Sexless In The City

Dear Agony Aunt,

I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m 42, never married, and a serial monogamist. I’m successful, fun, adventurous, generous. But I have terrible luck in the love department. 

I recently met someone I really like. He’s sweet, kind, successful, hot, fun, and understands how I think.  I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. He is truly a good guy. 

The issue is he is in his 50s and has never had a relationship longer than six months. He believes relationships either end, or they become very serious and lead to marriage. He isn’t necessarily wrong. While he’s told me ours will “never end” and he wants me “in his life forever”. He admits he cannot merge an emotionally vulnerable relationship with a physical one – so there is no sex here.

I usually have the opposite problem. Men want sex but can’t do emotional intimacy. My pattern has been accepting less than what I “deserve.” I put “deserve” in quotes because it sounds entitled. We cuddle, sleep in the same bed, and kiss, though not passionately. I think I could be okay with him as my partner because it’s hard to imagine finding this kind of emotional safety and friendship again. He’s a homerun in everything except the physical arena. Looking for this plus sex feels like hunting for a unicorn. 

And there are no unicorns in New York.

Sincerely,

Sexless in the City

Thank you for sharing this with me so openly. 

It sounds like you’ve met a good man. A rare man, even. Someone emotionally available, self-aware, steady. In a world where that can feel in short supply of both men and Unicorns, I understand why you’d want to hold on.

The hitch, of course, is sex. But I don’t think this is really about sex.

I’ll start here: I was married once.

He was kind. Steady. The sort of man who made life feel infinitely more manageable. He didn’t make me laugh until I cried, but he soothed something in me that had been restless for a long time. Which, I suppose, is why I married him. As a barrier against the cold.

In the beginning, we had sex. We were young, and naked in all the ways that matter. And then, slowly, we weren’t.

There wasn’t one big moment where it disappeared. I slipped away from him in quiet, imperceptible ways. I stopped reaching, and I stopped letting him reach me. It wasn’t dramatic. It was incremental. Like decay.

One night, after a dinner party we hosted on the rooftop of our new home, I decided to try again. One last, hopeful attempt at something I couldn’t quite name anymore. I won’t regale you with the details, but we had sex, and afterwards, I lay there beside him and cried into the pillow. I cried and cried, and he didn’t even notice. He just slept.

That wasn’t sex, Reader. That was loneliness.

And I think that’s what your letter is really about. Not sex. Loneliness.

Before, men gave you heat without depth. Now you have depth without heat. In both cases, you are adjusting yourself around a missing piece.

And I wonder, gently, but honestly, if you’re tired of that. Of bending your desire around what’s available, instead of what’s whole.

You say there are no unicorns in New York. You’re right. But there are people who can hold both things at once. Intimacy and desire, safety and aliveness. Not perfectly. Not all the time. But enough.

The question isn’t whether this man is good. He is. The question is whether the life you’re creating together is enough.

Because here’s what I know: loneliness doesn’t only belong to empty rooms. It can live quite comfortably inside a relationship. It can lie beside you in bed. It can swaddle itself in safety and still leave you starving.

You are careful with the word “deserve.” As if wanting both love and sex makes you greedy.

It doesn’t. It makes you alive.

You have a need that you’re calling a preference. Something essential that you’re trying to soften into something optional. But emotional intimacy and physical intimacy are not indulgences. They are partners. One does not replace the other.

Sex isn’t everything. But its absence is never neutral. It changes the temperature of a relationship. It shifts the body. It quiets something that, once quieted long enough, can feel very much like loss.

I have been in relationships built on sex and very little love. And I have been in one built on love, where sex lost its fire. Both left me feeling alone.

That’s the risk. Different configuration. Same ache.

So I would ask him – plainly -whether his body will ever join his heart with you. Not someday. Not theoretically. As things are, now.

You might not get the answer you want. But you will get clarity.

And clarity is kinder than the slow, creeping loneliness of staying somewhere that cannot fully hold you.

For me, it took two years to understand that the life we had built together wasn’t enough for me. I knew long before I left.

What I’m saying is: I think you already know.

I hope it takes you less. I hope you reach for it all.

— S