Read My Formerly Hot Life for Free Online

decent choices, but they’re not as personally affected by your choices, so in the end, whatever makes you happy, they’ll find a way to get behind. Not necessarily so, your nearest and dearest.
    Let’s say I wanted to become a midlife stripper, determined to show the world more and more of me, just as cultural norms and people’s near-universal preference would dictate that I reveal less and less. For the record, I think that my becoming a stripper would be awful for everyone involved, but Paul is very supportive so I don’t have an example of anything I truly want to do that he has disapproved of.
    So let’s pretend snaking my fish-white mom body up and down a pole is an aspiration of mine. I’d go to my friends and excitedly and convincingly frame it as an exercise in positive body image: The mass worship I’d get for flaunting my Formerly form would maybe make me feel “empowered” as a woman, which I’ve seen certain strippers interviewed on TV claim is the true payoff, not the cash tucked into their G-strings. I could sock away that off-the-books G-string green for my kids’ college fund, of course, and I’d maybe tap into my sexual core, whatever that is, which would no doubt enhance my intimate relationship with my husband. If nothing else, I’d have more to write about, as if there weren’t enough stripper memoirs out there to keep the hellfires burning for eternity.
    Then I’d assure them I was serious, and ask what they thought. Some friends would raise an eyebrow and suggestselling pencils from a tin cup outside the Empire State Building might be a more reliable revenue stream. But if it was obvious that I was jazzed about the plan, at least a couple of the more outré would say,
Sure. If it will make you happy, go for it! It’s more remunerative than an advanced degree, and possibly aerobic
.
    His in-theory support being tested, Paul, of course, would vote a loud no, out of concern for my safety and dignity, his career, what his parents would think and perhaps because he’d see it as evidence of our profound incompatibility. My girls wouldn’t like it, either; streaking is a joy for them, but the sight of my mature booty ducking into the shower elicits shrieks of “Eeewww, mushy!” They are just a couple of years away from being mortified by everything I do, and stripping would be worse than even my singing Go-Go’s songs as I drop them off at school (they already hate that).
    The bottom line is that as a familied Formerly, you don’t always have the support of those closest to you to do what you want or need to do. In this fictitious example, my family’s happiness is directly dependent on my remaining clothed. And that’s totally fair. But that leaves Formerlies like me back in the situation we were when we lived with our parents: negotiating with people who may not feel as we do, and who have a say in what we do. Remember how your ’rents had their own feelings about your donating your college fund to free Tibet and becoming a cranial sacral masseuse? You really needed your friends then, whether youwent to college or not, if only for empathy. All stripper silliness aside, there may be times when my husband and kids won’t like what I need to do and I will need to do it anyway. It will be so important to have my friends’ support.
    Many paired-off Formerlies seem to get this, which may be why our friendships are so rewarding—they remind us that we exist separately from our families, as we did in our previous incarnations. Melissa says her Formerly friendships are the best she’s had since before she was married. Her marriage is now a fact of her life, not something that feels new and sacred, like it needs to be encased in glass lest it gets covered with greasy fingerprints. “It doesn’t feel as private and primal as it once did, like no one can know that we had a fight,” she says. “Now I know it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, that all my friends have struggles with