Why I Love My Husband but not Sex

[Honey Bee]

Deeply, Truly (but not Physically) in Love by Lauren Slater





2014 Edit - For future reference:

MODERN LOVE
Deeply, Truly (but Not Physically) in Love

By LAUREN SLATER
Published: November 28, 2008

I COULD chalk it up to getting older, the fact that sex interests me these days about as much as playing checkers. But the fact is I’ve never much liked sex, even though it has, on occasion, captivated me. Says my proverbial therapist: “Sex threatens you, Lauren. You feel overcome.”

Another distinctly less sexy possibility is that I have never much liked sex because, when all is said and done, there’s not much to like. I mean, really: What is the big deal? Especially when it’s with the same person, over and over again; from an evolutionary standpoint, that simply couldn’t be right. I, for one, have always become bored of sex within the first six months of meeting a man, the act paling for me just as the sun pales at the approach of winter, and as predictably, too.

I met and fell in love with my husband for his beautifully colored hair, his gentle ways, his humor. We were together many years, and so sex faded. Then we decided to marry.

Predictably, almost as soon as the engagement ring slid onto my finger, I fell in love with someone else. I fell madly, insanely, obsessively in love with a conservative Christian man who believed that I, as a Jew, was going to hell. We fought long and hard about that, and then had sex. This is so stupid, it pains me to write about it.

And yet this affair, I sensed, was necessary for me to move forward with my marriage. It was a test. I believed, but could not be sure, that just as sex had cooled for my soon-to-be husband and me, it would cool with this man, with any man, no matter what or whom — in which case my fiancé was the person I wanted to marry.

Except suppose I was wrong? Suppose there was someone out there with whom I could have passionate sex the rest of my life? So I continued with my conservative Christian, and we had fantastic, obsessive sex while the whole time I waited to see when (or if) this affair would run out of fuel. I prayed that it would, so I could marry the man I loved.

Actually, I never had intercourse with this man, though we did just about everything else. He did not believe in sex before marriage. Therefore, when my fiancé asked me if I was “having sex” with someone (why was I coming home at 3 a.m.?), I could answer “no.” On the Christian man’s end, when his God asked him if he was having sex with someone, he also could answer “no,” and so we both lived highly honest, righteous lives filled with perpetual sex.

But then the inevitable happened. Sex with this man turned tepid, then revolting. While the revolting part was particular to this crazy relationship, the tepid part was wholly within my experience and proved, for me, that there is no God of monogamous passion. Thus freed from the tethers of this affair, I returned to the gentle arms of my pagan husband. We are going on our 10th anniversary. He wants hot sex. I turned tepid long, long ago.

A University of Chicago study published in 1999 found that 40 percent of women suffer from some form of sexual dysfunction, usually low libido. There are treatments for this sort of thing: Viagra or a prescription for testosterone. But the real issue for me is that I’m not sure I have a dysfunction. On the one hand, I am miserable about our lack of a sex life because it makes my husband miserable and cold and withdrawn, and it is so unhappy, living this way. “Have sex with someone else,” I tell him.

“The problem with that,” my husband says, “is falling in love. If you have sex with someone else, you just might fall in love with them.”

“I’d kill you,” I say.

Of course I wouldn’t. But I just might kill myself.

I have no answers for how one exists with almost no sex drive. A gulf of loneliness enters the marriage; the rift it creates is terribly painful. My sincerest hope is that once we make it through these very stressful years, assuming we come out the other end, my husband and I will be able to reconnect.

Until then, I could get treatment, but I’ve had so much treatment — for cancer, for depression — that in this one small area of my life, can I claim, if not health, then at least the absence of pathology?

My first orgasm happened decades ago when I was 19, in a rooming house with a broody bad boy who had a muscular chest and a head roiling with glossy curls. We both loved the Grateful Dead. Every time I slept over, we woke in the mornings and listened to “Ripple,” the clearness of the music, the pure simplicity of it, affirming for me again and again that I was part of a people, a species, capable of creating great beauty.

We’d gone out all summer before the start of our respective freshman years: Not once did he ask me for intercourse, even on our last night together. The very absence of his question underscored its implicit presence. When?

I confided to my roommate that we had not yet done the deed. Hers was a pause of shock. I was afraid. I didn’t want to bleed. Sheer fear of that plunging pain is what held me back.

Instead of telling my would-be lover the truth, I made up an elaborate lie. I was raped. Too traumatized to have sex. I needed more time.

Remembering this now, for the first time in a long time, I do not judge myself. I consider it a great deal to ask of a relatively newly minted woman that she offer her intact body up for this frankly difficult deed.

I also find it interesting that shame, an emotion that’s supposedly deeply rooted in the human limbic system, untouched by time or class, is in fact very much subject to time, class and culture, too. In the 19th century, to be raped was to be shamed, forever. In the late 20th century, to be a virgin was to be shamed. And so I lied, to save my skin.

Except one time, on a May night, through the open window, warm liquid breezes poured over our naked bodies, and then he touched me just so and I tipped into the orgasm and was grasped. This was different from whatever I’d achieved on my own. This was softer, gentler, full of a wide-open love, a deep falling-down love. When it was over, I hated him. I hated that man (that boy, really). The intimacy was too much, too wrenching and shameful.

There is nothing so intimate as the sounds of sex, which are a shared secret between lovers, part of the glue that binds them together. We have our regular speaking voices, and then we have our sexual voices. While these voices may be odd, disturbing, even disorienting, especially if overheard, they serve a special purpose: to bring us close.

My husband’s sounds draw me near to him, when he allows himself to have them, when I do. In the right situation, with the right sanctions, these nighttime sounds — what we say and what we do not — would be preserved, bottled, so they did not wash away with the laundry, the toothpaste foaming down the drain, the home from work at 9 p.m. nights, you angry, me angry.

In our culture, sex has lost its sacred quality. If I were mayor or president, I think I would institute some rules for the good of the American Marriage, a prohibition or two — no touching allowed until Tuesday — because longing springs from distance. It is ironic but also absolutely understandable that proximity can kill sex faster than fainting.

I’ve always found it odd that on a Tuesday night you might go about the bodily act of having sex and then, the next morning, amid a chattering group of children, eat Cheerios. It seems to me that if sex were separated out from the daily wheel of life, it might survive monogamy more intact.

I am a woman in love, but I am not in love with sex. I am in love with glass and stones, with my children, my animals. I am in love with making, as opposed to making love. Someday, I hope to build a house. And inside this house I want to live with my family — my children and animals and husband, whom I love so imperfectly, with so many gaps and hesitations.

The Grim Reaper, who for me is not death but mental illness, visits me from time to time, drawing me down with his sword. And each time this happens I never know if I will return to love. And each time I do I am more grateful than the time before. And so I see my life — my large, unwieldy, disorganized life — as a banquet. So much! So rich!

I AM captivated by things, by solid, actual concrete things that can be assembled, made, whether books or babies. For me, sex does not even come close to the thrill of scoring gorgeous glass for a window I will use, of hearing the grit as the grains separate and the cut comes clean and perfect.

Sex cannot compete with the massive yet slender body of granite I excavated last week, six feet long, this stone, packed with time and stories if only it could speak. I’m going to spend months carving it with a silver chisel. I am going to figure out a way to make this stone into an enormous mantel under which, in the home I share with my husband and the babies we made, our fire will flicker. The stone will give off waves of warmth in the winter, and it will keep the night-coolness captive all through the summer days.

I imagine my mantel, my windows, my glass, my gardens. I cannot believe how lucky I am. I have so very much to do, such wide and persistent passions, so little time in which to explore their many nooks and curves. Here. Now. Don’t bother me. I’m busy.

[Sally]

I found myself really disliking the author of this piece. She's somewhat of a twit and she obviously loves to write about herself, and she obviously thinks she's the most fascinating person in the world, and what she does is fascinating (except actual intercourse, sometimes). That's about all I can say about it. Except ICK!

[Coleslaw]

The article is an excerpt from an anthology to be published, something called "Behind the Bedroom Door". I am amused that this is the one the NYT decided to feature from that.

[SlightlyMetaphysical]

Wow, she's irritating. I only got halfway through.

[Olivier]

I didn't find it particularly irritating - self-obsessed, yes, but I think that was probably the point - getting people to open up and talk frankly of where and how sex fits into their life. Sexuality + frankness = good.

Still, I'd love to read a frank companion piece by her husband.

[Sally]

Sexuality + frankness = good.

Not always!

[ily]

Thanks for sharing-- I thought it was interesting, but a little sad, how tentative she was to state that her lack of sex drive wasn't pathological. Anyway, when I lived with my parents who got the NYT, I would always read the letters to the editor, Modern Love, and the weddings section first. I e-mailed the Modern Love editors telling them about asexuality and AVEN. I was hoping that the author would check out AVEN, so if she does end up seeing this...well, I liked the piece, at least ;)

[Guest Heligan]

I found myself really disliking the author of this piece. She's somewhat of a twit and she obviously loves to write about herself, and she obviously thinks she's the most fascinating person in the world, and what she does is fascinating (except actual intercourse, sometimes). That's about all I can say about it. Except ICK!

I didnt like her either, but I think it was the emphasis on 'hot sex' that did it- its quite an odd article really; she doesnt care about sex but she does care about it, Im confused.

I read something once that said most people dont marry the person they had the best sex of their lives with, I thought that was a nice comment on people not being shallow. She comes across as shallow because she doesnt really seem to care about the person she is supposed to be commited too, (she is all 'but maybe I can have constant hot sex with this guy over here'.... with the implication she would then leave her husband)I think thats why I dislike her- most people arent this shallow

[Parth]

Wait, she didn't have sex with the Christian guy, she says? And then goes on to say she "continued" having sex with him? This is confusing. Is "sex" a metaphor for emotional cheating?

[Hallucigenia]

Wait, she didn't have sex with the Christian guy, she says? And then goes on to say she "continued" having sex with him? This is confusing. Is "sex" a metaphor for emotional cheating?

I think it means she continued performing sexual acts with him that fell short of intercourse... playing that kind of game can lead to some amusing linguistic conundrums.

[knoxroxmysox]

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Part of me (most of me, really) doesn't really like her. She was quite self-absorbed. I wish she would have had more to say about her husband. And less to say about the Christian...

At the same time, I can understand a lot of her feelings. Clearly, she is more interested in the intricate works of glass and stone than sex. I have a lot of things that I consider like that.

I guess, above all, I think they would have done better to use a different person's article.

[osito]

Her article does put something on the table that I have thought sexuals and asexuals could explore more, unless it's been done already in a thread I haven't read.

What is it like for sexuals (who really are sexual) when they lose interest in sex? Are they now asexual, or could the fire be roaring again under other circumstances? I assume it could. For myself, in contrast, I think it highly unlikely that any circumstance would ever do it for me...but I did have one extraordinary sexual dream once (25 years ago or so) in which I met a stranger at a department store and we got the hots right away and had passionate sex in the store bathroom . Very weird. Whatever dark corner that came out of, I have never, ever encountered it again.

So I can imagine vignettes of disinterest for sexuals such as:

(1) being hit on by somebody you really don't like. So, no interest from the git-go.

(2) having the interest fade over time, as with the author of this article.

(3) being ill, or depressed

(4) having a traumatic experience such as being raped

Are sexuals at these times just like us As? And if so, does this, or does it not, say anything about the reasons we are As? I am not suggesting that our orientation is pathological (not at all). That's been discussed ad infinitum, and speaking for myself, I have always felt liberated from the siren-song of sexual attraction, even with its price (no lasting relationships).

I don't think the author is asexual at all, unless she's become so irreversibly of late. She just loses interest in six months. Predictably. For good. In that regard, she seems a lot like the male stereotype out there, and she makes a statement early on about evolution and monogamy that reflects that.

I mean, really: What is the big deal? Especially when it’s with the same person, over and over again; from an evolutionary standpoint, that simply couldn’t be right.

There's that old poem attributed to William James (and nitrous oxide) that goes something like:

Hogamus higamus,

Man is polygamous;

Higamus hogamus,

Woman is monogamous.

I don't buy it on the biological level, but there is a widespread cultural double-standard that I attribute historically to mens' insecurity about paternity.

What else...yes, she's self-indulgent, and tries too hard at times to inject poetry into her prose. It's awkwardly written, but maybe her Muse checks out whenever sex is the topic, and bounds back in for glass and rocks...eh, can't take sex for granite.

That affair with the Christian guy...woo, I wonder what her therapist thinks about that (there's a contributor I'd like to hear from :)). Everything-but-intercourse is not a sin, but penetration is...hmmm...is that in the Bible? So it is about paternity after all!! And everything but penetration is not-sex (even when it's labeled 'obsessive sex' :lol:)...well. That sounds like BS.

And then the sex--or not-sex--goes from tepid to repulsive for her. Gotta wonder.

Anyway, interesting article. I found it entertaining enough to read all the way through. Prolly won't buy the anthology, though.

[cait]

I would guess that she was trying to be ironic at the part about the obsessive sex with the Christian man. She was trying to be ironic, but I didn't see how this really *worked* in the piece.

I didn't like her writing. Or subject matter. Reads like a adolescent diary entry to me. But I mean ... whatever. Not that I want to bash the piece. Just that I personally didn't like it. I stopped reading at the bit on making sexual noises.

...Wonder what her husband thinks of the article?

[Sally]

Hogamus higamus,

Man is polygamous;

Higamus hogamus,

Woman is monogamous.

I don't buy it on the biological level, but there is a widespread cultural double-standard that I attribute historically to mens' insecurity about paternity.

Men didn't want to support kids who weren't theirs (and thus demanded to marry guaranteed virgins), and women were left with the raising of the kids without means to support them; thus women traditionally didn't have the chance, the means, or the nerve to have affairs that might produce kids that their husband wouldn't support. Biology paired with culture, or culture derived from biology minus technology, or something.

[SecretSaucer]

Instead of telling my would-be lover the truth, I made up an elaborate lie. I was raped. Too traumatized to have sex. I needed more time.

Remembering this now, for the first time in a long time, I do not judge myself. I consider it a great deal to ask of a relatively newly minted woman that she offer her intact body up for this frankly difficult deed.

I also find it interesting that shame, an emotion that’s supposedly deeply rooted in the human limbic system, untouched by time or class, is in fact very much subject to time, class and culture, too. In the 19th century, to be raped was to be shamed, forever. In the late 20th century, to be a virgin was to be shamed. And so I lied, to save my skin.

yeah nowadays being embarrassed about being a virgin is exactly the same as how it felt to be raped in the 19th century. and that totally makes it okay to lie about being raped and then not even feel a little bit bad about it later. i think i need another glass of sherry because of that.

[Cazz333]

-(x) is not the same as -x. Or a tramautised sexual does not behave the same as a tramatised asexual even when suffering the same abuse. Their midset is different. It could be different nueral wiring I suspect, that creates asexuals and sexuals; something to do with the amugdala and primitive reptellian brain...

[Guest Heligan]

-(x) is not the same as -x. Or a tramautised sexual does not behave the same as a tramatised asexual even when suffering the same abuse. Their midset is different. It could be different nueral wiring I suspect, that creates asexuals and sexuals; something to do with the amugdala and primitive reptellian brain...

Can you elaborate on why you say this? i.e. explain how a traumatised sexual, a traumatised asexual and an untraumatised asexual act.

Do you discount the possibility of a sexual becoming asexual due to trauma?

If so is this because of how you define asexual? i.e as nature with no nurture involvement

[Hallucigenia]

-(x) is not the same as -x.

Um. Isn't it? The parentheses are just there to tell you what order to evaluate things in, right? So it should come out the same.

[Cazz333]

-(x) is not the same as -x. Or a traumatized sexual does not behave the same as a traumatized asexual even when suffering the same abuse. Their mindset is different. It could be different nueral wiring I suspect, that create asexuals and sexuals; something to do with the amugdala and primitive reptellian brain...

Can you elaborate on why you say this? i.e. explain how a traumatized sexual, a traumatized asexual and an untraumatized asexual act.

Do you discount the possibility of a sexual becoming asexual due to trauma?

If so is this because of how you define asexual? i.e as nature with no nurture involvement

No but you have a good point in that it's extremely hard to tell the difference. I only suspect a difference because a traumatized suppresses sex and when coping with the trauma slowly desires sex almost like any other sexual. A traumatized asexual however, when coping with it may still not want sex but may be more willing to compromise if in a relationship with a sexual than previously. An untraumatized sexual may have less hangups or more but they don't have a memory of being traumatized. The last two may behave more alike than the first two but the traumatized asexual may feel a bit more vulnerable in relationships since she/ he's been bruised before. At the end of they day people are all different so I tend to take it as a given that their perceptions will differ from my own rather than similar.

-(x) is not the same as -x.

Um. Isn't it? The parentheses are just there to tell you what order to evaluate things in, right? So it should come out the same.

Oops, I was thinking in terms of AND, OR, XOR gates in Computer Engineering where x bar is not the same as x. I forgot to specify what the - meant.