Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us who get married can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they’ll share advice and reflections.
Sally Berg, 60, is a pleasure coach for mid-life women. She lives in Somerset with her son. Interview by MaryLou Costa
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I’m going on a hot date tonight, with a man 20 years younger than me.
Since separating from my husband of 35 years, in 2023, I’ve been prioritising pleasure – taking lovers instead of boyfriends, because I’m not looking for someone to load the dishwasher with or take the bins out. I want to have sex and intimacy without getting too invested in the other person, so I can protect my own space and identity.
My marriage wasn’t necessarily unhappy. It just became clear we had outgrown each other once I started to put myself first, after emerging from a period of severe depression, and healing from childhood trauma.
My ex and I met at college when I was 21 and he was 19. It was an instant attraction, and I was actually his first-ever girlfriend. It was full on love. When I went traveling around Australia for a year with my sister, it was before mobile phones, so we wrote all these amazing love letters to each other. It became this epic, beautiful romance.
While it was initially hard to reconnect when I returned to the UK, we got married when I was 26 and he was 24. Living in London, we were both ambitious in our work. I was a high-flying fashion editor, working at magazines like ELLE and Glamour. He was a photographer, so we were both really living the life, traveling and partying. It was a lot of fun.
After 15 years of living that lifestyle together, our beautiful son arrived unexpectedly. I knew I couldn’t live in London anymore and carry on with such a demanding career. I took a freelance consulting role in South Africa with a well-known shoe brand, and I was totally seduced by the landscape and the people. So it was settled – we would move to Cape Town.
We had an incredible time. We set up our own photography and videography company, and had our second son. We ended up moving to an off-grid farm, swam in the ocean every day, and were present with our children. Things were going so well that people even called us “Team Berg”.
But that’s when things started to unravel. My boys were one of the biggest gifts in my life, but I couldn’t escape from what happened to me as a child. I grew up with a bipolar, alcoholic father, who was violent and sexually abusive. I didn’t know what to do with it all, and I sank into a deep depression.
I tried therapy, but that didn’t work, as the trauma was trapped in my body. That was the start of my tantra journey.
I was in a restaurant one evening, and a woman walked in. She was absolutely radiant. My immediate reaction was, “I need to know her”. I spoke to her and when she told me she was a tantra teacher, I signed up to her classes on the spot. I wanted what she had.
I ended up working with this teacher for 10 years, on deep, healing work to release the trauma that was trapped in my body. She worked mostly with women, which was ideal. Because of the history with my dad, and being married, I didn’t want to be in mixed tantra spaces at the time.
People hear about tantra and they think it’s all about orgies. In fact, tantra is a very ancient spiritual practice based on achieving higher self awareness and a connection with the divine through breathwork, meditation, mindfulness and rituals.
‘I’ve launched two businesses in the last two years, and I’m living my most vibrant era ever,’ writes BergAs I went on my tantra journey, I started to make sense of why I had struggled to orgasm. I would explore eroticism and sensuality with myself and other women. It wasn’t about having sex with them, but about the freedom of being naked in a room with them, and being with our bodies, through dance, self touch, and consensual shared touching.
I began to experience kundalini awakenings – huge influxes of ecstatic energy that ran through my body. I came out of depression, into feeling vibrant, alive and magnetic – and full of sensual energy. My kids even commented on how beautiful I looked.
That expansion and awakening in me seemed to create a contraction between me and my husband. Rather than magnetise him, it felt like I repelled him – he seemed to run in the other direction.
I became immersed in living a tantric life, which is about weaving all of our parts together: welcoming and healing our shadows, and aligning our inner masculine and inner feminine. Generally, I started taking more care of myself. I started going on my own to events and workshops.
Perhaps that isolated him, but I felt like he wasn’t choosing to join me on this path. By the time we moved back to the UK in 2023, it had been eight years since we’d had sex.
We’d just become companions. At first I just thought this was now how it was going to be, as we’d been together for so long. But three months before we moved, he revealed that he hadn’t been in love with me for years. It was like a big slap in the face. I realised I’d been dragging a dead body around. Yet it gave me permission to start thinking about what I wanted for the rest of my life.
He initially suggested a trial separation, but I concluded there’d be no turning back or salvaging things. It was over, and I had to call it, so we could set each other free, without it turning ugly. He agreed. Our divorce is now being finalised.
I felt the next step, then, would be to explore tantra in mixed spaces. I attended a mixed retreat where we took part in sensual touching, while fully clothed. It felt very safe for me because it wasn’t going deeply into sexuality. I spooned between two men and felt completely safe.
Something then thawed out in my body and I started to feel waves of pleasure moving through my body. A sexual life force started moving through me, which has totally rebooted my life, my creativity, my intuition, my life’s purpose.
I’ve launched two businesses in the last two years, and I’m living my most vibrant era ever. That’s why I now support other women through mid-life, because I believe pleasure is the primary portal to health and wellbeing. Women are holding onto so much that they’re running on cortisol, and their adrenals are fried. Oxytocin counteracts cortisol, and when we can cultivate that ourselves, it’s really powerful.
Most mid-life women have lost themselves serving and caring for others for decades. We’ve been conditioned to care for everyone else, and to not prioritise our own needs and wants – so no wonder the wheels fall off. We need to learn how to manage our own nervous systems, and prioritise our own pleasure.
That’s not to say I wanted to go on a big shag fest after being in a monogamous relationship for so long. It’s not who I am. Once you’ve been learning tantra for 20 years, it’s a very different way of approaching intimacy and sexuality, rather than having pumpy, porny sex. For me, it has to be more energetic; more of a slow burn. I’m very discerning. I’m not going to share my body with someone that has no clue what they’re doing.
With the man I’m seeing tonight, we’ve actually already had a two-hour video call so I can be sure we’re on the same page. This man feels embodied and spiritually aware, which is important to me, as I’m so sensitive now to other people’s energy. Even though I’m not looking for a new father to my children, I want to know there’ll be enough magic to warrant meeting.
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