I thought the OP specified “sexless.”
I came in to nominate Stabler and Benson - to the point that Stabler’s wife sometimes seems to comes second to Benson in his priorities.
Also:
Lightman and Foster (Lie to Me)
McNulty and Bunk (The Wire)
Hugo and Charlie (Lost)
I don’t know if it makes sense to include TV siblings as a favourite “sexless love affair”, considering that there’s a lot of overlap between a tight-knit sibling relationship and a marriage once you take out the sex/romance component (Frasier and Niles? Jan and Marsha? Really???)
Only one I can think of adding:
Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation.
John Steed and Emma Peel in the Avengers.
What’s sad is that my seventy-five-year-old father would know exactly who they were.
I wouldn’t count Mal & Zoe. The only person who ever doubted that Zoe loved Wash best was Wash, and said doubts were born more of his insecurities than anything else. When the Russian-sounding fellow had Mal & Wash captive and was taunting Zoe by telling her that she could only have one back, she didn’t even let him finish the sentence before saying she’d take her husband.
Unlike Eliot Stabler’s wife (who by the way is quite as comely as Benson), Wash never had any real need to fear that his spouse’s true love was outside the marriage.
I honestly don’t know if they qualify. That is, certainly they are emotionally married, but the it’s always ambiguous whether they have sex. I’m in the minority who says the answer is never, hardly ever, or only for a brief time around the middle of their relationship.
Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Man loved her so much that he would rather be stuck on the earth forever as a ghost just so he could be near her for bit longer.
You seem to be implying that JD has genitalia. That seems unlikely.
Remington Steele and Laura Holt.
I forgot one!
Mary and Marshal (In Plain Sight)
Shawn and Gus from Psyche.
Kevin and Winnie.
Then there’s that closet furry, Christopher Robin.
Did Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Pepper Potts ever have sex? I’m pretty sure they didn’t in the movie, but there’s a lot of comic-book history there, too.
As others have mentioned:
Holmes and Watson
Kirk and Spock
J.D. and Turk
Chandler and Joey
Frodo and Sam
I’ll add:
Aragorn and Arwen (at least until they got married)
Beren and Luthien (ditto)
Gilgamesh and Enkidu
Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
Wooster and Jeeves
Felix and Oscar
Frank and Barney
I dunno, Zoe planned to come back, she knew Mal could hang till she did, Wash, not so much. I always thought they missed the chance for some great post dialogue there.
Z-did you find what you were looking for out there?
W-I think so. I know you love me, but you left Mal behind cuz you were sure he hold out till we got back, but maybe I couldn’t, didn’t you?
Z-There is that
W-Good call.
Hot monkey boom boom ensures
While she definitely planned to save them both if she could, there’s no way she’d be certain she’d be able to successfully rescue Mal. Maybe Niska’s security would be better than them. Maybe Mal would already be dead by then. She faced a choice where she could definitely rescue one of them, and had only a chance of saving the other. She was willing to take the chance with Mal, but not with Wash. Plus, the fact that she made her decision so easily: That was an emotionally-motivated decision, not just a logical one.
BTW, I would count Mal and Zoe. They obviously loved each other very much. But it was a platonic brother-sister type relationship.
OTOH, Mal was in love with Inara, and I have no doubt that had Firefly been longer-lived, sexy tiems would have eventually ensued.
Tony and Ziva (NCIS)
Bert and Ernie
No argument from me, I just always felt that scene had more nuances to it.
FWIW, I have zero trouble believing in 2 people going though a major war experience and coming out with no sexual attraction but still being that commited, albeit maybe not quite as hot as Zoe was.