Shall we?
But first, the song that is now in everyone's head:
So, sex. It is a thing that many humans enjoy doing for its own sake ("recreational purposes").
But how often have we been told that there is "more" to a relationship than "just sex"? I don't know about you, but I pretty much had that hammered into my head since puberty and definitely all through college.
And that "warning" came from a place of somehow trying to "help" young people (including li'l Leonard) not to throw themselves away on their first crush/love/lusty high school sweetheart...I guess? It was some kind of basic "life lesson" that you don't marry the first person you fall in lust with. Or perhaps just because you're young and in love, eventually looks (and sex drive) fade, and you'll want someone with whom you can have a conversation or maybe some common goals and activities.
Maybe?
The why's and wherefore's were never really articulated. It was just that bland, blanket statement: "there's more to a relationship than just sex."
What the fuck does that even mean? Do you remember hearing it? Is this simply a Gen-X thing? I have an inkling that it goes part and parcel with the HIV/AIDS "scare" that we angry Gen-Xers also grew up with.
At any rate, I think little Leonard took that piece of grown-up advice and ran with it, right to our forty-year-old detriment. Follow me through this:
I lost my virginity relatively "late." I was eighteen and a freshman in college, and it was with my first "real" boyfriend. And for that matter, it was by accident, but that story is neither here nor there. And I was, of course, very in love with him, although that's not why I "lost" my virginity with him. Our relationship didn't survive that first summer apart, especially since he decided he was not coming back to our college.
Later that same fateful summer, I spent some time with my dad and step-mom and their family (always a mistake; it never goes well), and my (Catholic) step-monster had a question about health insurance (as I was still on my dad's insurance). Basically, she wanted to know why they were being charged for birth control pills for me. I think she actually said something like, "Are you taking these for....?" and couldn't even finish; she couldn't even make up a reason (many women take BCP for all kinds of health reasons that literally have nothing to do with sex/procreation).
And I said, "I'm taking them for their intended purpose: so I don't get pregnant."
At that, the step-monster made a face and said, "There are some things you want to save for your husband."
To which I replied, "Were you a virgin when you married my dad?" feeling 90% sure that she wasn't.
Somewhere in that same conversation I mentioned that I had "only slept with one person anyway," and she threw back in my face, "And he dropped you like a hot potato!"
Bitch.
Anyway, that conversation shows the foundation of Puritanical, patriarchal, heteronormative nonsense they raised me on -- always there, lurking in the background. And again and again, the same refrain of "there's more to a relationship [or marriage] than sex."
Fast forward several years to my first engagement (circa 2002). I can't remember if we were even engaged yet when our sex life stalled and seemed to die. But I was determined to remain engaged (literally), to get married, AND to "make things work" (WTF does that mean?!?). And I was also convinced that lack of interest in the bedroom must have somehow been my fault. I take a heavy dose of SSRI's every day, and everyone knows those can kill your sex drive. I didn't put it together at that time that having an attraction and then not having it (even though meds remained the same) was a different issue than not having a sex drive at all.
I went to my physician and told him my problems. He prescribed an antihistamine of all things to take 1-2 hours "pre-coitus." One of the antihistamine's lesser known (unintentional) uses was increase libido. I did that, I bought a sexy new corset from Victoria's Secret1, and I thought things would be fixed.
I want to say that my ex-husband even went to his doctor to check for low testosterone, too, but now that I think about it, I believe he (and I) just talked about him maybe going, but it never actually happened.
Things were not "fixed." We didn't really start having regular sex again until we decided to try to have a baby, many months later. And then a month or so into that, he left.
We had many, many red flags during our four years together that things were not going to work, and the lack of sex and attraction should have been near the top of the list. But I discounted that because, y'know, "there's more to marriage than [just] sex."
Flash forward many, many years later: my first kiss with my most recent ex. I remember it because, frankly, it was flat. She and I had almost no sexual chemistry whatsoever. We were dating four months before we ever slept together. And when we finally did, it was kind of awkward.
Yet, I still said "yes" when she proposed. Because I thought that's what you did after a year of dating. I wanted to move in together; this was practically the same thing, right? And maybe, maybe the attraction would improve, maybe things would get better.
Spoiler alert: they did not get better. We had some very good and fun things going for us, but we were also missing some fundamental pieces for a healthy relationship, and one of those was a physically intimate relationship. And I don't just mean sexual intercourse; I also mean cuddling, holding hands, burning kisses like we were twenty-year-old's.
Flash forward to early 2018: I had resigned myself to my life as it was at that moment: living a comfortable lifestyle with a person for whom I cared deeply, but for all intents and purposes was a roommate/good friend. We had a good life and things weren't "bad," per se, but they could have been a lot better. And my reasoning went something like this, "I guess this is it. This is what happens when you get old, right? You stop having sex. You're just comfortable around each other." And, of course, "It's just sex. There's more to a relationship that 'just sex.'" And, of course, always the lingering thought that my daily Zoloft was erasing my sex drive.
And I even said something to that effect to my therapist: "This is what happens, right? You just end up as friends/roommates?" And she reminded me that 1) that doesn't happen to everyone, and 2) it only has to be okay if you want it to be okay. Some people are fine living like that2; others are not. And it only works if both people are okay living like that.
And then I met someone. Someone who was not my partner.
And quickly, and much to both of our surprise, feelings sprung up. Very real feelings of a romantic nature. And I let myself believe that maybe, perhaps I could "have it all" -- I could be with a person who had similar tastes, things in common, someone with whom there was shared mutual physical attraction -- even though, y'know, we're both middle-aged and not as svelte as we used to be -- and that thought was scary and wonderful and eye-opening. As was the thought that we were having physical feelings for each other while I was on my meds the whole time. That perhaps there wasn't anything "wrong" with me; it had been previous relationships that weren't right.
And Person X and I were head-over-heels for each other. And in the middle of our very brief time spent together, in the midst of spinning fantasies and telling stories to each other about what life would be like together, I came up with a fantasy that surprised even me.
No, not because it was twisted or kinky or anything like that (those were different fantasies). Fantasies for me generally fall into two categories: sexual or domestic.
Sexual is fairly self-explanatory. Domestic, though, domestic involves all those little somethings that help make a relationship: cuddling on the couch together, doing different things in the same room at the same time, decorating for the holidays, all that silly "domestic" stuff.
And so far, in my life, never have the twain met. They were separate spheres of desire for me. Not necessarily intentionally, but that's just how it was. And without meaning to, I concocted a fantasy that was both sexual and domestic with Person X. And that's the part that shocked me -- that I could have both things. At the same time!
I never got to tell them about this particular fantasy, and the details of it are unimportant in the scheme of this post; we have since gone our separate ways, with my heart getting broken in the process. But I guess my point after all of this is that telling me over and over again that "there's more to a relationship than just sex" did more harm than good as it caused me to ignore when part of a relationship didn't fit/wasn't right/wasn't working. It caused me to ignore ALL the parts of a happy, healthy relationship and end up "settling" for some things.
During English AP class in high school, we read a poem that I could have sworn was by Maya Angelou, but I cannot find, that described the "recipe" for a good marriage, and it included 3-4 "heaping cups" of sex. I wish I had paid closer attention to that poem than to the "moral" commands of (largely) religious hypocrites.
1I did not buy said corset "for" my ex-husband. I bought it because it made me feel sexy; the fact that he would also enjoy seeing me in it was an added bonus. I recently was told of a woman who bought two pairs of "sexy underwear" but then "never had a chance to wear them" because she and her partner's sex life was dead. And that was one of the saddest things I ever heard -- not that their bedroom was dead, but that this woman somehow felt she needed her partner's attention/approval/interest to wear the sexy underwear. That's not how lingerie works, people. You buy it and wear it FOR YOU, because it MAKES YOU feel sexy. The gaze and desire of someone is an added bonus, but not the point.
2It should hopefully go without saying (but I'm going to say it anyway), almost none of this applies to people who identify as asexual. Not having a sexual component to their relationships does not make said relationships "unhealthy" if that's what they (and all people involved) want. I (obviously) do not identify as asexual.
