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“Are you not worried Sam might step out of the relationship?” I ask Kim Hanton, somewhat curious, after coming across her Instagram post about being in a sexless relationship.
“His brain isn’t being taken hostage by how full his balls are because he hasn’t had sex recently,” she replies.
Well, there we have it. Consider me told.
It’s funny, isn’t it? We spend so much time talking about our sexcapades, but when it comes to a lack of sex, things can get a little awkward.
Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows that sex doesn’t always follow a rigid schedule. Life gets in the way. Work piles up, bodies change, health throws us a curveball and sometimes, quite simply, the desire just isn’t there.
And while periods of low libido are incredibly common, women still seem to carry an enormous amount of guilt and shame around not wanting sex.
But Hanton is hoping to change that.
“I knew it wasn’t the type of topic that is spoken about openly,” she tells me. “But I knew there would be people who felt seen by it.”
And judging by the 43k likes on her post, I’d say she was onto something.
Don’t force it
“I think it’s really unhealthy to make women believe that they have a sexual obligation to their partner,” she says.
It’s a sentiment worth sitting with.
After beating cervical cancer, sex was, understandably, the last thing on Hanton’s mind, particularly when the experience left her dealing with pain during penetration.
“Unless you’ve gone through something that has made sex painful or changed how sex feels for you, it can be quite difficult to understand,” she explains.
Think about it for a moment. If you constantly ended up with sore ankles after going for a run, you’d probably stop and find another form of exercise that felt better. You wouldn’t keep forcing yourself through it simply because you used to enjoy it.
So why should sex be any different?
You shouldn’t have to push yourself through something that no longer feels good, and your partner shouldn’t want you to either.
Of course, mismatched libidos can be a bit of a sore spot in relationships. But interestingly, it isn’t something Hanton and her partner Sam are struggling with these days.
When they first met, Hanton actually had the higher sex drive. Sam was a bodybuilder at the time and was also navigating his own mental health challenges. Over time, however, things have shifted and the pair have found themselves on a more similar wavelength.
“My own health experiences have allowed me to look at sex differently,” she says. “In a way that I probably wouldn’t have been able to when I was able-bodied.”
Please yourself
Now, as you can probably imagine, putting something so personal out into the world wasn’t going to come without a few raised eyebrows.
As Hanton expected, the comment section was filled with just as many negative opinions as positive ones.
“You’d have thought I’d confessed to having a human head in my freezer,” she laughs.
Which, if you ask me, is a bit of a surprise, since all I hear is my friends complaining about having to give their boyfriends head on their birthdays.
But it does raise an interesting question: why do we put so much emphasis on sex when deciding whether a relationship is successful?
Hanton isn’t buying into it.
“People seem to view couples who are still sexually active as two people who must still have some level of attraction towards one another,” she says.
“So even if everything else in their relationship is falling apart, in the eyes of society, at least they’ve still got that.”
She’s got a point.
We all know those couples who can’t keep their hands off each other but seem to struggle to agree on just about everything else.
We don’t claim that energy.
Neither do Hanton and her partner.
“The level of closeness that we have hasn’t come from sexual activity,” she says. “It’s come from the challenges that we’ve faced in life and overcome together, and the continued support, affection and belief that we’ve had in each other.”
And really, isn’t that what we’re all looking for?
Not even oral!
Now, just so we’re all on the same page, when Hanton says they haven’t had sex in over a year, she means it quite literally.
“When I say we haven’t had sex in over a year, I don’t just mean intercourse,” she shares openly. “We haven’t had oral sex or anything like that either.”
And before you wonder whether she misses it, the answer is a pretty straightforward ‘no’.
“I’ve genuinely reached a point where I’m happy with how things are,” she says frankly.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no intimacy in their relationship. Far from it.
Their physical connection simply looks a little different from what many people might expect.
“We kiss a lot, hold hands, cuddle and when we go to sleep at night we’re usually quite close to one another and often have our legs intertwined.”
Wondering about orgasms? Hanton is looking after herself; don’t you worry.
“I regularly engage in solo play, and so does Sam, and that’s absolutely fine with both of us,” she says.
Well, who are we to judge?
Sitting here chatting about it all, one thing is pretty clear: there’s no universal rulebook when it comes to intimacy.
Some couples are at it like rabbits, others are perfectly happy without sex being part of their relationship at all.
And somewhere in between, there’s a whole lot of room for people to figure out what works for them.
What I see when I look at Hanton and her boyfriend is two people who respect each other and are brave enough to find a way to love one another in a way that feels right for them.
No pressure, no keeping up appearances and certainly no obligation to tick anyone else’s boxes.
That’s pretty beautiful if you ask me.
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