Like most couples who marry I wanted my first marriage to last “’til death do us part.”  It was not meant to be. Soon after giving birth to our two beautiful daughters, my husband claimed his gayness.

At first it was difficult to believe, yet unconsciously I’d been aware of some effeminate signals, and his admittance to experimenting once while in college. Harder to believe was my church’s advisement not to let our daughters have access to their homosexual dad.

Rebelliously, I did not go along with their unloving ‘christian’ beliefs; and went on to marry three more times.  Many acquaintances have questioned me as to whether I’d want to marry a fifth time.

Since 2005, I’ve lived alone; experienced a few short-lived boyfriends, and knew I couldn’t settle unless I fell IN love. Again. I was content to be alone, although I was open  and desirous to share my life with a man I could love deeply. Purely.

The first day of spring 2018, I met Antoine at a bar where he was playing darts and I was dancing swing. I got in his way! Then, I missed the bull’s eye due to dart ignorance.

Then, I invited him to dance, despite he obviously being much younger than me. He was a graduate student in chemical engineering at Cornell University and had never danced in his life. I was delighted that he picked up partner dancing quickly, and that we progressed to conversations of our other interests such as hiking to waterfalls.

Near a waterfall is where I initiated our first kiss, maybe a month later, while being in disbelief that he’d never been kissed before. We’re now in our seventh month of being boyfriend and girlfriend, having lived together easily for two months before Antoine left for his home in France in mid-July. I flew to visit him for two weeks in late August; celebrating our birthdays: his on the 28th, mine on the 30th.

Our families and friends are shocked that we are IN Love since I am four decades older. What is more unbelievable is that we now call each other husband and wife.