My husband Bernd and I haven’t had sex for several years. When I’ve tried to talk to him about how this turn of events saddens me, how I wish it wasn’t so, he says, with an astonishing, perhaps admirable self-acceptance: it’s gone, that part of my life is over, it was great while it lasted. “Maybe this is just a phase,” he adds with a bemused smile, “maybe it’ll come back”—“it” being his libido, his sexual desire.
Of course, every relationship is made up of two parties who grow and change at their own paces. No matter how much we may share, we are both also on individual journeys—physically and emotionally.
At age 62, I fear an essential aspect of my life ever since my teens may just wither on the vine. I sigh wistfully: “Could it be that it’s all over?”
Bernd and I met in our late thirties, both divorced. At our first date over coffee in a Berlin café, we talked about music, and were delighted to learn we have the same favorite composer: Johann Sebastian Bach. We talked about his then six-year-old daughter; he and his ex-wife split childcare equally, and he shaped his working hours as a programmer around her. The love for his daughter in his voice was heartwarming; his ease with himself made me unself-conscious as well.
As we began sharing more about ourselves, I wanted to be open. I’d enjoyed lots of sexual experience; lust and the pursuit of excitement played an important role in my psyche. After years of monogamy, my sexual appetite had ultimately toppled my first marriage—such was my conviction, at least. In that relationship (we started dating in our mid-twenties), he initially asked me to recount sexual adventures I’d had. But then he took to saying, “You’ve had your fun.” I heard the sentence as an affront, since much I’d lived through had been confusing, even overwhelming. Nonetheless, in those years I internalized his judgment of me. Nine years after I met him, I for all practical purposes ran away from him. Henceforth, I intended to regain free agency sexually.
Bernd, my new boyfriend, accepted my past, my enjoyment of sexuality. Nothing I’d experienced before we became a couple could invoke his jealousy; all was fine, interesting. He himself had had just a few lovers before and after his long first marriage. When we met in 2000, he had a habit of printing out erotic stories from the Internet to masturbate himself to sleep for his midday naps. After we got together, I joined him on the weekends for those naps instead.
We were both pleased to learn on our fourth or fifth encounter that we shared sexual fantasies of group sex, and not just of couples swinging, but of gatherings with more men attending than women. As I wrote in an erotic anthology, “Me the center of attention for an indistinctly large group of civilized men with prominent hard-ons and quiet voices,” my male partner turned on by my excitability, accepting and non-judgmental.
Bernd and I embarked on what became a phase of expanded lust, holding and attending sex parties every two or three months. A couple of years into our joint exploration, we got married and bought an apartment together. Half the week, his daughter lived with us, and I was her stepmother; in the other half, when she was with her mother and stepfather, he and I were alone together. The formal step of marrying in front of both our families did not change our pattern of joint sexual adventures.
Sometimes I let go completely, though at other times a man’s style turned me off. Bernd occasionally found it stressful to be attentive to subtle signs of my discomfort, but that was our agreement around group sex—he catered sensitively to my needs in exchange for my being open to new joint experiences. Finetuning that subtle level of communication welded us together. After each encounter, we had lots of laughs, and the sharing helped make us strong as a couple.
For many of the people we met, these sexual encounters seemed to be the only pastime holding them together. We also had bringing up his daughter. We had music—my piano playing, and our attending concerts together; we created a website showcasing classical music in Berlin. We had a shared love of travel and nature, of natural parks and hiking, as well as a wonderful circle of friends (who knew nothing of our sexual proclivities).
Occasionally, we attended parties others held, some charging a small fee for catering food or renting a space. Or we met with another couple at their home, or in a club. But we preferred holding our own parties, wielding control over who could attend and defining the rules of the evening. Bernd put together a database of interested men and couples, and we made each attendee bring a bottle of champagne as a kind of admission fee. Before the party kicked off, we moved various mattresses around, hid some personal items.
All in all, that phase lasted some ten years. Thinking back to the beginnings of what became a long-term romance, I would never have imagined that twenty-four years in, we’d live in a sex-less, love-full marriage.
When we reached our fifties, and his daughter moved out, we moved house within Berlin. No longer did we live in a huge open loft, but rather in a more curated, grownup apartment. And no longer did we feel drawn to invite strangers, people who were not friends but merely shared our sexual inclinations, into our personal space.
Then I started feeling discomfort, vaginal dryness when we had sex. As I recall, I cringed a bit, pulled back. When I asked my gynecologist about the physical component of my problem, he offered a solution that made me feel less pain. But Bernd and I didn’t talk about either my discomfort or the suppositories. We usually do talk about stuff. Maybe I’m the one to bring a topic up, but he’s usually willing to engage. On this one—silence.
I’ve known my gynecologist for thirty years; I even gave his wife piano lessons for a while. When I spoke to our problem, he asked whether Bernd still got erections. “Um, no, actually,” I had to answer. He’s healthy, and he doesn’t believe in seeing doctors, in check-ups or screenings. He’s not against anyone else seeing doctors. But for himself, he’s sure he understands the signals from his own body better than any so-called professional. I stressed that my husband would definitely be against any chemical solutions, any pills. The doc handed me a flyer about an alternative medicine solution, with libido-increasing potential for both men and women. But I knew there’d be no best moment to broach the subject.
Were I to assert myself, saying that I want sex to be part of our life again—or at least of my life—I don’t doubt that Bernd would encourage me to take a lover or find someone to fool around with occasionally. But I don’t want to. Though I’ve had great sex without loving the man I was with, at the moment I’m not interested in being with an arbitrary man simply for sexual excitement. In fact, I don’t have the bodily confidence at this age to make the moves with a new person, not in this body. I never did dress up much, or wear makeup; I never was a head-turner. In my sixties, I’m well-aware, I have silver hair, less firm skin, more wrinkles. I sag more and have a stiffer way of moving through the world. Echoing other women, I’ve become fairly invisible: random attractive men at the supermarket or the library or on the subway seem not to even perceive me.
At the same time, however, in Year 24 together he and I seem to have arrived at a new level of emotional intimacy, practically a symbiosis. That we have no sex and are in love at the same time leaves me rather dumbfounded.
We’ve created a harmonious joint life. We have no fundamental differences of opinion—not about religion or politics or child-raising or dealing with elderly parents. To ourselves and others over the years we’ve framed our harmoniousness as the outcome of marrying for a second time: we no longer sweat the little things.
We’d both experienced feeling hurt or snubbed by our spouses. In our dynamic, occasional disagreements arise from brief misunderstandings, momentary impatience. Yet, any disputes Bernd and I may have don’t hurt or linger. That differs from my first marriage, where the recurring deep differences of opinion and raised voices caused me physical distress and great sadness. Our disagreements are about something that can be articulated, discussed, and resolved, and we have subtracted some of the ego, the potential vitriol.
In the intervening decades, my husband has grown emotionally—he’s warmer, sweeter, less defensive, more affectionate. He has more of an ear when I want to share an impression of what a friend is going through, or psychological explanations for our relatives’ behavior. He’s no longer much interested in action films; instead, we like to share articles that have caught our eye or watch documentaries that give us topics to speak about for days. We run a company together, travel a lot. We never run out of things to talk about, and if we’re silent for a while, it’s not unpleasant or tense.
Our joint sexual exploration phase, expanding to include others—men or couples with whom we shared little besides an openness to sexual lust—lasted beyond our forties. We’re both glad that we jointly experienced bringing fantasies to life that we’d hardly even dared to articulate before we met. We enjoy returning to memories of unusual characters, weird encounters.
“There are many aspects to ‘sex’ that aren’t intercourse—hugging, kissing, flirting, holding, teasing, complimenting,” I read. Over time, Bernd and I simply stopped touching each other sexually, expressing desire or urgency in kisses or hugs or touches that might lead to intercourse or sex play. But we do still hug, kiss, hold, tease, and compliment each other. Maybe we are still having sex?
