March 5, 2020

"A woman who was diagnosed with Stage IV terminal breast cancer at the age of 41 has opened up about why she left her husband to explore her sexuality..."

"... in the new six-part podcast Dying for Sex.... Molly underwent a double mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, and reconstructive surgery while fighting for her life.... Molly was put on a hormone therapy that [would supposedly] 'squash' her libido, but it actually had the opposite effect on her. 'I literally wanted to hump everyone and everything that I saw.... I was horny all of the time. I felt like a teenager.' ... [W]ith her husband's approval, she embarked on virtual affairs.... She and her husband were in couples therapy when she got a call from her doctor and was told the cancer had spread to her bone and was terminal.... [A]fter Molly shared the devastating news, her husband said: 'Can I get back to why I'm so angry?'... [S]he decided to leave her husband and enjoy her remaining time as a single woman....  'I don't think I would do any of this stuff without the cancer.... Even though I'd, maybe, want to, I'd be a little more cautious about everything... Sex makes me feel alive — and it’s a great distraction from being sick.'... [S]he was no longer as cautious as she used to be. 'What are you going to do to me? Kill me? I’m dying'...."

From "Woman diagnosed with terminal breast cancer reveals she left her husband and entered the dating scene so she could have 'better sex before she died'" (The Daily Mail).

ADDED: This story made me think of the scene in movie "Moonstruck":


Rose: Why do men chase women?

Johnny: Well, there's a Bible story... God... God took a rib from Adam and made Eve. Now maybe men chase women to get the rib back. When God took the rib, he left a big hole there, where there used to be something. And the women have that. Now maybe, just maybe, a man isn't complete as a man without a woman.

Rose: But why would a man need more than one woman?

Johnny: I don't know. Maybe because he fears death.

Rose: That's it! That's the reason!

Johnny: I don't know...

Rose: No! That's it! Thank you! Thank you for answering my question!
This isn't the first time I've quoted that scene on this blog. Previously: "Midlife crisis or narcissistic jerk?" (January 17, 2008).

74 comments:

Amadeus 48 said...

A strange and sad story...it's the Daily Mail!

Eleanor said...

I guess when we're faced with dying, we all have our priorities.

gilbar said...

technically, we any of us dies; We die alone, even if we're in a crowd

But
when it comes time for her to die, alone; i'm sure that her ex husband will be comforted ...
that he doesn't have to grieve for that skanky bitch.

AND!
maybe ONE of her many one night stands, will give a moments thought of her; probably not though

Kevin said...

Eat. Pray. Hump.

gilbar said...

of course; to make it a GOOD Story;
this summer, she needs to find out, that
the cancer is in remission
she has AIDS

Shouting Thomas said...

Clickbait heaven!

The story seems totally fake, but what does that matter?

I clicked the link!

So, which is it that actualizes and empowers women today? Promiscuity or the horror of some man commenting on your dress at work?

Kevin said...

Switch the genders and female readers won’t find the story so interesting.

Ann Althouse said...

The Mail story is cribbed from the NY Post, so there's a little corroboration.

I am skeptical that the story is real. It could be part real -- that there really was a woman who left her husband and then died -- without the details being real -- the particular adventures, the specific insensitivity of the "What about my anger?" husband.

Ann Althouse said...

"Sex makes me feel alive — and it’s a great distraction from being sick" — don't use this with contagious diseases.

daskol said...

Various studies have shown a reduced mortality rate among people with a high orgasm rate, so this woman was onto something. Similarly, I always fly with a bomb in my bag, because the odds of two people on a plane having a bomb are extremely low.

lgv said...

I think the most important sentence is, "The diagnosis made her see her unhappy 15-year marriage in a whole new light"

When we have a limited time left, we don't want to spend it in misery. The same couple in a truly happy marriage would spend their remaining time together. Neither choice would surprise me.

I guarantee if I got the call while married to my long ago ex-wife, I would have bolted to finally have some peace.

Bruce Hayden said...

I think everyone knows by now my view on why males usually chase females, and not the other way around - breeding opportunities. The difference in resources for each of the two sex’s to have kids is very large. He contributes a quarter teaspoon of sperm and 15 minutes of his time, while she contributes her body and nine months of her life, and more if she nurses. He could theoretically have hundreds of kids in a lifetime. She can, at most, have a dozen or so. She has the, by far, more valuable resource. On the flip side, if she is going to contribute her body and a year or so of her life for a kid with a guy, what does she get for all that work from him? That is where his resources come in. The more resources that she has available, esp in the past when much of humanity lived on the edge of starvation much of the time, the better the chances for success her descendants would have. So part of the courting is a man convincing a woman that he will be a good husband, provide mote resources than the other suitors, and not share his attentions, and, thus, resources, with other women.

Courtship, typically by the male, of the female, is common in relatively monogamous species. Male birds build nests for potential mates, then try to entice a female to shack up with him there. As with humans, the courted party is the one required to commit the most resources to have offspring.

Bay Area Guy said...

Yucky story in 10 different ways, assuming it's even true.

Howard said...

Good for her. "Do not go gentle into that good night."

Howard said...

Althouse Cucks hardest hit.

Ann Althouse said...

One thing that's true: There is a podcast — people are podcasting and listening to podcasts.

Anonymous said...

Molly was put on a hormone therapy that [would supposedly] 'squash' her libido, but it actually had the opposite effect on her.

I don't know if it's a scientific fact that some women get horny at funerals, but it's one thing that people have noticed anecdotally. If it's true, it might mean that death-related horniness is a factor of estrogen levels. So if you're adding estrogen to a woman who is fighting breast cancer, she might be a lot hornier, not less so.

Anonymous said...

An Australian movie, Look Both Ways, was written and directed by a woman. That jumped out at me because her attitude towards cancer and sex was so strange to me. Here's a review I wrote, many years ago...

Look Both Ways (2005) Australian movie, maybe the most morbid film I've ever seen in my life. A bunch of people obsess about death over a weekend. A woman who has just buried her father sees a man get smacked by a train. The newshound who photographs the scene of the accident finds out he has testicular cancer. The journalist who writes the story about the man who got hit by a train suggests that this accident was actually a suicide, it's more common than you think. The girlfriend of the man who gets hit by a train is upset that her photograph was taken. And she has to buy a casket. The girlfriend of the journalist finds out she's pregnant and is thinking about aborting her baby. The conductor of the train who killed the man is really unhappy and is probably thinking about suicide. I mean there's just a huge amount of frickin' death in this movie. And it's not fun movie deaths either. It's depressing, could-happen-to-me death.

When two of these people hook up and have sex, all they can think about is bodily decay and death. I mean it's a frickin' montage of bodily decay and death. This movie is so morbid it's funny. But mostly it's not funny. What a horrible sex scene. The man's mind is crowded with images of testicular cancer. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Okay, can I just say, that's not gonna work. It's like kissing a woman while thinking of eels. A woman can have morbid thoughts and still have sex. She can think about anything. A man needs to focus. You can tell a man did not write this movie. Complete unfamiliarity with the thought process involved in a male erection. I'll give you a hint, it doesn't involve testicular cancer. Or cartoon images of decay and death. That was maybe the least sexy romantic encounter I've ever seen in my life. I get more excited watching G-rated cartoons. Daisy Duck is hotter than this. Bugs Bunny in a dress. Anything. Just no more cancer death sex, please.

daskol said...

I don't know if it's a scientific fact that some women get horny at funerals, but it's one thing that people have noticed anecdotally. If it's true, it might mean that death-related horniness is a factor of estrogen levels. So if you're adding estrogen to a woman who is fighting breast cancer, she might be a lot hornier, not less so.

It may not be a scientific fact, but it was a Freudian contention regarding the sex and death urge that would explain such crossed wires.

JAORE said...

Switch the genders and female readers won’t find the story so interesting.

Change that to "... would find the story, and the man, reprehensible." and we are in complete agreement.

Tom T. said...

It doesn't sound like the husband was going to be a steady and supportive presence during her decline anyway.

Automatic_Wing said...

I kind of doubt that doctors call people and tell them on the phone that they have terminal cancer. Surely that's done face to face.

gilbar said...

Unknown wrote about...
An Australian movie, Look Both Ways,

I've wondered, WTF is with Hollywood, and all the movies based on Comic books...
I guess, if the only option was The Avengers, part 43; or this Australian movie; i would have a much (MUCH!) higher opinion of the Comic book movies.

gspencer said...

"Various studies have shown a reduced mortality rate among people with a high orgasm rate"

Throughout history the mortality rate among all people has held steady at 100%.

gilbar said...

Automatic_Wing notes the thirteenth stroke, saying...
I kind of doubt that doctors call people and tell them on the phone that they have terminal cancer. Surely that's done face to face.


Thanx AW; you're right, that part of the story is Clearly BS;
which casts doubt (well, CERTAINTY) on the veracity of the entire story

Masscon said...

About as believable a story as the "Letters To Penthouse" were.

Jamie said...

So... kind of Make-A-Wish for a grown-up woman. (That woman, at least.)

I guess that since I broke the seal on divorce in my family (first one ever, as far back as our history has been traced, at 23), my first thought is that I wouldn't have spent 15 years in an unhappy marriage. But whoever commented above that she might just want to spend her last days not in relationship misery, yes, I can see wanting to leave the husband once diagnosed as terminal. What I think certainly would not ever apply to me is the promiscuity thereafter - so much work.

exhelodrvr1 said...

So the woman being so liberated is because Trump is president, right?

Mike Sylwester said...

The bone that God took from Adam to make Eve was not a rib. Rather, the bone was Adam's baculum, commonly called the penis bone.

All male mammals except male human beings have baculums. Even other primates (e.g. chimpanzees and gorillas) have baculums.

According the the Bible, male humans do not have baculums because God removed Adam's baculum in order to make Eve. Another, evolutionary explanation is offered in an article titled Why don't humans have a penis bone? Scientists may now know:

[quote]

Humans may have lost their penis bones when monogamy emerged as the dominant reproductive strategy during the time of Homo erectus about 1.9 million years ago, the scientists believe. In monogamous relationships, the male does not need to spend a long time penetrating the female, because she is not likely to be leapt upon by other amorous males. That, at least, is the theory.

“We think that is when the human baculum would have disappeared because the mating system changed at that point,” [Kit] Opie said. “This may have been the final nail in the coffin for the already diminished baculum, which was then lost in ancestral humans.” Details of the research are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society.

“With the reduced competition for mates, you are less likely to need a baculum,” he added. “Despite what we might want to think, we are actually one of the species that comes in below the three minute cut-off where these things come in handy.”

[end quote]

Fernandinande said...



LOL. A woman (supposedly) engages in strange behavior because her body, and therefore also her mind, have been damaged by chemotherapy and you associate her abnormal behavior with the normal behavior of men, accompanied by a denigrating but very silly folk-psychology explanation of that normal behvior.

"Why do young men chase young women?"

"Because they fear death! Oh, wait a minute, no they don't."

Shouting Thomas said...

From the other side of the universe, this story on the plague of "inappropriate flirting" facing our poor women.

Fernandinande said...

All male mammals except male human beings have baculums.

No they don't.

"It is absent in humans, ungulates (hoofed mammals),[31] elephants, monotremes (platypus, echidna),[citation needed] marsupials,[32] lagomorphs,[21] hyenas,[33] sirenians,[4] and cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises),[4] among others.

rehajm said...

Yah it sounds like a fiction of a type they'd write in Glamour Magazine. Married woman leaves husband is just a slut but a married woman with a hall pass to be sexually uninhibited- that's a dream...

Temujin said...

The answers to everything in life can be found in the scripts of either The Godfather, Moonstruck, or Seinfeld.

Amadeus 48 said...

The father of one of my friends left his wife at the age of 80 and got divorced, saying he wanted a few years of peace before he died. My friend's mother thought of herself as a strong woman. Her children thought of her as a bitch. She could have used some counseling, except she herself was a counselor, so she knew what others needed--to see that she was always right.

That's one way to live your life.

On the other hand, I had lunch this week with another friend who has distinguished himself in recent years by the almost pastoral care that he has given to others who needed some help--the elderly, the widows, the orphans. He and I are both retired lawyers. He said that his goal in retirement was to become a better person.

He always was an admirable person.

David Begley said...

“ a man isn't complete as a man without a woman.” That’s basically my theme in “Frankenstein, Part II.”

And recall the enthusiasm for sex by Nazi death camp survivor Sophie in “Sophie’s Choice.” Sophie and the insane Nathan made love before their joint suicide.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

I’m so sad for her that she has evidently not known real love or intimacy and is going to die before that changes.

Michael K said...

utomatic_Wing said...
I kind of doubt that doctors call people and tell them on the phone that they have terminal cancer. Surely that's done face to face.


The worst experience of my career as a trauma surgeon was being maneuvered by a mother into telling her that her son had died in the ER after a traffic accident. She first did not believe me, then she kept asking me questions that I would far prefer to discuss quietly in person. I finally got trapped into telling her he was dead on the phone. Only time that ever happened. Same for bad news like cancer.

After all this was over, she accused me of operating on her son for money as I knew he was dead. A cop at the scene had told her he could tell her son was dead by looking in his eyes. The fact that his heart was beating was not mentioned. Her husband, the father, was a military chaplain at El Toro Marine Air Station.

Ryan said...

A "virtual affair"?? Lol.

Sebastian said...

"No! That's it! Thank you!"

Well played, PUA, well played. Women are easy, aren't they?

Rob said...

Olympia Dukakis was terrific. The whole movie was terrific.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Throughout history the mortality rate among all people has held steady at 100%.

Nobody gets out alive.

GRW3 said...

This made me think of the scene in Fight Club where, at the cancer group therapy, the terminally ill woman was begging for sex.

Gusty Winds said...

Her husband must have been a Democrat.

Levi Starks said...

She sounds like a super spreader to me.

CJinPA said...

Our culture has a terminal illness.

GingerBeer said...

I'd still like to hear her husband's side of the story.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

You may just need an "empowering for women" tag, Professor. It's a genre unto itself. My formulation is something like: whatever a woman chooses to do is automatically empowering for women and must be supported and celebrated.
Feeling randy due to a medication giving you a higher libido? If you're not a woman that's probably just a side effect you'll have to deal with while still meeting your moral obligations to your family, etc. If you're a woman, well, do whatever you choose, including have lots of sex with others while still married, leave your husband to have lots of sex with others, whatever--that's empowering! We must support and celebrate your choice(s).

The old (sexist) quip was that women have rights while men have responsibilities. The implied argument of stories like this one, though, really is that women have choices while men have responsibilities. If you're unhappy with your circumstances as a man--regarding your family/children, your business, or even defending your country--we as a society say "too bad, bucko, suck it up and get back to work." If you leave your family or stop supporting your wife you're a deadbeat, no matter what. You have a duty, an OBLIGATION, to endure whatever suffering life throws at you and we as a society won't tolerate you complaining about it, much less taking steps to avoid it.
But, if you're a woman? Hey, it's Life Laugh Love, Eat Pray Love, do what you "need," do what makes your heart sing, blah blah blah...the only thing that matters is how you FEEEEEEL in any given moment and it's our job, as a society, to structure things so that you have the maximum amount of choice and the minimum amount of responsibility (including for the consequences of your choices) possible.
Because, of course, that's equality!

Anyway I'm sure this woman's story is very tragic and emotionally engaging; we all love her and support the choices she made--how dare her husband not be more supportive, emotionally available, empathetic, etc?

Empowering for women.

Freeman Hunt said...

A good friend once hypothesized that fear of death is also what motivates some men to marry much younger women.

"You are young, and I am with you, and so, for a moment, I feel I might be young too."

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said..."Sex makes me feel alive — and it’s a great distraction from being sick" — don't use this with contagious diseases.

See, I would have thought you'd be more critical of that reason, Professor, since it's exploitative/selfish in nature and not an example of "good sex" as you've defined it.
I mean, she's more-or-less an inverse splooge stooge here, right?

Fuckin' just for feeling (her own) without much regard/consideration for the other party/parties--I thought that was something you considered likely to result in "bad sex" and that therefore should be discouraged. Just swapping the genders can't change the underlying moral logic, can it?

Meade said...

"A good friend once hypothesized that fear of death is also what motivates some men to marry much younger women."

Sounds about right to me. My penultimate wife was a few years younger than I, my ultimate wife is a few years older. As my own death has kept creeping closer over the past 40 years, my fear of it has been progressively vanishing.

Darcy said...

Sad, indeed. Probably TMI, but I recall so many well-intended people assuring me that I needed to be "happy", excusing my incredibly selfish behavior at the time and encouraging my divorce.

Perhaps Molly's cancer spared her from dying while also suffering hauntingly crushing guilt.

eric said...

This is a very sad story and if true, she likely died a miserable wreck

glenn said...

The line in “Moonstruck” Mom to the randy college prof, “Don’t s**t where you eat”. Great movie.

Dave Begley said...

Ann Althouse: Ultimate wife.

I like it!

Just don't do Ultimate Fighting like on TV.

Yancey Ward said...

If the gender roles had been reversed here, I wonder what the reaction would have been.

In any case, dying people get latitude from me. It sounds like this marriage wasn't much of one to begin with- perhaps she should have ended it earlier.

Achilles said...

Freeman Hunt said...

A good friend once hypothesized that fear of death is also what motivates some men to marry much younger women.

No.

There is definitely something else going on in men's brains when they marry younger women.

It is a total mystery what is going on of course...


Bunkypotatohead said...

Just so long as she's practicing safe sex. Right?

Ann Althouse said...

"What you don't know about women, is a lot" — another line from "Moonstruck."

It occurred to me when I reading about that "penis bone."

n.n said...

my ultimate wife is a few years older. As my own death has kept creeping closer over the past 40 years, my fear of it has been progressively vanishing.

"Dance me to the end of love" - Leonard Cohen, seems to be a common expectation for most men and women.

William said...

Humble brag? Stage IV cancer and a double mastectomy and guys are still lining up to boff her. Anyway she's got her weight under control so that's nice....So far as I know, there aren't any fetish sites that specialize in cancer patients. Maybe it's a fresh new thing....There used to be a thing for consumption patients. They had rosy complexions and heightened libidos. Camille never lost her fast ball.

The Vault Dweller said...

'If you're a commitment-phobe, I'm your girl,' Molly joked in one episode.

I thought this was pretty funny. And I was happy that she had good humor given her terminal illness. I must admit when I first read the headline I felt badly for her and her ex-husband. I imagined her embarking on some futile quest to find some great meaning in her life from sensory pleasure that would never work, when what I assumed would be best would be spending time with her family and loved ones. But it looks like it worked out for her in the end. Well not completely, she did die, but it seems like she died at least somewhat fulfilled by her actions. And I can totally understand leaving the husband after that, "Can we get back to why I'm upset now," remark after she learned her disease was terminal. I mean who wants to spend their end days in couple's therapy hearing about why they need to be a better spouse.

Darcy said...

@The Vault Dweller

Interesting what we perceive as fulfillment. Well, even up until death, anyway...

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Freeman, I’m gonna go out on a crazy limb here and guess that men who marry much younger women either want someone they can control or sanctioned regular sexual access to a woman with pert boobs and a firm ass.

Mark said...

men who marry much younger women

I'm going to take a wild guess here, but I would venture to guess that in a lot of those cases, those younger women are marrying older men.

What's the reason for that?

Mark said...

As for the guys, it may be that they simply do not think of themselves as "old," notwithstanding the increasing aches and inability to eat the same things and do the same things.

tim in vermont said...

Men fuck around because the men who fuck around have more babies who grow up to be men who fuck around. The only “fear of death” is the DNA worrying it won’t get passed along.

That was a really stupid line in that movie, but kudos for fitting it in with the elegiac nymphomaniac.

tim in vermont said...

Women are attracted to younger men too, but they know that the relationship is going to be far more transparently transactional.

Narr said...

New questions for blood donors: have you ever transacted with a transparent? Even once?

Narr
"Elegiac Nymphomaniacs" would be a good name for a band

ken in tx said...

"La petite mort", the little death, French term for orgasm. Found in French literature since 1882.

Iman said...

Good golly Miss Molly
You sure liked to ball!

ckmishn said...

I'm a bit late to the comment, but is anyone reminded of "Chloe" from Fight Club? She was the lady with cancer who only wanted to have sex again before she died. I remember watching it with my late wife (the timing of whose death was unexpected and, at least peaceful) and remarking that I would, in fact, have sex with such a woman out of compassion. For some reason this bothered my wife, though I never understood why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uya9bgndqe4

Meade said...

"I guess when we're faced with dying, we all have our priorities."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075040/mediaviewer/rm2327323648

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