No Sex in Your Marriage? It May Be More Common Than You Know

According to a recent report, it seems that it is very common for wives and mothers to ‘shut up shop’ and stop having sex with their partners if their family is complete, or for the men to do the same for lack of libido. Another reason for lack of sex could be a health problem that affect the sex drive or organs, like a hysteroctomy in women, or prostrate cancer surgery in men. For the first reason for no sex, I guess if the primary reason the couple got married was for children, then it makes sense?

The report goes on to detail the marriage of three couples who have not had sex for varying amounts of time, between a year and eight years. If you ask me, I'll say the first two marriages are in trouble if the partner who lacks the desire or motivation for sex does not get some rest or therapy and work with their partners to rekindle their sex lives. The last couple are in their sixties and the woman it seems has already come to terms with a sexless marriage - more like a companionship arrangement.



Read their stories

Charlotte and Chris Everiss - no sex for more than two years

Most evenings, with their little girl safely tucked up in bed, Charlotte and Chris Everiss enjoy a kiss and a cuddle on the sofa in front of the television.

Happily married for a decade, the couple cannot bear to even imagine their lives without one another. Yet, astonishingly, they haven’t made love for more than two years.

Both insist that their marriage, which followed a two-year courtship after meeting on a dating website, is stronger than most. It’s just that sex, they say, is not important to their happiness.

‘We still turn each other on but we don’t want to take it any further,’ says Charlotte. ‘We don’t have the time or the energy. ‘I find it hard switching off knowing that our four-year-old, Addison, is in the next bedroom. I think if Chris really missed sex he would tell me, or I’d catch him watching porn on the internet as a substitute. But he doesn’t seem to want to go back to having sex, either. We sound like Darby and Joan, I know - even though I’m only 34 and Chris is 40 - but that, to us, is contentment.'

Three years ago, when their daughter was 18 months old, Charlotte almost died after an ectopic pregnancy resulted in her having a partial hysterectomy during a six-hour operation. Since then, she and Chris have made love only once, around ten months after her loss, an encounter from which she derived no pleasure.

Chris is understanding about her aversion to sex. ‘It can be hard knowing that our cuddles will never lead to anything more intimate,’ he says. ‘Charlotte is a gorgeous woman and I’m still very attracted to her, but she nearly died and I count my blessings every day that she’s even still here.’

‘I have an hour-long commute at either end of my working day so, to be honest, most of the time I’m too tired for sex anyway.’

Chris, a digital marketing manager, says he doesn’t discuss with friends the absence of sex from his marriage, but believes it is more common than people admit.

‘I don’t know that we’re all that different from other couples, we’re just more open about it,’ he says.

In all other respects, the Everisses have an enviable lifestyle. They live in a beautiful, four-bedroom detached home, have a Mini Cooper convertible and a VW Golf parked on the driveway, and enjoy several foreign holidays a year.

Chris firmly believes that marriage is a lifelong commitment and says that walking out on his family has never crossed his mind.

‘It’s not as if we just stopped having sex because we stopped loving one another, there are reasons,’ says Chris. ‘I don’t take it personally, and my wife and daughter mean far too much to me to look elsewhere for sex. Of course, men have their needs, but I think I’m better able to control my urges than some - I distract myself with hobbies, like doing up old cars. However, I am hopeful that in the future, when Charlotte and I both feel better in ourselves, our sex life will resume.’

Charlotte is less optimistic.

‘Sex was an important part of our relationship in the early days. Like most new couples we had lots of it and it was good,’ she says. I do feel guilty knowing that Chris sometimes gets aroused when we snuggle up together so, out of wifely duty, I’ve tried to let him make love to me a couple of times in the past three years. The one time we went all the way, after we’d shared a bottle of wine one Friday night, it wasn’t at all enjoyable for me. It wasn’t painful, but I lay there thinking: “How quickly can we get this over with? I think Chris probably sensed that, which is not great, but maybe he was just relieved it was happening at all.’

Tracey and Julian Dowler - no sex over a year

Tracey Dowler, 42,spent several months worrying that husband Julian, 55, didn’t want to make love to her because he was attracted to other women. But she has now accepted that the stress of his demanding job as director of a motor mechanical and haulage company is the reason they no longer have sex.

And, while she admits there have been times when she has felt like walking out of their immaculate, three-bedroom semi-detached home in Rugby, Warwickshire, over the lack of intimacy, Tracey values other aspects of their marriage too highly.

‘We got married in 2007 after only knowing each other for six months, so it was pretty whirlwind,’ says Tracey, a wedding fair organiser. ‘When we were dating, we’d have sex up to three times a night, which was wonderful, but after the wedding we only made love once or twice a week. We started going months between encounters and now we haven’t made love for well over a year.’

Tracey still feels very attracted to her husband, and he says the same of her. The couple are loving in other ways, holding hands when they go out together, kissing one another goodnight before going to sleep and saying “I love you” at the end of telephone conversations.

But Julian has 40 employees under him and says his job has become far more demanding in the years since their wedding. He gets up at 4am to start work at 5am, puts in a 12-hour day and, as he is on 24-hour call, his phone often rings several times during the night with drivers needing advice.

Weekends are no more relaxing as Julian also runs a photography business, which he is hoping will take off enough for him to concentrate on it full time.

They are both keen to have a family together. They’ve had IVF and plan to have another round of it in August.

‘We talk about rekindling our love life but never seem to get around to it,’ says Julian. ‘We had a weekend away at a country hotel a couple of weeks ago and I was so exhausted I spent most of the time asleep.’

Julian regards Tracey as his best friend and soulmate - a fact common, it seems, to many couples enduring sexless marriages - and believes that once he retires they will be able to rekindle some semblance of romance.

Rhae and Keith Elliot - no sex for more than eight years

Rhae and Keith Elliott, from Cambridgeshire, have been married for 44 years but have not been intimate for more than eight years.

When Rhae was 56 and Keith 67, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that affected his sexual function and, although his GP said Viagra may help, Keith never pursued it.

‘To be honest, I felt embarrassed discussing it with my female doctor and couldn’t wait to get out of the surgery and forget about it,’ recalls Keith, now 75, a retired senior foundry manager. ‘Even before the prostate cancer, we’d go weeks without sex. For me it was never the most important thing in the world, and I’d say the same for Rhae.

‘I don’t feel pressured to try because Rhae doesn’t put me under any pressure. For us, sex really is not the be-all and end-all of married life.’

Rhae has found the absence of sex in their marriage more difficult to come to terms with.

‘I’m 64 now and have been celibate for eight years,’ she says. ‘During the first couple of years, I’d get very upset when Keith rejected my advances.

‘He’d say: “I’m sure we’ll get back to doing it eventually”.

‘Then in 2007, we were living in France, renovating a house, when I raised the subject of sex and Keith said “Rhae, I don’t want to do it any more, can we stop talking about it?”

‘I had to decide then whether our relationship was more important to me than my sex life. And it is.

‘I have friends who sleep apart from their husbands and some don’t even like them very much, but Keith and I are really close.

'I don't worry that Chris will stray if I don't make love to him - he's too much of a gentleman'

‘We’ve had some wonderful trips to China, Australia, America, Canada and Fiji. We go on fishing trips together and love gardening - we’re great companions.’

The Elliotts have a grown-up daughter and Rhae, a retired chief administrator, says the irony is not lost on her that, in her younger years as a working mother, she often felt too tired and stressed to fulfil her husband’s desires.

‘But we’ve gone without sex for so long now, I wouldn’t want Keith to try Viagra,’ she says. ‘Our relationship has morphed into companionship, and I think to have sex now would be embarrassing.

‘We’re used to seeing one another naked, when we undress or are in the bath, but if Keith made advances now it would be like getting intimate with my brother, or best friend. Just not right, somehow.’