5 Things I Learned After Leaving My Sexless Relationship

By Taylyn Washington-Harmon · Updated September 23, 2022

“Men cheat because they have a higher sex drive.”

“Sometimes women just have to roll over and take it when their man wants some.”

We’ve all heard some version of this story and advice concerning relationships, but what happens when a woman isn’t satisfied sexually in a relationship? If all else is going well, we’re expected to grin and bear it. Unfortunately, by grinning and bearing it to spare feelings, I began to lose sight of who I was and what I desired, a compromise that too many women are expected to make for the sake of keeping a partner.

In my four-year relationship with my ex, we were intimate regularly for two of them. Things came to a screeching halt when we ended up going roughly 10 consecutive months without sex. What I found was that when sex isn’t on the table, it gives you plenty of time to think, for better or worse. In that time, it helped me evaluate what sex meant to me: a manifestation of human love and the desire for touch. Going too long without that as a person in love made me feel like nothing more than a glorified roommate. Thus, I broke it off, only for friends and family to call me brave. 

Such a label isn’t my preferred word for how I handled things. Instead, I just knew that I deserved better, not only from my relationship, but in the bedroom. Here’s everything that I learned in my time of unplanned abstinence.

01

Never assume the lack of sex is just about you.

It’s really easy to get wrapped up in what you could be doing wrong if your partner doesn’t desire intimacy with you. For me, having struggled with body image issues for the majority of my life, I wrongly assumed it was about my body. I wondered if I had “let myself go” or wasn’t being sexy enough around the house. However, when I confronted my partner about it, he shared that he simply had other things going on in his mind, like work problems and money issues, that kept him from seeing sex as a priority. Thanks to your body, stress has a direct correlation to a decreased interest in sex. The issue doesn’t have to be wholly mental either. “It might actually be a physiological concern that they’re having,” says Donna Oriowo, LICSW, M.Ed, CST, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist and relationship therapist. “Whether it’s low [testosterone], if they have pain or discomfort in having sex, those things could make them not want to have sex again. We all have things that are sexual accelerators and things that slam on our brakes, like daily life stressors.”

02

You deserve to know what you like during sex, masturbation included.

Shamyra Howard, LCSW, a New Orleans-based social worker and sex therapist actually encourages women to explore their own bodies while in a relationship, giving you the opportunity to learn what you like and don’t like in bed. “Women unfortunately don’t get the same messages about sexual liberation as men do,” says Howard. “We don’t tend to see ourselves as sexual beings, but rather, we see ourselves as someone else’s sexual being. When you know what you want to experience, you can communicate that to your partner.” While I initially felt ashamed for masturbating while in a relationship, exploring my own body gave me the confidence to know what I like and that I deserve pleasure and happiness, especially outside of the bedroom. “Masturbating benefits the relationship because it can also help you feel more comfortable with your body,” adds Oriowo. If masturbation isn’t really your thing, Howard suggests body mapping, where you take a photo of yourself of a stick figure and circle the areas where you like to feel pleasure.

03

You can see other red flags clearer when sex isn’t involved.

Getting “dickmatized” is a real thing, just listen to Jazmine Sullivan’s album Heaux Tales. When my partner and I were having sex frequently, the pleasure and joy it gave me regularly helped me to overlook certain behaviors I ended up no longer being able to brush over, whether it was insensitive comments or skimping out on chores around the house. “Whenever there is a lack of anything that we are missing in a relationship, it’s almost like it heightens our senses in other areas,” says Howard. “Oftentimes when there’s issues in a relationship, sex is usually the first thing to go, and then it causes us to think about other complications because we’re trying to find out what happened.” That could be anything from an argument about dishes, or realizing you haven’t had a date in three months. When I was no longer “dickmatized,” I was able to question our long-term compatibility.

04

Sex should never be used as collateral in a relationship.

Here’s where I realized I was even being the toxic one in my relationship. I would use the lack of sex and intimacy as a means of hurting or coaxing my partner emotionally, whether it was threatening to cheat or even questioning his masculinity. Looking back on it, that was completely out of line and something I would never want to impose on another partner. “It makes it seem as if your partner owes you something more than time, affection, and attention,” says Oriowo. ”Having a desire for sex and feeling like you’re owed sex is not the same thing.” Feeling as if that line was blurring for me, that’s when I knew that it was better to break things off. I’d rather find a partner who values sex in the same manner that I do rather than force someone to fit my mold.

05

It’s a good time to give voluntary celibacy a try.

Now you might be wondering, why would you prolong your lack of sex even further if you’ve already gone some time without it? Just hear me out. In my sexless time period, I realized why cheating simply wasn’t an option for me: I simply don’t enjoy sex without a deep emotional connection with someone. According to Oriowo and Howard, that could place someone like me on the scale of demisexuality, defined by Cleveland Clinic as “only feel[ing] sexual attraction to someone after [establishing] a strong emotional bond with [someone].” While casual sex and the “hoe phase” may seem like a rite of passage for women fresh out of long-term relationships, it never appealed to me, though I’d never judge anyone else if that’s their cup of tea. Now that I’m single, I can honor how I really feel about waiting until I’m in a committed relationship where I feel emotionally and physically safe. By removing sex from the immediate equation, I feel as if I can get to know potential partners on a deeper level, rather than using sex as a means of building that connection in the first place.

Taylyn Washington-Harmon is a writer and editor based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Men’s Health, Health Magazine, and SELF.com. @taylynharmon