What if it took you until MID life to say out loud something that you’ve been trying to find the words for your whole life.

Something like: “Yes, I know I am a mother, married to a man, but I am also bisexual…and I’m ready to date women.”That’s the story of today’s guest, the novelist Julie Cohen.

Julie was in her 40s when she came out as bisexual. She tells Holly Wainwright that some people asked her why she bothered. As if age, itself, rendered her sexuality irrelevant. Others suggested that just as an adolescent’s sexuality can be dismissed as a “phase” - perhaps hers was simply a mid-life crisis.

Dating after divorce, navigating the apps and the first post-long-term relationship sexual encounters are interesting and nerve-wracking for anyone, and Julie says that was no different for her. You’re going to hear how it all went, the pleasures of post-penis sex, what she found the differences in dating men and women to be, and just how it felt to be living the version of herself that, as Julie says, she didn’t even have a word for when she was growing up.

You can follow Julie Cohen on Instagram here.

You can find Julie’s books here.

THE END BITS:

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CREDITS:

Host: Holly Wainwright

Executive Producer: Naima Brown

Producer: Tahli Blackman

Audio Producer: Jacob Round

Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

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