My Situationship

Suzanne Noble on the low-commitment relationship she’s been enjoying for two-and-a-half years. PLUS: An open thread where you can chime in about your own casual—or not-so-casual—relationships...

shapecharge/Getty Images

Readers,

Today we have an essay by Suzanne Noble who writes the newsletter Sex Advice for Seniors . It’s about an unconventional, super casual relationship she’s been involved in for two-and-a-half years, and you can find it below this section. ⬇️

Save for the couple of times they’ve traveled together, Noble and her partner primarily only meet for sex in the afternoons on weekends. That’s it. For a variety of reasons she’s not inclined to turn it into more. She’s quite content getting her sexual needs met weekly, then doing the rest of her life solo.

Seeing as attitudes toward sex, relationships, and non-monogamy have broadened in recent years, I thought this would be a good subject to prompt you all about. In the comments please tell us…

How old are you? Are you someone who is open to casual, non-conventional relationships? Non-monogamy? Or do you prefer things the old-fashioned way? Have you experimented with uncommitted relationships? What was your experience like? Answer as many or as few of these questions as you’d like! (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you.)

Me, I’m 60 and I am very much commitment-oriented. I was something of a serial monogamist until my late 30s, when I met my husband, Brian, and we’ve been together 23 years now, married 21. I gave casual dating a try before meeting Brian, and it was really not for me. But I respect other people’s choices, and I’m always interested in hearing about how less typical arrangements work out for people.

---

“Just wanted to say I am REALLY enjoy this publication!!!!! I look forward to getting it in my inbox!” - Loren Kleinman, subscriber.

---

Suzanne Noble’s essay starts here. ⬇️

Steve Duchesne/Getty Images

My Situationship

Suzanne Noble on the low-commitment relationship she’s been enjoying for two-and-a-half years.

By Suzanne Noble

Have you ever considered redesigning your current intimate relationship, or a future relationship, around the partnership that would actually work best for you, rather than what society suggests is appropriate at a later stage of life? In other words, instead of going down the monogamous partner-is-for-life-route, you opted for a different type of dynamic?

For some, that might mean a long-term partner with whom you share life’s experiences. For others, it could be a friend with benefits, or a living-apart-together arrangement, which seems to be growing increasingly popular among my friendship circle. You could even consider being part of a triad, being polyamorous, or simply having more than one lover akin to swinging. Or perhaps you want to ditch the whole idea of being sexual altogether and only have platonic relationships. What if you could rip up everything you were told about what a relationship was supposed to look like and start all over? What if being older came with a whole host of (friends with) benefits?

I was married for a decade. I’m 65 now, have two adult children and have had several partners whose relationships with me lasted between two and five years. I’ve done monogamy, marriage and what I thought was appropriate and acceptable when it comes to my intimate relationships. But when I think about when I’ve been happiest, when my brain wasn’t buzzing with discontent and when I felt fully free to be me, it was when I was a) non-monogamous and b) kept my liaisons to the weekends, when I could devote myself fully to pleasure without the distraction of work.

I call my current, long-term relationship a “situationship” because there’s no other way to describe it. We’re not friends in the traditional sense; we didn’t build a friendship before becoming sexual. We met via a site designed for no-strings-attached hook-ups, started with sex (usually on a Sunday afternoon) and have, essentially, continued that way, punctuated by the occasional meal, a midweek phone call, or a handyman-style call-out. He’s very good at fixing things, which usually comes with mutually satisfying benefits when I call him up, typically in an emergency situation, to deal with a household problem.

We’ve been away together a couple of times, which was fun and hassle free. But once we returned to London, where we both live, we slipped back into our rhythm: meeting once a week and having sex. The last trip, a week in NYC, sparked a flurry of questions from friends. “Is he your boyfriend now?” “Are you taking it to the next level?” “New York? For a week? Isn’t that serious?”

I call my current, long-term relationship a “situationship” because there’s no other way to describe it. We’re not friends in the traditional sense; we didn’t build a friendship before becoming sexual. We met via a site designed for no-strings-attached hook-ups, started with sex (usually on a Sunday afternoon) and have, essentially, continued that way, punctuated by the occasional meal, a midweek phone call, or a handyman-style call-out.

In truth, the only reason he stayed with me in New York for a week was purely practical. He needed to renew an American single-engine pilot’s license that had expired over a decade ago, and the only way to do so was to meet an assessor at a U.S. airfield. There happened to be one a couple of hours from where I was staying. I offered him my bed, the chance to see NYC for the first time, and the opportunity to renew his license. It was too good an offer to refuse, though I did quietly wonder whether he might change his mind right up until boarding the plane because he’s not the most organized. His “diary,” and I use the term loosely, appears to be a whiteboard in his kitchen where he jots jobs to be done.

Suzanne Noble in the company of her "situationship" at Katz's Deli in NYC. To paraphrase When Harry Met Sally, she'll have what she's having...

Like several of the men I’ve attracted over the years, he’s prone to anxiety, which often manifests as an aversion to planning. I suspect this is because I am a relatively anxiety-free person. We joke that when I ask what my situationship has planned for the weekend, he responds with a single word and a laugh: “Planned?” Our weekend liaison is usually arranged a day or two beforehand, sometimes only hours. It generally happens weekly, though occasionally more pressing commitments shift it by a day or even a week.

After two-and-a-half years, you might wonder whether I’ve considered making it something more serious. I won’t pretend I haven’t. I’ve occasionally imagined what moving him from situationship to boyfriend would entail, but it never takes long to identify several reasons why that might be the end of us.

For one, we often sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum. I’m liberal; he isn’t. His upbringing and limited formal education mean he gets much of his information from YouTube, as he learned to read in his late teens. When conversations drift into politics, I counter his claims with statistics. It’s not sexy. And because our relationship is sexual and only sexual, I tend to steer us away from topics that might spark arguments.

Secondly, I adore the arts: theatre, museums, galleries. If he has attended a cultural event, he has never mentioned it. His passions are motorbikes, planes, and, inevitably, women. I don’t consider him a womaniser, but when he once or twice recounted stories of “hot” women who had come on to him, I shut it down. “I’m not interested,” I told him. “Unless you’re actually involved with them, I don’t need proof that other women find you attractive.”

I love to travel. He rarely ventures beyond East London, where he was born and raised. I spend roughly three months a year in warmer climates; he struggles to leave his neighborhood unless it’s work-related. The two trips we’ve taken together were the only real holidays he has had. Even then, I was half surprised to see him waiting in the arrivals hall when we met up in New York, having arrived on different days. He visits Turkey once or twice a year for dental treatment and follow-ups, but that is the extent of his travel. A man who hates planning is hardly my ideal travel companion.

Check out today’s edition of Connections in The New York Times! What timing…

Then there are logistics. One of his adult children lives with him, and my flat has a revolving door of Airbnb guests. Our meetings often involve negotiating whether he can persuade his son to vacate for a few hours, or whether my guests are out. In two-and-a-half years, I have avoided meeting his friends or family and he has avoided introducing me to them. They know of my existence, as I crop up in conversation, but I have come to realise I will never put faces to names except via photos on his phone. He once described them as “a bunch of meatheads,” which I suspect is his way of implying that I am more intellectually inclined than his inner circle.

And yet, sexually, we align perfectly. We both enjoy giving pleasure and taking our time. He has a great body, and we are well matched, if you know what I mean. We immerse ourselves fully, but we can also laugh. He is tremendous fun in bed, and I am never less than satisfied after our Sunday afternoon sessions. He is a wonderful lover, though kissing is kept to a minimum. With other men, that might be a deal breaker. Here, I suspect it is one of the subtle ways we maintain distance.

He is also kind, and devoted to his family, despite a bad-boy past that included prison and brushes with the law. He speaks constantly and proudly of his two sons, both of whom are exceeding his expectations. He is not one for flowers or grand declarations. Instead, he shows up with practical gifts I did not know I needed. When he discovered my Japanese Global knives were blunt, he found a pocket-sized sharpener designed specifically for them and restored them in a few swipes.

When I nearly hyperventilated trying to inflate a special blow-up pillow designed to ease the strain on his knees and make things more comfortable for me when having sex, he arrived the following week with a rechargeable pump. When I complained about shoulder pain, he bought me a massage gun.

But what truly binds us are his stories—colourful, engaging, and endlessly entertaining. And he rarely repeats them twice. Think of a version of East Enders, with a touch of Peaky Blinders thrown in. With two erotic memoirs behind me, and a glamorous past including being a celebrity publicist for a decade, I’m not short on stories myself, yet in our case, I rarely bother bringing them out. Being with him feels like stepping outside my own life for a while, lying back and listen as the tales from his past emerge. I have close friends with whom I share my vulnerabilities and my triumphs. My situationship, by contrast, stays deliberately light. I let him do most of the talking.

This kind of relationship may not suit everyone. But the positive response I receive from women when I describe it suggests that many of those I know are intrigued, if not quietly a little jealous.

Perhaps that is the real point. When we strip away expectation and convention, what remains is choice. And for now, this is the choice that works for me.

---

Okay, your turn:

How old are you? Are you someone who is open to casual, non-conventional relationships? Non-monogamy? Or do you prefer things the old-fashioned way? Have you experimented with uncommitted relationships? What was your experience like? Answer as many or as few of these questions as you’d like! (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you.)

Big thanks to Suzanne Noble for sharing her story. And to all of you for reading, and commenting kindly and thoughtfully. Oldster has the best comments section around!

Thanks, too, to those who support Oldster with paid subscriptions. 🙏💝