QUESTION: I’ve been with my husband for 26 years and thought we’d done well to keep our sex life going.
But last week he told me that he’s no longer attracted to me, even though he loves me. He says it’s not my fault, that we’ve become family rather than lovers and there’s nothing I can do to change things. Surely that’s not true?
ANSWER: It’s hard to imagine a much crueller sentiment from the person you love. The sensation of being attractive is usually generated by the reassuring fact that other people are attracted to you.
So to be told by the person you love that you’re undesirable is to have a core component of your sex life switched off.
There’s nothing unusual about lulls of attraction in long-lived relationships. But if one partner flatly refuses to examine what’s gone wrong, there’s little hope of restoring your love life.
The problem here is your husband. The only way to resolve this is by discovering why he is so certain nothing can be done.
One obvious reason is that he finds someone else attractive and is justifying this by casting you as a platonic family member.
You need to ask him whether he wants a relationship with another woman - at least then you would know the problem is not about desire per se, but about desiring someone else.
If he denies any urge to stray, then other factors must be examined. Perhaps he’s suffering a general loss of libido, or erectile dysfunction.
And you have to want to get back under the duvet in a passionate fashion. Some are happy to bow out of an erotic life once they hit their 50s and 60s. But they should also recognise that their abdication may be devastating for the person they love.
Above all, they should recognise how much is placed in jeopardy by this unilateral decision - that the scorned spouse would then be justified in looking elsewhere for love.
Daily Mail