Reddit mentions of Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemproary Lesbians

This is going to be long, so bear with me.

1. Stop dating males. Stop fucking males. Stop giving males the time of day when you aren't getting paid for it. If every woman did this, androcracy would be over inside of a week. But even apart from the politics of it, this is the best move for your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being as a woman.
   
   
2. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that other members have mentioned Boston marriages, asexual women/lesbians, nonsexual romance, etc in their replies. Yes, these exist, and have been around for a long time. I'm one such woman, who's attracted to women and wants a female partner, but doesn't want genital sex.
   
   I think it's cool that you recognize you can and do want a nonsexual partnership/relationship with a woman. And it's also cool that you have experience being single for long stretches. That's always a plus for women, particularly het women.
   
   My advice is as follows--
   
   
3. Be honest and upfront right out of the gate, about what you're looking for and yes, your past heterosexuality. Lesbians who want sexual romance and/or who are wary of bisexual and ex-het women, deserve to know where you're coming from so that they can opt out if you don't meet their criteria.
   
   
4. Take the time to deconstruct your internalized misogyny, lesbophobia, and male identification. All women acquire this shit after growing up in this world. If you want the best possible relationship with another woman you can have, then you need to purge the aforementioned toxic crap from your psyche. This is a process. Read as much radical and lesbian feminist writing as you can get your hands on, and preferably from the 20th century, because that's where the real shit mostly comes from. Think critically about your own beliefs, feelings, etc, particularly when it comes to men vs. women, hets vs. lesbians, etc.
   
   I think it's a valuable excercise to also reflect on why you chose to be heterosexual in the past and how authentic your attraction and desire were/are for men. You say that your "sexual feelings" have always been directed toward men and that you've tried to feel sexual toward women without success. Reflect on what those sexual feelings toward men actually entailed and when and how they started. Too many women who ID and live as het claim that they've only ever sexually desired males, and yet when they talk about the actual fucking and interaction with males, it becomes clear that they either rarely or never experienced actual pleasure and emotional connection in these sexual encounters, and/or their "attraction" to men is actually secondary to the mere pattern and assumption of being het since adolescence. Do not underestimate the power of the desire to be accepted, approved of, and to enjoy het privilege/status.
   
   Most people are used to approaching romance/sexuality from a male-identified perspective, which places sex at the forefront and the starting point and separates the mind, body, heart, and spirit in a way that isn't natural to women and the love between women. Yes, some lesbians do experience immediate sexual desire for strangers or women they aren't actually in love with, and while there's nothing wrong with that at all, it's not the ONLY way that lesbians/women experience desire, attraction, and love for other women.
   
   Male/het society reduces lesbianism to sex, because it hates the idea of women actually loving each other and being totally independent of males. Male/het society wants to reduce lesbianism to a porn category, make lesbians into sex objects, etc. They don't know anything about lesbian love, let alone lesbian love between female-identified, feminist lesbians. So don't base your expectations and perspective of lesbian love on what men and het women have told you about it, what the media portrays, etc. The lesbian feminist conceptualization of love between women and lesbian existence understands that being a lesbian is about exclusively loving other women, that love being the bottomline and the core. Sex/passion/eros flows from that love, is a part of that love, but is not by itself the definition of lesbianism or the most important element. Of course, most lesbians desire sex within their romantic relationships, but sex is not what lesbianism is ABOUT. And this is often the dividing line between bisexual women and lesbians: most bi women want lesbian sex on the side of their het lifestyle and aren't willing to deal with all that loving a woman as your partner entails, while lesbians love women and only women, whether they're having sex or single or not.
   
   Anyway--it's entirely possible to unlearn false attraction to men and to discover that you're more attracted to women than you once thought. Tons of lesbians went through this process as a result of feminism in the 70s. On the one hand, I want to say that nowadays, it's easier to know you're a lesbian from childhood than it was for women born in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, because lesbianism is more visible and less dangerous now than it was back then; on the other hand, all non-lesbians still hate the fuck out of lesbians and we've got all this gender, queer theory, universal bisexuality, sexual fluidity bullshit going on in mainstream culture, so in reality, it may not be any easier for girls and women to know and to choose lesbian life now than it was 50 years ago. The pressures to be het are just different, not less.
   
   Don't think of finding a female partner in terms of "dating." Dating is a het thing. It's also unnecessary. Make friends with women, be open about what you're looking for, and let nature takes it course. Love that grows from friendship is the best kind, anyway. And don't be surprised if you fall in love with a woman and then find out that your feelings about sex change, although it's totally okay if you continue to prefer a nonsexual intimate partnership.
   
   On OKC, you can select "asexual" in addition to "bisexual" or "lesbian" or the dreaded "queer." So maybe you can try that out. Again, just be as honest as you were here about what you want and where you're coming from.
   
   There's a book about contemporary "Boston Marriages," if you're interested. The term was originally coined to describe presumably nonsexual domestic partnerships between women in the 1800s, who could afford to opt out of het marriage and decided to partner with each other instead. This book is more about lesbian relationships that become nonsexual, except one of the stories is about a relationship that was never sexual at all but still quite sensual. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0870238760/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
   
   There are definitely self-identified asexual women who are looking for nonsexual partnerships with other women. There are also self-identified lesbians who don't care much for sex. So yeah. If you want a partner and you're cool with never having sex again, you don't have to settle for being single or more horror with men. But do be considerate of lesbians who are looking for lovers and/or prefer to be with other never-het lesbians.