Not That Weird, After All

My husband and I haven't had sex in something like two and a half years.  Which, for those who are counting, is about a year longer than we've been married.  Stripping that, along with the romantic partnership, out of our relationship is what let us get to a healthy, stable place with one another.  We were pretty bad at finding mutually satisfying ways to be sexual or romantic.

But we're pretty fucking great at living together, and leaning on each other for the important things.  For all the ways in which we are not, and make a point to not be, primary partners, we are pretty bombass domestic partners.  The way that I characterize it is that if I get hit by a bus, I want my husband to be the one making decisions.  We can trust each other in that way, with that depth, without holding hands or getting each other off.

At first glance, this seems to throw many people.  Marriage gets taken for granted as a package deal.  Even for non-monogamous folks, who already tend to think outside the box when it comes to relationships, our approach is consistently met with surprise.

And then they think about it.  "Huh.  I guess that makes sense."  Sometimes folks without long-term partners even have a lightbulb moment of who fills that role in their own lives.  "Oh, like my friend Peter!  We've lived together on and off for the last ten years."  "Oh, like my friend Erica!  We just took a three week trip together, and she's been my best friend since college.  If I got hit by a bus, I think that she's the one I'd want making those types of decisions."

And then Reader's Digest, of all things, sealed the deal.  While waiting at the doctor's office with my husband ('cause we go to important appointments together!), he pointed out a copy with a cover story about traits of happy marriages.  "Hey, see if we're normal!" he suggested.  So I flipped it open to the article.  Most of the numbers and percentages were not particularly relevant or interesting to me, so I've since forgotten them.  But one jumped out.  According to Reader's Digest (super legit, I know), a solid 20% of the happiest couples are no longer attracted to one another.  Triumph!  "Looklooklooklook!  We're not weird!  See?!"

Well.  Maybe a little weird.

But at least not the only ones who figured out that you can do this without doing that.

Rivers of Snot

Over the past year, I have both cut out a considerable amount of my social involvement with my local kink community and acquired an in-state sex partner (we'll call him ISSP).  This has left me with less fodder for writing here, unless I were to turn my asexuality blog into a sex blog.  Which, for numerous reasons, I don't want to do.  An elaboration on that might be a post for another day, but not today.

Today I'm going to write about rivers of snot.

ISSP and I were talking the other day, and wandered onto the topic of crying.  Specifically, bawling like a three year old, rivers of snot-style crying.  He was using this as a description of unsexy crying.  I maintained that more context was required to determine whether it was sexy or unsexy crying.  He looked befuddled.

Don't get me wrong.  Uncontrollable sobbing, in and of itself, is not particularly sexy.  It's messy, it's graceless, it's profoundly awkward*.  No argument there.

So what's hot about it?  The rawness.  The vulnerability.   I really dig emotional intensity.  For me, I think that the emotions themselves end up being secondary to the intensity.  Delving into that sort of intensity in a reasonably controlled and safe setting is just fantastic.

To get that messy and graceless is to let some pretty substantial walls come down.  Forcing those walls to come down in an erotic context is absolutely hot- at least for me.

Even if it does involve rivers of snot.

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*Know what else tends to be messy, graceless, and profoundly awkward?  Fucking.  Seriously.