Marriage can survive a lack of sex for a season — what it can’t survive is a lack of intimacy.
There was a time when I may not have believed this statement. Younger me knew for certain that sexless marriages fail.
There was a time, as well, when I confused sex and intimacy as one and the same.
Over the course of our monogamous 17-plus-year relationship, our sex life has seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And I can tell you that there were times when my husband and I didn’t have intercourse for months, didn’t have partnered sex of any kind for several weeks a stretch, yet we felt more intimate than ever.
What I now know is that intimacy is the key to weathering anything life throws at the two of us — the key to a lasting marriage.
Our relationship started in a flurry of passion. In each other we each found something lacking with our previous partners. I found, in him, a sexual partner fully comfortable with and respecting of my bisexuality; a partner who, for the first time, was concerned with making sure I was having not just a good time but an exceptional experience. As is often the case early in a relationship, we couldn’t get enough of each other.
Though, anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship knows, with time, that tsunami of passion gradually subsides into gentle waves lapping upon the shore. However, we didn’t find ourselves in our first sex-drought due to the passage of time nor the monotony of routine.
It was three months before our wedding day when I was diagnosed with cancer — stage 2 Hodgkin Lymphoma. An “easy” cancer with an 80% 10-year survival rate, though that made it no less daunting to treat. We spent the remaining weeks leading up to our wedding and the first few months of our marriage navigating doctor appointments, surgeries, radiation treatments, and chemotherapy.
The surgeries left me sore. The radiation treatments left me exhausted. The chemotherapy left me nauseous and achy. And the whole experience weighed heavy on both our minds.
We had been thoroughly enjoying that lusty early stage of our relationship then, quite suddenly, sex was the furthest thing from our minds.
It was during this first major trial that we learned the true meaning of intimacy. Though intercourse and most sexual acts were not appealing as we both felt the strain of cancer, we found we still couldn’t get enough of each other. But now, our desires were for intimacy beyond sex. We’d lie together, wrapped in each other’s arms for hours. We’d be soothed by the thumping of our beating hearts, comforted by the feel of warm skin against skin, calmed by the rhythm of each breath.
Bonding, we’d call it. Nights we’d turn off the TV early, lazy Saturday afternoons, early mornings before he’d head to work — the time that once would have been devoted to sexual endeavors was now devoted to bonding. There was no expectation of sex, just the intimacy of being so close to one another and not wishing to be anywhere else, doing anything else.
When we did have the energy and desire for sex, our experience was much changed from earlier in our relationship and not the mind-blowing romps I once would have thought necessary to keep the spark in a marriage.
That was but one season in our lives, thankfully. My cancer did go into remission and, slowly, our lives (sex and otherwise) found a new normalcy. Nothing ever truly returns to how it was before. We were both changed by facing cancer, but life in remission became comfortable.
Before long, a new season was upon us. We were ready to start a family. This was something we’d planned since before we were even engaged. In fact, when I was told I had cancer, I did not shed a tear until the doctor warned that the chemotherapy necessary to rid my body of the disease could cause me to become infertile. Realizing the cancer could cost us the family we’d dreamed of together, I sat in the crowded office with tears flooding my eyes and streaming down my cheeks.
Seeing my reaction, the doctor suggested we consult a fertility specialist in the short window I had before treatments would commence. That is how it came to be that my husband and I had eight cryopreserved embryos waiting for us now that we were ready to start our family.
It certainly wasn’t as easy — or as fun — to make a baby as I once imagined it would be. I was poked and prodded at frequent appointments, I self-administered injections and suppositories for weeks, and we were told to avoid vaginal intercourse for most of the cycle.
While there are plentiful alternatives to vaginal intercourse (many of which are even more pleasurable), going through fertility treatments is physically demanding and mentally exhausting — it is stressful for both partners — and our sex life took another hit.
Again, it was intimacy that filled the gap. Not only spending time physically close but emotionally close, as well — talking openly with each other about what we wanted and needed in this season, what we dreamed of and hoped for as we imagined life with children in the coming years.
It took half of our cryopreserved embryos to result in my pregnancy with a single baby boy.
I had an uncomplicated (though uncomfortable) pregnancy. Labor was intense and exhausting. I ended up with an episiotomy in one direction which failed to prevent a 3rd-degree tear in another direction before vaginally delivering our 8lb 13oz son, who was immediately whisked away by the nurses.
As our baby was being cared for on the other side of the room, the doctor began sewing up my episiotomy and tear, and it became clear that things were not going well for me. I was severely hemorrhaging. I was bleeding out.
I heard my husband’s voice weakly manage to say, “I love you,” as I was hurriedly wheeled out of the room. While I was rushed to emergency surgery, he was left sitting on the cold hospital room floor, feet from a pool of my blood, our baby still being cared for by the nurses.
After eight units of whole blood, two units of platelets, two units of plasma, and exhausted efforts to stop the hemorrhaging, my family was told that, without an emergency hysterectomy, I had a mere 10% chance of survival — far worse odds than the cancer I had faced.
I awoke in the ICU with a crooked slash stitched up across my pelvis. I had been pumped full of so many fluids in an attempt to keep my blood pressure up during surgery that I was painfully swollen from head to toe. I had survived, but I was a complete mess — physically, mentally, emotionally.
In this aftermath were some of our marriage’s most challenging times.
Though my husband had to return to work after only a few days, he was shouldering much of the responsibility of caring for our newborn when he was home as he tried his best to care for me, as well.
I was in pain throughout my entire body. I was not supposed to lift anything nor drive. For days, I had to half-crawl to get up the stairs of our split-level home.
On top of trying to recover from the traumatic vaginal birth and emergency hysterectomy, it turned out that my episiotomy and tear had become infected — probably a result of the stitches pulling apart due to all the swelling I experienced post-op. The infection did not clear with the first round of antibiotics, nor the second, and it lingered for several weeks.
As bad as the physical pain was, the mental and emotional pain was even worse. While I was grateful to have survived, I was lost in despair over the fact that I would never be able to give our remaining embryos a chance at life.
I felt like I was failing my newborn son. I felt like a burden to my husband. I was traumatized and likely dealing with postpartum depression, as well. All this on top of what I now know were existing anxiety disorders and unresolved traumas.
In these dark months, I hardly remember how I survived, let alone how our marriage did. I know that physically and emotionally, I was in no shape for sex of any kind.
Yet, even through this long drought of sex, even through this highly challenging and stressful season, my husband and I remained intimate. The intimacy of vulnerability, of each trusting the other to see you and be with you at your weakest, is as powerful as any.
In the more than thirteen years since then, we’ve continued to face challenges: completing our family was highly stressful and full of uncertainty as we searched for a gestational surrogate to give our remaining embryos a chance; we’ve felt the fear of my cancer causing secondary health issues; we’ve endured intense worry when our children needed surgeries; there have been times when my anxiety and depression were overwhelming; we’ve felt the financial strains and stresses of running a household and raising a family; and we’ve even been fortunate to have long enough lulls to feel the boredom of monotony and routine that is expected in a marriage of many years.
But we’ve weathered it all.
There have been times when our intimacy has waned, when we weren’t giving each other enough of ourselves, when we reserved too much and grew distant. Those were the only times I ever worried we might not make it. And those times had nothing to do with how much sex we were having.
There have been times in our marriage where the sex was incredible and frequent, yet I felt like I missed my husband even as we lay in bed together. And there have been times where sex was the furthest thing from our minds, times when we had the desire but no drive, or when we had the drive but not the ability, yet we felt completely connected to one another.
Passions may turn from inferno to smoldering embers, sex drives take a dive, libidos end up out of sync, stress weighs heavy, monotony bores — the one constant that is needed though it all is intimacy.
Don’t push your partner away, no matter what you are going through. Don’t run from your partner, no matter what they are going through. Share your most difficult thoughts, share your fears, share your hopes and dreams, share your desires.
The greatest intimacy is feeling seen and understood, feeling vulnerable yet safe, feeling complete closeness both physically and emotionally. And while sex is a spectacularly enjoyable way to foster those feelings, it is not the only way, or even the most important.
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This post was previously published on “Hello, Love” on Medium.com.
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