Q. My wife and I are in our mid-fifties and we haven’t had sex for more than ten years. She says her libido has all but disappeared. I want us to stay together — I love her, value our relationship and we have two children. I just don’t know what to do. Do I just have to accept that things will never change?
A. You are not the only ones not having sex. Research using Natsal-3 data (which collected data between 2010 and 2012) suggests that more than 33 per cent of people aged 55-64 who are in a relationship are sexually inactive. By the age of 70, 48.6 per cent of men and 65.7 per cent of women are not having any sex. Unlike you, however, only 33 per cent of men and 25 per cent of women who are not having sex say they are dissatisfied with their sex life.
The thing is, if two people are emotionally connected, the absence of intercourse isn’t necessarily a big deal — if, and only if, they are both comfortable with the situation. Couples who actually like each other can show their affection in myriad ways and, as people age, having less of a focus on intercourse can take a lot of pressure off. This is particularly true if one or both partners are dealing with age-related sexual dysfunction or discomfort.
While you don’t suggest that there is anything physically wrong with your wife, if her libido has disappeared, she should see a GP about hormone-replacement therapies. There are all sorts of options available as pills, patches, gels or rings. The fact that she has not done this suggests that she may have already given up, so professional help may be useful. It doesn’t matter if you see a couples counsellor or a sex therapist because they both work holistically. Counselling helps to remove the emotional barriers that have been blocking your sexual connection. Sex therapy restores your physical connection, which transforms your emotional relationship.
Any therapist will ask you both to think about what changed ten years ago. Did one of you experience illness, unemployment or bereavement? Did you have a child? Was one of you depressed? Did your wife go through an early menopause? Did it happen overnight, or was there a slow slide into sexual avoidance? Your therapist will also explore how you both responded when it became apparent that your sexual relationship had ceased. Did you avoid the issue and hope it would fix itself? Did you stop initiating because you didn’t want to be rejected? And how did the absence of sex make you both feel? Rejected? Angry? Anxious? Relieved?
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When you begin to untangle the origins of this issue, you will almost certainly find that sex wasn’t the original problem, but became a way of communicating dissatisfaction without using words. When one partner doesn’t want sex, and the other one keeps asking for it, being rejected becomes a way of vindicating their antipathy. It is obviously not a very helpful strategy because it turns sex into a battlefield. It is a relatively common, but utterly pattern of behaviour that leaves both partners feeling awful.
Although you hold your wife responsible for the absence of sex in your marriage, you are not necessarily blameless. What you need to do now — together — is to work out what the original issue was. A counsellor would really help you in this situation. Find one through Relate (relate.org.uk).
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