Sex File: His moods are a total turnoff 

When two people have spent decades living in close proximity, they become experts at reading each other's behaviour and reacting accordingly.

My 60-something husband has become increasingly anxious and irritable, which is an incredible turn-off. 

He thinks having more sex would help us feel closer, and he might be right, but his attitude to life in general is putting me off. I'm not sure how to break the stalemate. If I protest about his moods, they only get worse.

Something is clearly bothering your husband. There may be an obvious reason, or it may just be the existential angst that comes with turning 60. Men in their 60s worry about a million things: ageing, illness, impotence, irrelevance, isolation, money and, ultimately, the wooden overcoat. While it is hard to remain supportive of someone who has a permanently negative outlook, telling him that his moods are getting you down and turning you off is just about the worst way to help. It makes him responsible for your feelings at a time when he is struggling to cope with his own.

When two people have spent decades living in close proximity, they become experts at reading each other's behaviour and reacting accordingly. Even if you don't criticise your husband directly, the absence of a jolly morning greeting, slightly stilted conversation, avoiding affectionate touch or pretending to be asleep to rule out sex will give everything away anyway.

It's a common mistake to believe that if you feel less attracted to your partner, they are the one who needs to change. Relationships don't work like that. How you feel and behave directly influences how your husband feels and behaves, and vice versa. You mirror each other, and when things go wrong, you must look at the dynamic. Occasionally, one person is entirely to blame, but more often than not, both partners have played their part.

Although you describe your situation as a stalemate, it's possible that your withdrawal from sex might be contributing to a negative feedback loop. If it makes your husband feel even more anxious, that will make him more irritable, which makes you even less attracted to him.

Your husband believes that sex and intimacy might help you feel closer. Although you acknowledge that he might be right, you can't bring yourself to try. You need to listen to your instinct. Having sex does release oxytocin (the bonding hormone) and endorphins (natural mood elevators), which can temporarily reduce anxiety, stress and feelings of emotional distance, but it won't fix the core emotional disconnect between the two of you.

If you both want to repair your relationship, you need to be honest about what is really going on. You also need to think about what you want from the rest of your lives. The transition from middle age to old age throws up all sorts of challenges but it can be an enormous opportunity for growth. If you fundamentally care about each other, you should do everything you can to invest in your marriage. Try therapy. Try travel. Try tantra (and I don't mean tantric sex). Try anything that will help you to find your way back to each other. And if you think you would be happier apart, be honest about that too. Doing nothing is the worst option because it means you will spend the last 25 years of your lives in an unhappy marriage, and you both deserve better than that.

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