numb_waiting_94

We are romantic partners. We are not a sexual couple

I’m 54 and my partner is 57. We are both women and have been together for nearly two years. We are romantic partners. We are not a sexual couple. That sentence seems to make other people much more uncomfortable than it makes us. She told me early on that she is asexual. I asked a lot of clumsy questions, mostly because I did not want to assume what that meant for her. She likes kissing, sleeping in the same bed and physical affection. She does not want sex. I had come out of a marriage where sex had become a duty neither of us discussed. I did not want to recreate that with anyone. I also did not know whether I would miss it. So we did not make enormous promises. We dated. We checked in. We agreed that either of us could say the relationship no longer worked without turning that into an accusation. For the first six months I probably asked too often whether she was secretly tolerating kissing for me. She probably asked too often whether I was secretly waiting for her to change. Neither was true. What we have is not friendship with nicer bedding. We are in love. We are exclusive because neither of us wants another romantic or sexual relationship. We spend four nights a week together, know each other’s children and have keys to both houses. She leaves half-read crime novels everywhere. I make tea and forget to drink it. Last month we changed our emergency contacts and wrote down what we would want if one of us was in hospital. That felt more intimate to me than several things I used to call intimacy. The awkward part is other people. One friend asked whether I was “giving up that side of myself” because I was frightened of dating. My sister once referred to us as companions and then looked surprised when I said girlfriend. Her friends have asked whether I will eventually want permission to sleep with somebody else. Those are not ridiculous questions once. They become irritating when our answers are treated as temporary. We did have one difficult conversation in August. I had made a joke at dinner about us being an old married couple without the marriage or sex. She laughed in the restaurant and cried later. She thought the joke meant I saw our relationship as missing two important things. I thought I was making fun of the checklist people keep applying to us. We talked properly the next morning. I apologised for making our private agreement into a public punchline. She admitted she still sometimes waits for me to announce that affection is no longer enough. Nothing dramatic changed after that. We did decide that I would stop explaining our sex life to curious friends. “We are happy together” is a full answer. Maybe one of us will want something different later. That is true in every relationship, even the ones following the standard script. For now, there is no person waiting for more and no person withholding it. Tonight she is coming over with the dog and the second half of a detective series I dislike. I will complain about the plot and move her bookmark when I tidy up. She will accuse me of losing her page on purpose. It is not a friendship we are pretending is a relationship. It is the relationship we chose.