‘Sex to me is like having anchovies — yeah, I suppose I could, but I’d really rather not.’

Chris Summers was born in South Philly and raised by her grandmother and her mother. She knew she was supposed to get married, but she never felt exactly like the people around her.

The main sticking point was sex: she didn’t want to have it, yet she still longed for romantic companionship.

”I really crave connection and spending time with somebody. I would be happy to spend a romantic weekend where we didn’t have to sleep together,” Summers, 73, said. ”We would stay up talking and drinking tea and drawing and reading to each other."

Summers married Fred, who The Inquirer is referring to by his first name to protect his privacy, in 1975. The two had sex throughout their marriage, because Summers figured that was what a wife was supposed to do, but she never cared about it. They divorced in 1980 after Fred had a series of affairs, she said.

She continued to date men, all the while wondering if she might be a lesbian. Above all, she was attracted to people’s minds; she wanted a connection that had nothing to do with the “groping, kissing, fumbling, and activity that led to orgasms,” as she described it.

“At that time, there was no vocabulary for that. There was no saying: Sex does not interest me at all. Sex is not part of my reality,” she said. It wasn’t until the 2010s that she began reading about asexuality — the term for people who do not experience sexual attraction.

About 1.7% of lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults identify as asexual, according to the Williams Institute, a research center focused on sexual orientation and gender identity at UCLA. The vast majority are young, under 27; a Williams Institute scholar noted that asexuality is an “emerging identity,” and probably likely to become more widespread in the future.

Summers, who describes herself as neuroatypical, now lives with her two cats in Wissahickon. She has posted personal ads on Craigslist and forums for asexual people, but at this point has mostly resigned herself to being alone.

The following, as told to Zoe Greenberg, has been edited for length and clarity.

On meeting her husband

I put an ad in the personals in 1972. I was definitely hoping for romance, but also I was just looking for somebody to hang out and smoke dope with. Fred answered the ad, and he showed up at my house on his Honda 350 motorcycle. He was kind of like my knight in shining armor. We dated for a few months, and then I moved in with him.

On a less-than-romantic proposal

There was no real romance involved in getting married. We were living in West Philly, and I was setting the table for dinner. He came into the kitchen and said, “What do you think about getting married?” I hadn’t really thought about it at the time, and I just said, “Yeah, okay, that’s a cool idea.” I didn’t realize that was a proposal. He said, “I’ll call my parents and let them know we’re going to get married.” I thought, This is what it’s like?

Fred’s a Libra, and he likes to be doing what other people are doing. Friends and people in our age group were getting married. I guess he thought, Everybody else is doing this. So this should be something that we’re doing.

On her mother offering her husband-to-be cash to marry her

Fred and I had been married for several months, and we were having dinner one night. I was complaining about my mother; I always had a troubled relationship with her.

He said, “Did you know that your mother offered me money to marry you?” I thought he was kidding. I said, “What did she offer?” He said, “$1,000.” I said, “Did you take it?” And he said, “Of course not.”

I was horrified. I was raised by my mother to think I better get married, because that way I would have somebody to take care of me. She didn’t believe I could navigate life on my own. I think that on some level, my mother meant well. She thought, I’m going to offer a guy money to marry my daughter, and that way I’ll feel that I’ve done my part.

On her husband’s (“pedestrian”) fantasies and her evolving sexuality

Fred was into fantasizing. One of his favorites was: you work in a massage parlor, and you’re really a hooker. I like playing, and I like fantasy and dressing up, and I just thought that was so pedestrian. I mean, if he had said, “Let’s dress up like aliens,” I would have thought, This could be fun.

I still thought that it was quite possible that I was a lesbian. I liked looking at women, I found women attractive. When I was in 8th grade, I had a serious crush on my best friend. But in a working-class, blue-collar family, it was not something that you talked about.

On her husband’s infidelities

I thought we were happy. But Fred was a philanderer. He always had a little something on the side, and one of his big things that he really enjoyed doing was confessing his sins later.

For our first wedding anniversary, we saved money so we could take our honeymoon, and we went all the way up through the Eastern Seaboard.

We were at a lovely restaurant having a nice meal. Fred leaned over and said, “Um, there’s something I have to tell you.” I thought, Oh, God, no.

I knew he was going to confess something, and he told me that he had been having an affair with the woman who was our matron of honor. I said, “Why did you have to tell me this on our wedding anniversary?”

On life after divorce and discovering asexuality

I initiated the divorce in 1980 because I was tired of Fred not being faithful. I made sure that he was served at work with the divorce papers, to embarrass him.

After that, I was in California and I was looking for a partner. But I was not looking for somebody to sleep with. Sex to me is like having anchovies — yeah, I suppose I could, but I’d really rather not.

I was always attracted to people who were very intelligent and on the quirky side. For me, it was never about: I want to get in their pants. It was more like, I want to get in their brain.

In the last 10 years, I was trying to figure out, what is different about me? I started seeing things about asexuality. It made me feel like less of a freak, realizing: Okay, this me. This is where I fit.

On searching for love but not sex

I’d always been homesick for Philadelphia, and returned in 2015.

At one point I was part of a now-defunct Meetup group for alternative sexualities. I was an old lady in the midst of these 20 and 30-year-olds. They were very dear, they were very accepting. But I was not really considered dating material due to my age.

Since I’ve been back, I have not really had much of a romantic life. I dated a few guys, a few women. But when you say “I really don’t want to have sex with you” — there’s no nice way to say that.

This story is part of a series about life partners across the Philadelphia area. See other stories in the series here and here.

If you want to share your story about who you’re navigating life with romantically or otherwise, write to lifepartners@inquirer.com. We won’t publish anything without speaking to you first.