Meet the married couples who never have sex but insist they’re happy
When married couples live like brother and sister. No sex for years and
they insist they are happy. Are they deluded – or just honest? Read and
tell us what you think…
Most evenings, with their little girl safely tucked up in bed, Charlotte
and Chris Everiss (pictured right) 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.’
Charlotte and Chris, it seems, aren’t the only ones whose sex life
has dwindled to nothing. A recent survey estimated that 15 to 20 per
cent of couples have sexless relationships – defined by experts as
making love fewer than ten times a year – while around 5 per cent go
without altogether.
Actress Helen Mirren spoke for many of these couples earlier this
year when she said: ‘I think the power of partnership in marriage is
under-recognised in our society. That’s what makes marriages work, not
sex.’
In a sex-obsessed society, where everyone – young, old, male and
female – seems to be boasting of how many times a week they ‘do it’, it
may come as a relief to many that couples like Charlotte and Chris are
happy to admit that sex plays no part in their marriages at all.
Most couples who find themselves at a point where sexual intimacy has
died tend to confide their predicament to no one at all. But today
three brave couples reveal to Femail how they have learned to live
contented lives without sex.
You don’t need a degree in psychology to work out why Charlotte, a
social media consultant from Great Wyrley, Staffordshire – who in the
early years of her marriage made love to her husband three times a week –
may have problems surrounding sex.
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.
Tracey Dowler, 42, (pictured above with husband) 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.
Once a couple gets out of the habit of having sex, however, this can be easier said than done.
‘Couples who don’t make love start living like brother and sister or
friends and get out of the habit of seeing one another in a sexual way,’
says Relate counsellor Paula Hall.
‘If both partners want to reintroduce sex, we encourage them to do so
slowly, learning how to be sensual with each other and gradually
building up to intercourse.’
