I lost the love of my life to cancer. It was a decades-long love affair for us both, brought to a tragic end at its height. But … life goes on.

Over the years that followed, I went on with things and tried to find that person to share what are commonly referred to as the “golden years,” when career and finances are settled. A few months before COVID came, I was blessed to meet someone who was a perfect match. Active and athletic, financially secure, well-educated, an accomplished person in her own right who had also lost her soul mate after many, many blissful years filled with family and living in the upper echelons of her world. After dating for a period of months, we both admitted we were a match, and pledged ourselves to the other, though agreed that at our age (I’m in my 70s, she’s in her 80s), marriage or cohabitation wasn’t a good idea (too many entanglements). We’ve been seeing each other once or twice a week for over two years (she has her own business, I am retired).

Our relationship is wonderful in every aspect but one: sex. She was married once in her early 20s and had children, and then lost the only other man she ever had sex with. Her Christian faith is a big part of her life. We’ve been to church together. As I was raised a gentleman, I’ve made clear to her I would not make any unwanted or unapproved advances. When COVID swept over the land, we agreed to still see each other, but socially distanced and outdoors. Months later, when it got colder, we did what we needed to do to make things safe to go inside. We began enjoying more physical contact, but anything beyond a certain point was forbidden. Her faith taught her that you do not have sex with someone you’re not married to – a belief she held to her entire adult life before, during, and after marriage. She’s expressed feelings of wanting to be intimate with me but is constrained by her faith. In fact, she’s even told me to consider “finding someone more willing” as she understands that as a man I have those feelings, urges, needs.

So, there’s the situation. We are both in excellent physical health. As I lie in bed alone at night and spend many, many evenings alone, I am left to wonder: what to do? Looking for advice … got any thoughts?

– A Gentleman in New England