When Stacey Heale’s husband Greg Gilbert died from bowel cancer in 2021, she was floored by grief. Diagnosed at just 39, he’d finally succumbed to the disease after a five-year battle. “I was devastated,” Stacey says. “Greg was amazing. We were together for 15 incredible years.” What Stacey didn’t expect to feel in the maelstrom of emotions such as sadness, denial, shock and anger however, were strange and powerful feelings of sexual desire.
This sudden, unbidden rise in libido she recalls as being “incredibly intense. I can only describe it as like going through puberty all over again – that rush of physical feelings that build and wane and build ... you don’t understand them, but they are very real.”
Heale did not want to talk to those close to her about what she was feeling: “It was confusing to me, the way my body was reacting, I just didn’t understand what was happening. It wasn’t that I wanted someone else – I was devastated at losing Greg, but there it was – this involuntary physical need. I ended up researching online and discovered there was a term for what I was experiencing: ‘widow’s fire’.”
Jessica Stephenson Clarke, a relationship coach for ARVRA wellness specialising in grief counselling, says the term describes “the strong desire for sex amid or following a bereavement. Not everyone will experience it, but for those who do, it can often feel uncontrollable and all-consuming.”
Indeed, forums and chat rooms relating to bereavement are filled with women describing complex feelings of shame and guilt and looking to better understand this hidden and often distressing part of the grieving process. Writing on the Widows Handbook website, Evey W describes herself as feeling “like a cat on heat” while Deb89, says she felt “like a horny teenager”. Meg, from Manchester says her sexual urges were “guilt-laden – I felt I was being unfaithful to his memory, but it was like an itch that I had to scratch. Dating was difficult. Thank heavens for battery operated assistance.”
Stephenson Clarke is not surprised women are desperate to communicate their feelings on the subject. “Grief is a universal experience yet it’s something we don’t like to talk about – sexual grief is a particular taboo. Missing sex and intimacy following the loss of a partner is going to be a natural part of grief and is something we need to talk about more, not less.”
Heale, who has written a book Now is Not the Time for Flowers (Lagom) to help others untangle the realities of life and loss, agrees. “Grief is so bewildering,” she says, “it’s an umbrella term, encompassing different and often opposing emotions. Some of the feelings are welcome and some are not, but they are all normal.”
Indeed, this very common phenomenon affects women (and men) regardless of age and circumstance. During a recent episode of Women’s Hour, listener Lizzie – a widow in her 60s – was keen to outline her own experience after losing her husband 18 months ago. “I’ve described it as being like having my pants on fire. You feel permanently tingly,” she said. “Sometimes it’s worse than others but it’s pretty much there all the time and, in the beginning, certainly it would wake me up at night. The only thing that would get rid of it would be masturbation or some form of exercise – because it makes you very restless.”
‘An insatiable yearning for intimacy’
The symptoms of widow’s fire can last for months or even years. For Heale, they were mercifully confined to the first phases of bereavement. “It was all encapsulated in that heightened state of early grief,” she says. “There’s a headiness that feels fizzy, it’s so visceral, it’s on the tip of your tongue. This was when it was at its most intense.”
Anecdotal evidence about widow’s fire can now be backed up with hard statistics. A recent study by Chapter 2 – a dating app for widows and widowers – showed that 63 per cent of their users have experienced widow’s fire and 58 per cent within six months of losing their partner. Nicky Wake, the woman behind Chapter 2, lost her husband Andy to a heart attack in 2020 and describes widow’s fire as “an insatiable yearning for intimacy. I left it several months, but in the end it became overwhelming. I tried online dating, but it was like the Wild West. Full of dick pics and marital cheats and ghosting. Not what I needed at all.”
Spotting a gap in the market, Nicky set up Chapter 2, “so that, when they’re ready for a relationship, widows and widowers can date from a standpoint of mutual understanding”. The site is hugely popular, however feedback from users, coupled with Nicky’s own personal feelings – “my heart was still very much with Andy, so I wasn’t ready for a relationship, but I was craving intimacy and physical touch” – led her to set up the Widow’s Fire platform, an offshoot of Chapter 2, so that still-grieving widows and widowers looking for a purely physical coupling have a safe space in which to connect. The take-up has been so positive, the app has recently launched internationally.
So, there’s no question that widow’s fire exists, but what of the science behind it? We know that the human brain initiates and maintains sexual arousal and desire. A 2019 study by Italian researchers, “Neuroanatomy and Function of Human Sexual Behaviour” published in the National Library of Medicine, states that “sexual desire, arousal and orgasm are mediated by complex, yet still not fully understood, interactions of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin also play their part.”
When it comes to widow’s fire, the physiological response is therefore intrinsically linked to what’s happening at a psychological level. In “Young Widowhood: a qualitative study of sexuality after partner loss” the lead researcher Dr Liza Barros-Lane drew links between bereavement and the shaking of a woman’s fundamental sense of self. “Partner loss deprives young widows of physical contact, emotional intimacy and the fulfilment of sexual desire. Although disenfranchised and oppressed, sexuality is a core piece of women’s identity, and sexual bereavement may compel widows to reconstruct their sexual identities.”
Describing sexual bereavement of widows as “a significant secondary loss,” the study found that as widows grieve for their sexual partner, “they may oscillate between their lonely, active longing for the deceased and their attempts to self-soothe and recreate themselves as sexual beings within an altered, partnerless status”.
Respondents reported “skin hunger” a craving for touch and intimacy and expressed a profound need to feel desirable, which the study found was “seemingly rooted in their drive to feel alive and to maintain their identities as sexual beings”.
‘Wanting to feel something other than fear’
Heale recognises that “drive to feel alive” having felt it herself and firmly believes widow’s fire is the brain’s way of counteracting death. “I suppose widow’s fire is to do with distraction,” she says. “It’s about wanting to feel something other than fear. It’s about needing to feel alive because you feel a little bit like you’re dying at the same time as your partner.” She reveals she actually felt the first physical stirrings shortly before Greg died, while he was receiving end-of-life care in a hospice. “I think it’s just that when you’re surrounded by death, your psyche is desperately looking for something to counteract that horror,” she says.
Heale has come to terms with those feelings and has accepted them as part of the natural grieving process. “For me, widow’s fire is similar to what happens when you laugh in an inappropriate situation and you think ‘this is not what I should be doing’,” she says. “Your body is having an emotional reaction to something – it’s unbidden, but you just can’t help it.”
So, it’s not about the person you’ve lost? “Absolutely not. It’s nothing to do with the love you felt and continue to feel for them. It’s not about finding anyone else attractive either. It’s about yourself and to do with primal feelings around abstract fundamentals of life, death, sex and birth.”
Stephenson Clarke agrees: “It’s crucial to remember that experiencing widow’s fire doesn’t diminish the love for the deceased partner or indicate a lack of grief. Rather, it’s intertwined with complex emotions including guilt, confusion and a yearning for closeness. Many people also grapple with societal expectations of prolonged mourning that can conflict with their natural desires for intimacy.”
She advises anyone struggling with bereavement should remember it’s a vulnerable time. “Sometimes what you’re craving is not sexual but instead intimacy, which is much harder to find. A sensual massage or simply someone to hold at night can be just as fulfilling as a sexual connection. Whatever you need, it’s important to tread carefully. Reach out and talk to someone you know in a safe and non-judgmental space, not because there is anything wrong but because these are complex emotions that can feel lighter when shared with someone supportive. Lastly, be transparent with any sexual partners about your circumstances. Don’t pretend that you’re looking for a new partner if you’re not and, instead, allow yourself to focus on fulfilling your needs while still processing your experiences.”
A common thread among bereaved individuals struggling with widow’s fire is for compassion and less judgment from those around them as they deal with this confusing and unexpected sexual and physical part of their grief. “No woman broken by the death of their partner is trying to be provocative or make a big statement,” writes Heale in her book. “They are just experiencing their life and the multitudes it produces, often at odds with other feelings and what we have been conditioned to feel is acceptable.”
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