Few people who know us as a couple realise that, for most of our long marriage, we have had no intimacy whatsoever; we have slept apart and existed apart for most of those years. If we touch in passing, it is clumsiness, not affection.
It didn’t start well. Almost as soon as the wedding service was over your libido, which was never that high, plummeted. I rationalised it in so many ways over the years: it must be my fault somehow (no), illness (all tests proved negative), the stresses of a demanding job (though mine was infinitely more stressful than yours). I could not have children, so that was never an issue. Had it been one, I might have taken a different course, but I will never know.
Eventually, when we were comfortably retired and financially secure, I ran out of excuses. With great difficulty, I got you to accept couples therapy. It was a disaster. You felt no attraction to me, had not felt any for years, but you saw no reason to think any more deeply than that.
Things did change then: my life now is almost totally outside our marriage, but the damage to me has been immense. I can’t envisage an intimate life again: this one hurt too much. I feel demeaned as a woman; my own libido has now disappeared, crushed by years of rejection. I even flinch when a man hugs or kisses me in a nonsexual way, and it unnerves me for days.
So why do I let it continue? Good question. Because I do at least have a good social life and no financial worries, which many women my age lack. Because I fear similar failure again. I can now never be the woman I might have been: the damage is done.
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