This Is Us
My Shame-Free, Sexless Relationship
My husband and I are sexually incompatible — but instead of ditching each other, we ditched monogamy
If a time traveler from the future would’ve told me, “Jonathan, your future husband will be the man of your dreams — but it’ll be a sexless marriage,” I would have laughed in said time traveler’s face, gone out to a gay bar, found a hot stranger, had sex right in front of him, then replied, “See? I love sex, and you’re wrong.” But actually, the time traveler would’ve been right.
Mark and I met eight years ago, on a website. He was 27; I was 33. I was just out of a 2.5 year relationship that was emotionally and verbally abusive. The sex was heart-pounding, sweaty, frequent, and great — but literally everything else was hostile. Meeting Mark was a breath of fresh air: He was someone who could make me laugh until I cried, who I never felt annoyed or awkward around; someone I could be in constant contact with for weeks and months and still enjoy his company every minute of every day. I could be goofy, or vulnerable, or wrong, or bloated, or thin, or masc, or femme, or smart, or stupid, or mistaken — and no matter what, it was fine with him.
It wasn’t very long before we discovered that the way we kissed each other was… yikes…
