‘Lesbian bed death?’: An encounter with the sexless relationship

 Berlin Sylvestre

I never knew it was a thing, this ‘lesbian bed death,’ until it was mentioned in passing on Showtime’s The L Word. Apparently, a couple had stopped having sex and it was such a common phenomenon among lesbians that it had a name. (The horror, right? Lesbian. Bed. Death.) The notion struck me in (what’re the kids saying these days?) some type of way. I mean, certainly a sexless relationship would be a relationship worth ending, I surmised — at that point you’re just best friends trying desperately not to end up alone.

It was a good deal later — a good stretch into my first long-term girlfriend — that it struck me like a skillet thrown from a wagon that we hadn’t had sexy sex in about five months. My blood ran cold with unfavorable epiphany as I lay there, listening to her get into the shower, knowing I wasn’t going to sneak-attack her nakedness with irrepressible affection. At that point, the most I’d managed were quick booty-tweaks and boob-honks from the other side of the curtain on especially good-humored days. At night, I’d often stay up working on my book or fiddling with the wires coming from the entertainment center (anything, really) while she called from our room, “Come to bed!” It never honestly occurred to me how low I prioritized sex with my ever-patient sweetheart. Not until that morning.

Is this the beginning of the end? I worried. No, it can’t be. I love her, I do. This has nothing to do with not loving her.

When I asked Cara about it a few days later, she mentioned that she’d noticed I was stressed out a lot lately. (For the past five months?) I nodded along and rattled off watery excuses (bills, school, work) like they somehow prevented me from turning her around by her hips in the kitchen and masterfully encroaching her privacy or ambushing her as she changed into yoga attire. Like I used to. Like I used  to with many-times-daily frequency. Back when things were better. And I would agonize in bed at night, knowing that all I had to do was reach over and show my feelings in that type of way.

But I didn’t want to.

I became irritable, more upset with myself than anything else. I thought of all the people from her past, present, and potential future who could lavish her with the sexual attention she not only deserves, but most likely needs, in spite of her insistence to the contrary. How awful of me to put her through this desert of a love life, watching the tumbleweeds of depleted love blow by as lazy and empty as her attempts to justify it for my sake.

Then I became irritable with her. Why doesn’t she initiate sex more? Why is it my responsibility to take control of our love life? Well, of course I can’t feel sexy! It’s all this pressure!

Where once I was embarrassed, I now felt fit enough to broach the subject with my buddy James, who was single despite his constant surge of gentleman callers … or perhaps because of it. I filled him in on the lack of sex in my life and he waved his hand.

“It’s over,” he said flatly, leaving me to protest and frantically, naively ‘count the ways’ about my lady. He wouldn’t have it. He eventually said something like: “Take inventory of your relationship and you’ll see that it’s more than just sex you’re missing” and my heart sank. I’d been doing that anyway. We no longer talked about the things we saw in our future; we didn’t playfully argue over marriage or kids or a home in California; we didn’t go jogging together, didn’t want to meet for lunch, didn’t talk politics or school or damn-near anything we used to go on for hours about. I’d been kicking and screaming that the deep bond we shared transcended sex, but who was I really kidding? Certainly not us.

Months later, it happened.

I met a girl at my university who made my knees quake and my heart race. I tried to deny it, avoiding her at first. Speaking with her only made me feel worse about that spark I got when she’d touch my arm or laugh at length at my anecdotes on college life. How I missed that rush of vitality!

Partly through shame, I tried to reignite the lost magic between me and my girlfriend which was an utter and miserable failure that made me finally drink the water life had lead me to.

We both deserved better than this facade.

When we called it off, James didn’t gloat. He took me out to Midtown for drinks and assured me that lesbians aren’t the only group of lovers who linger in sexless relationships. “Y’all just stay for longer,” he laughed, assuring me that when I look back on this time years down the road, I’ll see that it was more than a lack of sex that drove us apart; it was just two people changing their minds about the whole idea of union … and of their future in one.