I’m in a sexless marriage and may’t bear in mind the final time we made love. It’s taboo to confess however I’m blissful about it: ANNIKI SOMMERVILLE

My partner Paul and I are sitting on the sofa watching a couple passionately make love on a kitchen counter.

It’s that classic unrealistic kind of sex that you see only on TV. Spontaneous. Crazy. Like the sex you have in the heady days of meeting someone.

Paul and I eat snacks and pick up our phones now and then to check emails. Neither of us is even mildly excited by what’s on screen or, if we are, it doesn’t translate into any form of action. Frankly, we might as well be watching the Antiques Roadshow.

And the reality is, it’s not just steamy sex that’s off the menu for us nowadays, but all sex. Yes, we’re one of the 28 per cent of all couples who, according to a recent Relate survey, say they’re in a ‘sexless marriage’.

You officially hit this milestone when you have sex less than ten times a year. So, in fact, we’re even worse than ‘sexless’. We’re in the 7 per cent who haven’t had sex at all in the past 12 months. It could be longer. I’ve stopped counting.

Yet I’d argue that my relationship with my partner is good. Marriage counsellors might gasp, but I’m here as proof that it is indeed possible to be happy in a sexless union.

Paul and I have been together for 27 years – which no doubt has something to do with the attraction wearing off.

We met in a sweaty nightclub in east London back in the hedonistic 1990s. I was 25 and in a relationship that was going pear-shaped. The connection between Paul and me was instantaneous. I remember kissing for hours. I was stalker-ish in my pursuit of him, and would purposefully walk around the area where he lived, hoping to ‘bump’ into him.

Once we started ‘going out’, he tried to break up with me several times, but I was like a dog with a bone. I now realise I was someone who invested all of my emotional energy into relationships because it was the only thing in my life that gave me purpose. I was what you’d call ‘classically co-dependent’.

Paul was hard to pin down back then, and our relationship was almost purely sex-based. We’d meet up and snog for hours, or go back to his place and fall drunkenly into bed. Pubs and gigs were our natural habitat – and yes it was a fun time with lots of sex but also hugs, kisses and hand-holding.

At that point, I knew he was seeing other people and I had a couple of flings, too – but by the time I left university and entered the world of work, we decided to become exclusive.

I travelled a lot in my market research job, and we had plenty of adventures exploring cities together. We had no responsibilities (apart from work), and slowly the other people began to fall away and we dedicated all our attention to one another.

After two years we moved in together because that’s what couples do. Before we knew it, seven years had passed and the sex – while not yet non-existent – was on the wane.

I fully believe this was to be expected. I don’t know any couples who are as passionate with one another now as they were in those first few months. I remember my mum telling me it was normal, especially as a couple approached the seven-year mark – it wasn’t called the ‘seven-year itch’ for nothing.

Work was overwhelming, and I was being promoted to a senior position. I felt tired and often so stressed that sex was the last thing on my mind. Paul didn’t seem interested either. He was navigating his own challenging work times, kicking off a career in corporate catering.

‘We should try to have sex more often,’ I would sometimes say when I was a bit drunk.

‘Yes, we should,’ he would reply, but neither of us made any effort. And it did feel like an effort rather than the spontaneous fun we’d had before.

A couple of times I tried to initiate it and was rejected, not for any ‘big reason’, but just that we were both tired. Things felt familiar and comfortable, and despite what you see on TV, it’s rare that you’re suddenly overcome with desire when you’re settled.

Then I hit my mid-30s and became obsessed with having a baby. Paul was on board, too, so we started having sex regularly again – only the passion was still lacking. Instead it was perfunctory and soul-destroying.

Nobody tells you how joyless it is to make love purely to get pregnant, that deeply unsexy mixture of discipline, desperation and disappointment.

I was using ovulation kits. A little smile would pop up when you ovulated and needed to have sex. At which point I’d go downstairs and summon my partner and yet again we’d go through the boring, functional motions. It was the opposite of tear-our-clothes-off lust.

Trying to get pregnant wasn’t working either. After 18 months of having sex 15-20 times a month, we decided to move on to IVF. While Paul wanted to be a dad, he wasn’t as preoccupied as I was and, looking back, I can see how much my fixation on motherhood damaged our relationship. It was all I could think about and, for a while, we drifted apart.

I suffered three miscarriages and felt like my body had become my enemy. Then, finally at 40, we had our first daughter. We went on to have another daughter when I was 46, also with fertility treatment.

We adore our children and wouldn’t be without them, but it’s fair to say that parenthood became the final nail-in-the-coffin of our sex life. Intimacy began to feel like more of a chore than a treat.

Talk to any parent and they will tell you they feel drained and guilty most of the time. When you’re tending to small children and navigating work… well, sex moves down the list of priorities.

To be honest, I’m surprised that any parents have sex any more. I also suspect that many say they are doing it and they aren’t – it’s still taboo to say that your relationship is sexless.

I’m now 51, Paul is 60 and the kids are 11 and five. My life is purely focused on raising them, working, staying fit and healthy, and navigating the menopause.

So no, we don’t have sex any more. Honestly, I don’t miss the act itself. I don’t even do the solo thing very often (if you catch my drift). My dwindling libido seems to have finally – thanks to depleted hormones – hit the buffers.

We have talked about having an open relationship, but neither of us is particularly interested in this option. In fact, Paul has said this is something he isn’t interested in at all.

When I talk to friends about it, they tend to spend the first ten minutes of the conversation complaining about their partner and how they don’t live up to their expectations.

Then the not-having-sex thing is brought up and these are the types of things they say: ‘I don’t fancy him any more.’ 

‘I actually feel like I hate him at times.’

‘I just wish I could be more loving but I’m so angry all the time.’

Those who are still having sex have to schedule it in their diaries or it doesn’t happen. The phrase ‘sexless marriage’ is one of the most consistent searches on Google and has been since 2004.

And yet there is much happiness and satisfaction in my relationship. In my childhood I experienced a lot of instability at times – mainly because I was living in different places and wasn’t always sure what was going on, and I realise that I’ve built something solid with Paul.

We have similar values in terms of the way we raise the girls. We’re friends. We make one another laugh. We are team-mates – I often visualise us rowing a boat together through ever-changing rapids, trying not to fall out the side.

Why, if I love him – and I do – do I not yearn for the physical side?

I don’t love the way I look. I feel like I’ve gained weight. I’d argue that Paul looks really good and often get compliments from friends who say he has aged well. He will compliment me if I’ve made an effort and am going out, but we rarely have date nights these days.

Phones and technology haven’t helped either. It isn’t unusual for us to sit in bed and scroll our phones. This might have been the time when we would have cuddled instead.

Then there’s the pressure presented by social media and TV: the fact that it seems as if everyone else is doing it and we’re not.

It’s not like we haven’t tried to spice up our sex life. We recently did one of renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel’s online courses together to try to create more desire.

It was a series of eight pre-recorded sessions that took us a couple of weeks to complete. I wanted to do it, as I felt we needed to address the fact that we rarely had sex any more.

It did raise some helpful conversations between us. I hadn’t quite realised the impact it was having on Paul.

‘I feel like we’ve lost the intimacy we used to have,’ he said. It made me feel guilty, as he is perfect in many ways and I felt sad that we couldn’t seem to sort it out between us.

It obviously feels isolating for him, as it isn’t something his male friends talk about (even if they’re experiencing the same, or similar, thing). In fact, I have tried to tell Paul that, just because they’re not talking about it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in their own relationships.

Interestingly, what he missed – just like me – was not so much the sex but the physical affection we used to show for one another.

Since the course, we’ve tried to be more affectionate and tactile, but it doesn’t always feel spontaneous or natural.

I have friends who force themselves to have sex with partners even when they don’t want to.

For me, this mirrors what happened when we were trying to have children, which ultimately made us desire one another less rather than more.

One thing that doing the course taught me is that there are no quick fixes. We both need to prioritise one another and spend more time communicating. We also need to just break this no-sex habit and get on with it.

So life carries on. We watch TV together. Take the kids to activities and playdates. We each have our own circle of friends.

From the outside we look like every other normal couple. (We’re obviously older than many parents but in London that’s not particularly unusual). And we’re happy. We laugh a lot and are silly together. We are a team and we support one another when things get tricky or the children are being challenging.

Will we have sex? Who knows? It might happen or it might not. I know that it’s unlikely when we’re in the ‘rush hour’ of parenting and work. That it might take time.

But I also feel it’s not the benchmark of a great relationship. It still feels like there might be a sparkle there and so it doesn’t feel like we are entirely in the friendship zone.

‘How will your partner feel when he reads your article?’ a close friend asked me this week when I revealed I was writing about the fact we didn’t have sex.

‘I hope he’ll feel that I love him and want to make things work,’ I said. ‘And realise that this isn’t something unusual. It’s just that we’re the ones talking about it rather than pretending it’s not happening.’

My friend looked at me. ‘It’s funny,’ she replied, ‘I didn’t want to mention it but we haven’t had sex for months either.’ I wasn’t surprised.

Whatever the reason – lack of desire, tiredness, stress, age, familiarity… it’s happening to many couples.

I would love to break the taboo and talk about it more openly. It’s only through bringing it out into the light that we can remove the stigma and move forward.