Even when our sex was “good”—everyone’s body parts were doing what they should; if you saw a video of us doing it, you’d be like, “hot”—I wasn’t present, nor was I lost in bliss. Most of the time I was some putrid combination of bored, irritable, and dissociated. A couple of years in, when I requested an open relationship, I came up with all kinds of sexpert-approved reasons: because it creates and maintains healthy tension, because monogamy isn’t sustainable, because to hell with patriarchy and the marriage industrial complex. But I knew deep, deep, deep down that the main reason I wanted to fuck other people was because I no longer wanted to fuck him.

So what, exactly, was so bad about our sex? During our harrowing mid-coitus fights, I’d fixate on technique and positions, not acknowledging that we simply didn’t have that unlearnable spark, which could, of course, be enhanced with but not created by skills. I knew I’d had wonderful sexual encounters with other people where our chemistry transcended mechanics or traditional markers of success; one of my favorite sex partners, for instance, had never even witnessed me orgasm. I was also attracted to Aaron, and always had been. So it really boiled down to the fact that most of the time, sex with him felt physically, rhythmically, olfactorily wrong. And once in a while, when I was in the mood for self-honesty, I could see clearly that our “bad sex” was the symptom of a bigger problem—that I didn’t love or understand him in the way I needed to. That our connection, though real, wasn’t strong enough. I was scribbling out the one con that mattered most.