6 1GT Monday October 26 2020 | the times

life

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Many decades ago

I married a gentle,

clever, kind, loving,

sexy, funny, attractive

man. He is still all of

those things. To the

outside world we have the perfect

marriage, and, truthfully, it mostly

is. We are healthy and we love many

of the same things.

There was a brief encounter

with pornography, which I did not

appreciate, but we got over that and

he agreed to drop it. We can, and do,

talk about just about everything.

The grain of sand is sex. We are

in our sixties (I am older than him)

and I just don’t want it any longer,

but I know that he really does. It’s

all I can do to steel myself to a brief

and “emotionally faked on my side”

weekly encounter. This feels neither

good nor fair. But it simply is. What

can I do?

I love that he still feels passionately

for me, and in all but sex I feel

passionately for him. I love our life

together and feel completely faithful

to it. We have a great relationship

with our children.

I was brought up to see and

appreciate the value of occasional

(if necessary) compromise in a happy

marriage, but my body is literally

in revolt, making it harder and

harder to pretend any sort of

enthusiasm. I almost feel I am

performing a self-aggression on

myself to go through with this ordeal

once a week. I simply try to get it

over as quickly as possible.

There is no question of separation

or other people being involved, but

it deeply saddens me that there is

this huge change in myself. We have

talked about it and he said that,

although he still loves our sex life, he

would of course leave me alone if I

just could not continue. There was no

acrimony or blame or hurt feelings.

But I really do not feel that this is

right; a marriage needs intimacy and

closeness, and the last thing I want is

for him to seek this elsewhere.

Mary

A

NN

A

This situation is

clearly upsetting for

you on a number of

levels: the increasing

distress you feel when

having sex with your

husband, the sadness that you are

unable happily to meet his needs and

derive your own pleasure from doing

so, and the conflict that you feel now

that he has offered to “leave you

alone”. I can see that while your

inclination is to accept this offer,

you also fear where that might take

him — particularly because you have

made your feelings about his use of

pornography very clear.

Sex is an important part of a

relationship because it provides an

intimate and loving connection. Not

only can it give pleasure and decrease

the effects of stress, it has health and

mental health benefits, such as

reducing the risk of heart attacks,

increasing metabolism, and boosting

and maintaining wellbeing.

However, as you describe, when

sex isn’t pleasurable and feels like an

obligation it can impact negatively

on mood and wellbeing.

It sounds as if you have lost your

libido, and this isn’t unusual with age

(see Age UK at bit.ly/2Tisjfd). For

women this can become a problem

during and after menopause, when

vaginal elasticity and muscle tone

decreases, the walls of the vagina thin,

lubrication decreases and arousal

takes longer. This can not only

impact on libido, but also can make

intercourse painful and orgasm

difficult. Some women can develop

vaginismus, which is when the vagina

involuntarily tightens (see the Sexual

Advice Association at bit.ly/35u89Ey).

As a clinical psychologist my

approach is to look at the

psychological factors and underlying

issues that would cause you to have

lost your interest in sex. However, in

cases such as yours I work closely with

my medical colleagues to forensically

determine the root cause(s) because

they can be biological, psychological

or social, or a combination of all three.

Starting from a biological

perspective and given that it is not

unusual for libido to dwindle with

age, it is important for a GP to rule

out a number of factors. Given the

hormonal changes during and after

menopause, a blood test can check

your hormone levels, which can

be increased, if low, via hormone

replacement therapy, which may

or may not include testosterone

treatment. Blood tests can also

look at thyroid function because

an underactive thyroid might be

the culprit.

Your GP would also want to screen

for other medical conditions, such as

diabetes, cancer and heart disease,

and issues with mobility. It would

also be important to look at any

medications being taken because

some can also reduce libido,

including antidepressants,

blood pressure medications and

medicine taken for seizures. It

would also be important to

look at other contributing

factors, for example alcohol

intake, diet and weight,

exercise levels, smoking,

sleep and overall mood.

From my perspective as

a clinician I would want

to explore your ideas and

beliefs around sex at this

stage of your life; research

highlights that women

between 40 and 65 who

place greater importance

on sex are more likely

to stay sexually active

as they age.

We would discuss your

sexual history and explore

any experiences that may

have traumatised you

from childhood onwards:

trauma can surface at any

time if it has never been

acknowledged and

processed. We would look

at how you have experienced

sex within your marriage: do

I have a great marriage — but I just don’t

want to have sex any more

you feel you have ever had agency to

say what you enjoy, what you want,

or has it always been seen by you as a

duty as part of the marriage contract?

I would also want to understand

your feelings about yourself as a

woman and your body image; many

women lose confidence as they age

and find being looked at, touched

or even desired extremely repellant.

Your mood (including anxiety and

depression) would be explored

because this can impact significantly

on libido and any other areas of

life that may be causing you stress

and unhappiness.

Putting all this together, we would

have a holistic understanding of you

as a sexual being, then formulate a

plan. This plan, of course, depends on

what you decide, and my impression

is that you would be happy to say

goodbye to your sexual self. Then we

would need to consider the impact on

your marriage and how you would

manage any of the fallout you fear.

Clearly at this point there are two

people who have a stake in this

conversation, and it may be that you

and your husband need to have an

open and frank discussion with or

without professional support (see

the NHS at bit.ly/2J1tRbL).

While it is not my job to tell you

what to do, I do advise that you defer

a decision until everything I have

described above has been explored.

There are medical and therapeutic

treatments that can reverse loss of

libido; your GP can advise on this

(see the NHS at bit.ly/2Tif2mR).

I also advise you to look at

reframing sex. At present you

dread it and expect it to be an awful

experience. Of course that mindset

will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I suggest that you think about

how your sexual

relationship could

adapt to meet your

needs as well as your

husband’s —

perhaps start with

low-level, non-

threatening

intimacy and

build up slowly —

see the College

of Sexual and

Relationship

Therapists at

bit.ly/3jmMUd0.

For all of this

you will need

to include your

husband in the

conversation.

Perhaps revisit

how you started

your sexual

relationship: the

courtship, the dates,

the flirting, the fun. In

doing so you wouldn’t

close a chapter in your

life and relationship, but

slowly create the narrative

for a new one to begin.

If you would like

Professor Tanya Byron’s help,

email proftanyabyron@

thetimes.co.uk

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Revisit

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Ask Professor Tanya Byron

Stumbling on a

disused abbey,

William Cash was

so obsessed he

decided to risk his

house to buy it

W

ith many

looking

to trade

in their

cramped

London

houses or

city flats

to “fix up” a country wreck, this is a

cautionary tale about another disease

out there, which the English are

especially vulnerable to being struck

down by — restore-a-ruin addiction,

or ruin lust, as the Germans call it.

The boom in home working has

resulted in the return of property

wars to secure dream rural homes.

Ecclesiastical buildings are one

niche area where prices are still fairly

low. However, there is a flip side to

such tempting bargains, and it’s

not just the warning from the

Centre for Economics and Business

Research that after a brief house

price boom, values could fall by

14 per cent next year.

There is an emotional cost to falling

in love with a wreck, and “money pit”

denial can follow when taking on such

projects. I found this out to my cost

when (after inheriting the restore-a-

wreck addiction from my parents) I

fell in love — at first sight — with the

14th-century abbot’s house of Buildwas

Abbey on the banks of the Severn.

What was I thinking? I already

lived near by in a wonderful ancient

house, Upton Cressett, which our

family spent 50 years restoring.

In 1970 my parents fled London,

swapping Islington for an overgrown

Elizabethan wreck in Shropshire. I can

still recall the foetid smell of pigs and

chickens as I strolled around the dusty

panelled rooms on our first visit to

Shropshire on a sultry day in June.

There were no proper doors and no

key. A stack of twisted 16th-century

brick chimneys had tumbled down.

You just walked in. It was two years

before my father — at the time a

30-year-old Westminster lawyer —

dared to tell his parents. “They’d

have thought it was an irresponsible

gamble,” he said.

More than four decades later I

became obsessed with the mad dream

of taking on the 12th-century Buildwas

abbot’s house, thinking I’d turn it

into a wedding/holiday-let property.

This was a house I didn’t need,

couldn’t afford to buy and certainly

couldn’t afford to renovate. Yet I

still somehow scraped together

enough for the deposit (10 per cent)

and nearly blindly signed away my

house to a bank specialising in high-

interest “bridging loans”.

For a year. Then it was the

receivers. “I’ll find an investor,” I said

optimistically. The next thing I knew

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I fell for