Sex advice: I don’t want to be celibate for rest of my life

My wife and I have been married for 20 years. She is my best friend and soulmate and I can’t imagine life without her, but we’ve been celibate for 10 years. She says that if it made me happy, she wouldn’t mind if I found another sexual partner. I don’t want to be celibate for the rest of my life, but should I take her at her word?

Most definitely not. After 20 years of marriage you must by now realise that women are contrary, emotional creatures. When a woman asks you “does my bum look big in this?” she doesn’t want to know the answer. She wants you to tell her that you love her, and her bottom, unconditionally and always will.

When she tells you gruffly that something “doesn’t matter”, you can be sure that it does. And when she tells you that “if it would make you happy” it wouldn’t bother her if you had sex with someone else, you can be sure that it would bother her — a lot.

If, as you say, your wife is your soulmate and you can’t imagine life without her, then try to imagine the situation in reverse. Wouldn’t you feel just a twinge of jealousy if she had sex with someone else? OK, now hold that feeling and magnify it by about 1,000 because “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, even if she was asking for it.

Though you seem to have considered how much you might lose if you take your wife at her word, you don’t appear to have considered how much you have to gain by resurrecting the celibate corpse that shares a bed with you both. Your dead sex life probably looks unappealing right now but given the kiss of life, it could be restored to health. You would first have to establish the precise cause of death. What was your sex life like at the beginning? Did something happen 10 years ago? Does your peaceful co-existence mask underlying problems? Basically, you can’t have reasonablesex if you don’t have a reasonable relationship, and when couples take an honest look at why they have chosen to kill the intimacy between them, there is usually a reasonable explanation. Being honest will stir emotions and bring unpleasant feelings to the surface, but this is simply the first electrical impulse shuddering through your corpse to demonstrate whether life is still present.

After the post-mortem, if you feel there is any hope, your relationship will need a spell in intensive care. This means you have to nurture it with some affection and attention. A long-dead sex life may also need a bit of physio.

Many relationship counsellors offer sex therapy and Sensate Focus, a form of psychosexual therapy which takes couples back to non-sexual touch to help them to rebuild trust and intimacy without the pressure to “perform”.

Though you may not realise it, yours is a peculiarly 21st-century problem. Extended human lifespan has increased “till death do us part” from a 20-year to a 60-year commitment and the divorce rate reflects this.

It is virtually impossible for a 24-year-old couple to predict whether they will still have anything in common at 44, let alone 64, and since monogamy and monotony are just a few syllables apart, it’s hardly surprising couples eventually stop turning the telly off when they havesex. And then they just stop having sex. But if you let sexual apathy destroy your relationship with someone you love, eventually just about anyone that expresses a sexual interest in you will seem more interesting and exciting than the interesting and exciting person you fell for 20 years ago.

This may now be an inevitability for you and your wife but remember lust is blind and the green-eyed monster usually has X-ray vision, your mobile bill and a great lawyer.

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