Welcome back to another Question of the Week here at The Confusing Middle! Every week, I pull another question from Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions and attempt to figure out what my answer actually is. Sometimes the answer comes immediately. Other times, Stock manages to find one innocent-looking sentence that sends me down a philosophical rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting to visit on a Saturday morning.
Here’s this week’s question: Could a marriage of the highest quality in all respects but one—it completely lacked sex—be satisfying to you?
My immediate answer? Yes.
Of course, I should probably acknowledge that I’m answering this question from a somewhat unusual position. I have never shied away from the fact that I am a 46-year-old virgin. At this point, I figure pretending otherwise would require considerably more effort than simply acknowledging reality. I have no firsthand experience with sex, which means that when Stock asks whether I could live happily without something I have already spent 46 years living happily without, I have a slight advantage.
But that almost makes the question more interesting. Because while I think I could be satisfied in the marriage Stock describes, that doesn’t mean I would necessarily want sex removed from the equation.
Apparently I Don’t Know What I’m Missing
If I were to get married someday, I would hope physical intimacy would be part of the package. I’m attracted to women. I don’t identify as asexual. I simply haven’t found myself in a relationship that progressed to the point where sex became part of it. Those are different things, and it’s worth making the distinction because asexuality is generally defined around experiencing little or no sexual attraction, not around whether someone happens to be sexually active. Asexual people can also experience romantic attraction and form committed romantic relationships.
So, no, my virginity isn’t some carefully maintained philosophical stance. I haven’t spent four and a half decades protecting myself from the dangerous allure of the opposite sex like I’m guarding the Holy Grail.
Life just worked out this way.
Would I turn down the possibility of sex with the right woman in the context of the right relationship? I don’t imagine I would. At the same time, if you presented me with Stock’s hypothetical marriage and promised me everything else was extraordinary, I have a difficult time imagining that I would throw the relationship away because one particular form of intimacy was missing.
Maybe that’s easy for me to say because I don’t know what I’m missing. It’s hard to crave the absence of something you’ve never experienced.
Isn’t Marrying Your Best Friend Kind of the Dream?
What catches my attention more than the lack of sex is Stock’s phrase “of the highest quality in all respects.” Think about what he is actually offering. You have someone who understands you. Someone you trust completely. Someone you want beside you when something wonderful happens and when everything falls apart. You make each other laugh. You share a life. Presumably, if this marriage is truly exceptional in every other respect, you genuinely enjoy being together.
Isn’t that what people mean when they talk about marrying their best friend? That sounds pretty good to me.
I don’t mean that marriage is merely friendship with better tax paperwork. There is obviously a romantic dimension that separates the relationship from the friendship I might have with another person. Physical affection could still be part of that. Stock only says the marriage completely lacks sex. He doesn’t say these two people never kiss or cuddle. They might hold hands while walking through a store. They might sit against each other on the couch watching television. They might hug simply because one of them had a terrible day.
I certainly wouldn’t object to any of that.
Although I’m going to admit something terribly romantic here: sharing a bed might be the adjustment that gives me the most trouble. I have spent my entire adult life sleeping alone. I have my space. I can stretch out wherever I want. I’m also fairly hot-natured, so the idea of another warm human being pressed against me for eight consecutive hours sounds considerably more romantic at 10:00 p.m. than it probably would at 3:17 in the morning.
“Darling, I love you more than life itself. Please move six inches to the left.”
Marriage.
The Real Question Is Whether We Agree
This hypothetical becomes much easier if both people understand the arrangement from the beginning. Imagine two people who already know that sex isn’t particularly important to either of them. They fall in love, build a life together, and agree that their relationship doesn’t need a sexual component. Who am I to tell them their marriage is incomplete?
Research into relationships actually supports something more nuanced than the simple assumption that more sex automatically equals a better marriage. One study that followed married couples found that sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction were closely related, but sexual frequency itself did not directly predict changes in marital satisfaction once the other factors were considered. Another study examining marriage over time concluded that a satisfying sexual relationship and a warm interpersonal climate mattered more to marital satisfaction than simply having intercourse more frequently.
That doesn’t prove sex is unnecessary. It suggests that counting encounters misses the point. The problem begins when the two people don’t agree. If I were perfectly satisfied with a sexless marriage but my wife felt unwanted, rejected, or neglected because of it, I couldn’t simply shrug and say, “Works for me.” Now we have a marriage problem.
That distinction may be more important than the presence or absence of sex itself. Studies of couples with differences in sexual desire have repeatedly found that significant or distressing discrepancies can be associated with lower sexual satisfaction and, in some studies, lower overall relationship satisfaction. Research also suggests that how problematic the couple perceives the discrepancy to be matters.
In other words, wanting different things can become a problem. Which is not exactly a revelation exclusive to the bedroom.
Marriage Requires Two Votes
That’s where I think Stock’s question becomes much harder than my original “sure, why not?” response. I could be satisfied. But marriage doesn’t consist of one satisfied person.
If my hypothetical wife wanted physical intimacy and I didn’t, her needs wouldn’t become irrelevant simply because everything else in the relationship was wonderful. At the same time, I don’t believe anyone should be pressured into sexual activity they don’t want. You cannot manufacture desire through obligation. So what happens? You talk. You listen. And presumably, if the marriage really is as good as Stock claims it is, you care enough about the other person to take their feelings seriously.
Research into sexual communication has found associations between better communication and greater sexual satisfaction, while distressing differences in desire are a common issue couples bring into therapy. That makes intuitive sense to me even without personal experience. The worst possible approach would seem to be pretending nothing is wrong while one spouse becomes increasingly resentful and the other becomes increasingly defensive.
The answer would have to belong to the two people involved. Not me. Not their friends. Certainly not strangers on the internet who have somehow appointed themselves Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Other People’s Bedrooms. I’m looking at you Reddit.
Sex Doesn’t Feel Emotionless to Me
Part of the reason I would want these conversations handled carefully is that I’ve never really bought the idea that sex is purely physical. People certainly say it can be. Maybe they’re right. I’m answering from absolutely no personal authority here, so feel free to attach an enormous asterisk to the next paragraph.
I have a difficult time believing that two people can share something that physically intimate and completely remove emotion from the equation. Maybe some people genuinely can. Human beings vary tremendously in how they experience attraction, intimacy, and attachment, so I’m not interested in declaring that everyone else must experience those things exactly as I imagine I would.
Personally, though, I don’t think I could separate them. And this is coming from a man who has occasionally described himself as an emotionless automaton.
Sex, in the context of marriage, would mean something to me beyond the mechanics of the activity itself. I would want it to represent closeness and trust. If it disappeared, then, I suspect the important question wouldn’t merely be whether I missed sex. I’d want to know whether my wife and I were still finding other ways to communicate that same affection and connection. Because the absence of sex and the absence of intimacy are not necessarily the same thing.
People Change
There’s another flaw in imagining marriage as though two people sign a contract on their wedding day and remain exactly the same until somebody dies. People change. Bodies change. Circumstances change. Desire can change throughout a relationship, and it doesn’t necessarily change at the same rate for both people. One spouse may want considerably more physical intimacy than the other at different periods of their lives. Research on couples consistently finds that mismatches in desired sexual activity can matter to relationship satisfaction, especially when those differences become distressing.
That seems like one of those situations where the actual work of marriage becomes important. If I married someone, I would hope I was making a commitment bigger than I promise to stay as long as you remain exactly the person you were on our wedding day. That sounds like a terrible deal. The person you marry at 30 is not going to be identical at 50. Neither are you. Health changes. Careers change. Families change. Priorities shift. Somewhere along the way, the relationship has to keep adapting.
I’ve always liked the idea that a lasting marriage requires two people to continue choosing each other. Not only when everything is easy. You wake up and keep choosing the person beside you through whatever version of life happens to arrive that morning. That doesn’t mean every marriage must survive everything. There are legitimate reasons relationships end, and I would never suggest that someone has an obligation to remain in a harmful situation because they once said “‘til death do us part.”
But I do think marriage is supposed to involve sacrificial love. Sometimes your spouse’s needs inconvenience you. Sometimes yours inconvenience them. The goal, presumably, is to keep finding ways to tell each other, You still matter to me.
So Could I Be Happy?
Yes. I think I could.
If Stock handed me a marriage that was genuinely extraordinary in every other respect, I would have a hard time saying, “Sorry. Dealbreaker.” Maybe my answer would be different if I had decades of sexual experience behind me. Maybe I would understand the absence differently if it meant losing something that had once been central to a relationship. I can only answer as the person I am now. And right now, companionship sounds enormously valuable to me. Having someone who knows you completely and still chooses to stay sounds valuable. Sharing your ordinary life with another person, not merely the vacations and anniversaries but the boring Tuesday nights when nobody has anything interesting to say, sounds valuable.
Sex could absolutely be part of that marriage. I’d hope it would be. But if everything else really was as good as Stock promises? Yeah. I think I’d be okay. Although I’m still requesting my half of the bed.
Your Turn
How would you answer this week’s question? Could a marriage of the highest quality in every other respect still satisfy you if sex were completely absent? Would your answer depend on whether the arrangement existed from the beginning or developed later? Would physical affection without sex be enough, or would something essential still be missing?
More importantly, what if you and your spouse answered those questions differently?
Let me know where you land in the comments. I have a feeling this is one Question of the Week where there are going to be a lot of very different answers, and that may be exactly the point.
Feature Photo by Marina Abrosimova
