Can We Be Lovers & Not Have Sex?

I came across this piece "I want a life of a million lovers"  written by Brentan Schellenbach over at elephantjournal

I was struck by how it gives shape and structure to feelings I have been wrestling with for a good while now. And since the break-up with The Potential Mr. Babz I have been looking at how I love and make love. Perhaps he and I should've remained friends with benefits... perhaps we should've just been friends... however we were never that ever. we were always lovers...always passionate lovers at that. I am walking through my love life and seeing where I am and what do I want. I have lived long enough to have a good idea of who I am. I've had a lot of great sex in my life and I want to continue to have great sex, but how? Clearly I don't want to go back down the relationship rabbit hole and be talked to death about my lack of communication skills. And I certainly don't want to hear how too busy I am for a serious relationship. And my one solid man-woman friendship with my BFF Ron thrives and succeeds. We've been friends for well over 25 years without ever having sex. Not once... not even flirting. So anyway, this piece stopped me in my tracks and called me to discern this for myself in my own life. I have sent it around to friends for their thoughts... I have had deep discussions with a few FB folks who are relationship gurus and dating experts. I don't know what I hope to find, or hear. I just know for whatever reasons I've not been good at finding someone who likes sex as much as I do who has their own life and interests and is not looking for me to be their mother, or bank, or baby-sitter, or therapist, or moral compass.

I am going to explore this a bit more over the next couple of weeks. It speaks to me and I want to know why.

I want a life of a million lovers.

I want to love you.

I want to love you if you are male or female, young or old, single or married…

When I see you we will embrace and hold a hug long enough to glimpse some insight from each other’s heartbeat.

When we walk down the street we shall link arms, pause frequently, and turn our toes and noses towards the other to speak directly without modesty.

I would like us to share the couch together, rather than creating a “do not cross” line where we may as well be sitting on brick blocks seated four feet away. Give me your knee, your foot, your thigh—let your body dangle on top of my body so I can know you the way litters of kittens know each other.

I want to show up to you and look into your eyes instead of at your eyes. I want to feel your hand and be consumed by it until the rest of the world ceases to exist. I want to be in your presence and be in want ofnothing.

I would like you to leave our time together feeling loved and free and full of your most vibrant and luscious hue of you-ness.

Please do not get confused: I do not want to have sex with you—whether you are male or female.

I have no sexual agenda, as you know, because we laugh at the freedom we feel to speak to strangers for reasons other than because we have to or because we’re hitting on them.

For me, sharing sex with someone requires a certain alignment, and I do not take that lightly. My sex requires that I can possibly foresee living with a person and combining all my stuff with all of their stuff (and I mean physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual stuff—the stuff that just feels heavy if it’s not the right fit, but feels buoyant beyond imagination when it is). It is delicate, it is careful, it is not presumptuous or impulsive.

And I do not think that our connection is somehow weakened because we do not share our bodies with each other.

For love is love is love is love, and that is what I want.

I only want us to fall in love.

Now I realize that at some point, either you or I may change our minds and crave sexual expression with each other.

For I am human—as are you—and we have wants that change and grow.

But if that desire should spring upon one of us, I hope that we will talk about it, the way we talk about the universe, cultural tropes, the nature of depression, what makes a good cup of coffee, and how your day was yesterday.

I hope that that topic of conversation is no more avoided than talking about the latest episode of Doctor Who or how to effectively clean one’s mouth from Oreo breath.

I would like you to share yourself with me—every stitch of you—so that I may be warmed and nourished by your tapestry. And I would not like you to worry that some of your threading is inappropriate or uncomfortable to share with me, because I am only here to accept you exactly as you are and to take interest in the way you step through life.

So lay on me your doubts, your troubles, your faux pas, your suffering, your sadness. Lay on me your hopes, your dreams, your excitements, your curiosities, your guilty pleasures.

I want to see you how you see yourself.

And while you tell me all of this and more, I would like to rest my eyes upon your eyes, and take my hand upon your back, and laugh up to the ceiling as you divulge, because it is in these moments of pure exposure that I bask in the ever-so-specific you, and I become the ever-so-specific me, and even though you’ve never stepped into the tides of the pacific and I’ve never ridden a skateboard, I am more sure than I’ve ever been that we are the same.

I don’t care if I see you everyday or if I see you only just the one time when I happened to be in that coffee shop and you happened to be making my drink (which was delicious, by the way, and thank you for not rolling your eyes when I asked if your only non-dairy milk was soy)—I want to be your lover.

And I will have the lover whom I share a bed with, and it will be none the less—on the contrary, that love will be all the more—because I take on another million lovers.

So if you’re ready, let me see you and let me love you.

My insides, my arm, my couch, my laugh, my eyes, my toes are all for you.

I hope that is enough.