and I had an alcohol dependency. A combination of both, I suspect. But for me I had a feeling in, in rehab was the sort of thought of, my goodness, how on earth am I gonna have sober sex?

How am I gonna allow myself to be naked and vulnerable and raw and open without the numbness that, alcohol gave me?

August/narration:

She also knew she would soon find out.

Nicky: In rehab they advise you not to get romantically involved for 12 months. Well, you know, I’m a woman with needs, shall we say. So that was never not gonna happen. I just knew that I was gonna have to wrap my head around it and compartmentalize it in a in a way that worked for me.

I’m a single fifties woman. I got to 90 days from rehab and I thought, I deserve a treat. You know, 90 days is a big milestone. It’s a big achievement for someone who’s drinking daily and was addicted. And I thought, I’m gonna spoil myself. I’m gonna book myself a cruise. ‘Cause I like cruising. I like cruise holidays.

In  the past, cruise holidays have always been all inclusive drinks, packages, drinking, you know, cocktails at breakfast practically. And so I booked a cruise. and I was fairly confident in my sobriety by that point, because I knew that getting sober, I gained so much more than I’d lost.

And I knew that I couldn’t just have one drink. I’m an all or nothing girl. And I knew that I couldn’t fall off the wagon and that this was gonna be a real test. So I made sure that I booked, a non-alcoholic drinks package.

And I knew that on a cruise ship they have Friends of Bill W, an AA meeting, every day. So if I needed to, I could access AA.

August/narration:

Friends of Bill W. is code for AA. It’s named after one of the organization’s founders.

Nicky:  So on the very first night of the cruise, I went to the solos meetup, ’cause they organize it. They have really good programs for solo people.

August/narration:

Basically fun activities and mixing and mingling for single folks.

Nicky:  And I spotted a kind of silver haired fox across the room and I thought, oh, he’s lovely.

August/narration:

So lovely, in fact, that immediately she set her sights on getting closer to him.

Nicky:  We all went to the theater together to watch a show, and I remember practically pushing women out the way to get sat next to him strategically at the theater. I knew I had seven days on this cruise. I had to maximize my chances.

And the women outnumber the men in those things, usually two to one anyway. So you have to help your odds. So I engineered, to sit next to him and we flirted and we had fun and. at the end of the theater show he said, “Do you wanna have a drink?”

August/narration:

She accepted and they went for a drink.

Nicky: And he spotted that I wasn’t drinking alcohol, and he said, “Oh, why?” You know, everyone else was10 drinks into the free drinks package. I said, “Look, I’m in recovery. I’ve just come out of rehab and this is my first sober cruise.

August/narration:

The silver fox was just fine with that.

Nicky: We had a really nice evening and I went to leave and he went in to kiss me and he kissed me. It was a beautiful kiss and very tender, very sweet and really quite innocent. And I, I said to him, that’s the first sober kiss I’ve probably had. And he was very, very sweet.

I invited him for dinner the next night. Now had I been drinking, I would’ve absolutely ended up, going back with him that first night.

But the second date we got on like a house on fire over dinner. And in the end, we were making out in the lobby kissing and, and the waiter said, “Get a room!”

Anyway, he invited me back to his, and we had very lovely, very tender, sober sex. I was present and there was no guilt. There was no shame. There was no fumbling. It was a very sweet and tender moment.

He was very respectful. He didn’t drink that second night because he said he wanted to be sober and present with me, which I thought was very sweet and thoughtful of him.And we then hung out for the entire cruise together. He’s a very sweet guy, and I’m glad that he was my first sober sex experience.

And it turns out I’m actually quite good at sober sex. I think previously I was a bit lazy and selfish. I just lie back and enjoy it. Whereas I was a bit like a Russian athlete, I think on the first night. I was much more in the receptive and giving. So yeah, apparently being sober makes you a better lover.

August: I love that so much. Did being sober affect your own pleasure?

Nicky: I was definitely more attuned to my own pleasure and more confident in vocalizing what I wanted. I’m a terrible people pleaser and so very often I would put somebody else’s pleasure before mine, whereas I felt, a greater degree of confidence, I think in being clear about what I wanted and, and the best fit was, I could remember it the next day. and I didn’t wake up with a horrible hangover.

In fact, I wake up frisky as anything in the morning, as did he. So that was lovely.

August/narration:

Sober sex has remained gratifying and pleasurable for Nicky ever since – even as she’s had to work through related challenges.

Nicky: I had to not rely on Dutch courage of alcohol and really double down on, being proud as a woman of my body as it is, and not worrying about, perhaps, you know, the fact that I’m not a size 10 and, and all of those kind of, kind of things,

I think I had to really work on self-confidence and not feeling nervous around sex.

August/narration:

She’s changed her relationship style since losing Andy and getting sober, too.

Nicky: Polyamory really works for me, which is ongoing, regular with different partners. I’m not ready or looking for a committed and serious relationship.

I do like an ongoing, regular thing with an individual with agreed boundaries. That kind of works for me as a framework if you like.

August/narration:

Both grief and sober dating have taught Nicky a lot about herself, and about sex, love and intimacy.

Nicky: Grief taught me that grief isn’t the end of a story. You know, you never stop loving somebody, but you do learn in time to live with that grief and to carry that person and those thoughts and that love with you. I mean, grief is the price we pay for love and, being a widow is a club that nobody wants to be part of, and it’s a club with the highest admission price.

I hope that I’m living proof that, you can navigate a way forward through grief. As widows, we never move on, we move forward. And that’s how I try to see it.

I’ve only got one child, but my friends who’ve got two children tell me that when you have the second child, you don’t stop loving the first child any less. Love is an ever-ending capacity.

Andy was one chapter in my story -a beautiful, wonderful, lengthy chapter, and I’m blessed to have known him. But life doesn’t stop with grief and physical urges and aches don’t stop with grief. And that’s perfectly normal.

And as a widow or a widower, you need to respect those feelings and carry them with you and acknowledge widow’s fire for what it is. And that it isn’t a, a reason for, for shame. you can embrace it and you can allow yourself some physical comfort as long as you understand the emotional ramifications that that can bring so that you don’t put yourself in a situation where you can be hurt, hurt further, because otherwise you might suffer a kind of secondary loss.

So I guess that’s kind of what I’ve learned, through grief and intimacy.

Nicky Wake

August/narration:

In terms of sex without alcohol, Nicky has learned…

Nicky: …that sober sex is fantastic and I highly recommend it and everybody should do it. And I’m sure a lot of people are doing it. It’s just that I was a terrible alcoholic. it’s been a revelation to me. as a sober person, we need to get our dopamine hits where we can.

And believe me, sex is a fantastic dopamine hit. You know, it’s, better than going to the gym. Trust me. I’ve tried both. You know, the endorphin high and the rush that can come from an orgasm is incredible!

Obviously be careful not to get a sex addiction, I suppose, if you’ve got an addictive personality. But I’ve managed to avoid that thankfully so far.

It’s a great rush of endorphins and should be embraced and enjoyed.

August/narration:

Nicky’s companies aim to support people going through similar experiences with grief, loss and widow’s fire, or with sober dating.

Nicky: If you are a widow or widower and are looking to explore your next chapter, then visit chapter2dating.app, which is a app for widows and widowers who are looking for the next significant relationship. If you are not ready for a significant relationship, but you have a sort of flame of, passion that needs igniting, then Widows Fire is the site for you and that’s widowsfire.dating. And you can log on and browse, members on there. We do ask that people verify their widowed status to ensure that we protect our, members ’cause they could be vulnerable.

And then if you are sober or sober, curious. And, and considering dating and finding connections with clarity. Then check out sober.love.app, which is live in the UK and the US.

[acoustic, encouraging music]

August/narration:

Find direct links to learn more about Nicky Wake in the show notes. And, if you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, I would so appreciate a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also support the show and your friends, by sharing links to episodes you think they’d love. Thanks so much for listening.