BROOKE SHIELDS: I did not lose my virginity till age 22 – and by no means felt capable of indulge my urge for food for intercourse. Now, from thinning hair to stomach fats, my physique’s altering…

My husband Chris and I have been married for 23 years and together for 26, unusual enough in Hollywood for people to wonder why we’ve lasted this long.

Of course, I had a starter marriage that quickly ended. My mom had been a hugely controlling force in my life, and when I married my first husband, [the tennis champion] Andre Agassi, I walked into another controlling, rigid relationship, and for a while I did whatever he said.

One of the reasons I’d married him was that I liked being in a relationship with someone more famous than I was. After a lifetime of always being the focus, it was a relief to be able to slink into the background a bit.

I was still married to Andre when I met Chris in 1999, at the gym on the Warner Bros lot. We became friendly because we’d see each other at that gym from time to time – I was working on the TV sitcom Suddenly Susan, he was writing for a show on the lot – but we didn’t start to date until the following year, after my divorce.

At the time, I was broken. My marriage had ended, my best friend had just died and my father had been diagnosed with cancer. It felt like Chris swooped in and folded me into his arms. That he saved me. I’ve always been a sucker for romance, and I liked the whole knight-in-shining-armour approach.

But, let’s roll forward now to the present . . . Chris has been working out at a boxing gym recently, and he looks incredible. Women are acting differently toward him, and I can see it. And he loves it! I can see that, too.

At the same time, I’m going through all the bodily s*** that comes with ageing as a woman – the thinning hair and the peach fuzz and the brand-new belly fat and vaginal dryness and the diminishing sex drive – and in my natural state, I feel less appealing to him than I ever did before.

As a young woman, I had a fervent sex drive, but never felt like I could indulge that appetite in the way I wanted to, writes Brooke

Brooke with husband Chris Henchy. ‘Chris has been working out at a boxing gym recently, and he looks incredible,’ she writes

It makes you think, ‘Oh, this is how it happens. Men can still have children, so they’re just as valuable to younger women, even at 60.’

But at my age, women obviously can’t. A huge part of our appeal has been our ability to bear offspring, and once that’s gone, a huge part of our currency to men is gone, too. Mostly my response to that is a big ‘get over yourself’. The hitch is that when I want to attract Chris, it’s down to me to find ways to be sexy. And I resent that, too.

I resent getting to a place where I’m expected to do more work to keep a man’s attention. Haven’t I worked hard enough? And yet I feel the pressure to keep it all up, to maintain his gaze, lest he find someone ‘better’ (translation: younger).

As the mother of two daughters just coming of age, I’ve been forced to re-examine my past. Why, I had to ask myself, was I such a good girl, always so measured?

It’s not a point of pride for me, quite honestly. I wish I had more of a past. More rebellion. More sex.

I’ve tried to encourage my two girls to see their early 20s as a prime time for experiencing and experimenting. I’m not bohemian about it, but I am realistic.

To be honest, I’ve surprised myself a bit, because I find myself saying things to them that I never even thought of for myself until ten years ago. Things like, ‘Your pleasure is important, too.’

Even now, at 59, I’m still pretty prudish when I talk about sex because it’s hard-coded in my cells to be ashamed, but I don’t want that for my daughters.

‘Don’t give it away freely,’ is what I say. ‘But if you’re in a relationship that has mutual respect and admiration, celebrate that. I never had that when I was younger, and I really wish I did.’

As a young woman, I had a fervent sex drive, but never felt like I could indulge that appetite in the way I wanted to.

I lost my virginity at 22 to my college boyfriend and first love. I waited that long because I had the weight of the world on me. Not just figuratively – the whole world really was watching!

And even once we started sleeping together, I never really let loose. Yet I was so in love with him. He was so beautiful, and I wish I could look back and think, ‘Oh wow, that was a wild time. We just went at it!’

It was perfectly set up to have been that carefree, can’t-take-your-hands-off-each-other young love, but my mother, the fans and especially the public had such a hold on me.

Stupidly, I guiltily confided in my mother after I lost my virginity and, once she knew, whenever she’d get drunk she’d shame me about it. ‘I know it’s just physical between you two,’ she’d sneer.

The start of my sex life was a personal affront to her, because having a man in my life meant that she was losing me. Oh, how I wish I’d just let the lust take over! But regrettably I was never able to do that.

And now here I am, more than 35 years later, sometimes pretending I’m asleep when I know my husband is in the mood . . . (And that has nothing to do with him – he’s hot!) It’s not great, I know.

I was talking to a doctor recently who inquired about my sex life, and I explained that I have no desire and I’m fine with it. Turned out, she was not fine with it.

I’m hardly unusual – reduced sex drive starts for most women in their late 40s and 50s. While men also see a general decrease in their libido, women are two to three times more likely to experience a decrease in sex drive.

My doctor didn’t particularly care about these statistics. So I ended up receiving a lecture about how important sex is to a relationship, how couples need it to connect, how it can ward off depression, boost immunity, reduce stress and improve communication between partners.

Not having sex, she said, can erode a lot of what brought a couple together in the first place. It may not be the same as it was, but it can still be good. And because of all that, she said, I need to get my hormones in balance.

For me to fully enjoy sex at this point, I need my lotions and potions, the right sleepwear (maybe calling it sleepwear is contributing to the problem), my special pillow and maybe a tequila so I can relax.

Brooke with daughters Grier, left, and Rowan. She writes: ‘For decades, much of my life had been owned by other people. My mother. The media. Hollywood. Fans. My husbands. My daughters’

Again, Chris is not at all the problem. Did I mention that he’s HOT? More so now than he was on our honeymoon. Listen, there’s nothing wrong with using whatever you need, doing whatever it takes. My gynaecologist says I should take testosterone – sure I might get a few more whiskers, but that’s what tweezers are for.

But I haven’t gotten there yet. For now, I’m counting on the old ‘the more you have it, the more you’ll enjoy it’ approach.

Low sex drive isn’t the case for all women, of course. And even just believing that sex is important can make a difference. When women between the ages of 40 and 65 place greater importance on sex, they’re more likely to stay sexually active as they age.

And here’s what I definitely know about the importance of sex: when Chris and I have a fight, there’s nothing I want to do less than have sex. But if we do, he assumes that’s the end of our quarrel and everything’s fine. He literally becomes less angry.

I don’t want to resolve conflict by sleeping together, but I think that’s important to understand.

I’m not saying sex should be used as a weapon (and consent is, of course, always a prerequisite.)

I guess I just believe that sex is always going to be powerful, so let’s use that power on our own terms.

Over the years, Chris and I have come to know almost everything about each other. You lose the mystery after all this time, which eliminates a bit of the excitement. Plus, behaviours that you might once have found endearing – because you were blinded by love – might now just seem, well, annoying.

We know each other so well that I can anticipate his mood by the cadence of his footsteps on the stairs or by the tone of his voice when he answers the phone. Yet despite all the time that’s passed, I think he’s very much the same guy today that I married. That’s where things can get hard.

In our years together, I’ve changed exponentially: I’ve grown more confident and more self-assured. I stick up for myself more, even in the little moments. I’ve also grown more independent, as a person in general, but also as a wife.

I love Chris very much, but I don’t need him the way I once did. I don’t need saving any more.

At the start of our relationship, I think being the saver was as satisfying for him as being saved was for me. It was part of his currency. But taking those ‘manly’ opportunities away can feel emasculating for guys.

I also don’t need Chris in the purely biological sense, because I’ve had my kids. And all that change puts us in a very different place now to when we got married.

To make our marriage work, I have to want him in my life, because I don’t need him in the same way.

For decades, much of my life had been owned by other people. My mother. The media. Hollywood. Fans. My husbands. My daughters.

I just put my head down and moved forward, checking off the boxes on the timeline of how a woman is expected to live her life.

Yes, I know mine hasn’t exactly been typical – I had my first job a month before I turned one, I starred in my first movie at nine – but I’ve held myself to the same standards as many of my peers.

I went to college, went back to work, got married, had kids, raised them.

But now something major has shifted. I used to put everybody else’s needs ahead of my own. And now, for the first time in over 50 years, I’m no longer the hub of the wheel that keeps everyone else’s lives spinning.

So my role as a wife has evolved. And having to refocus on ourselves and re-examine our relationship has not been without its difficulties for Chris and me.

There was definitely a moment of ‘What are we going to do now?’

You sort of need to reintroduce yourselves to each other, which is a little bit scary because it’s not going to be how it was when you fell in love the first time.

We have different ideas, for instance, of how to spend our free time. A big part of Chris’s social existence – the thing he looks forward to every day – is dinner. He loves to go out to eat and sit at the bar and chat with friends or bartenders.

I don’t really want to be eating at nine – I’d rather go to bed early with a book or a TV show and get up to exercise in the morning. But I weigh things differently now.

What am I going to remember at the end – that I took another 8am spin class or that I had a great conversation with my partner? Which is why, despite wanting to be in my pyjamas, I sometimes throw on a pair of heels and meet him at one of our local haunts.

One thing Chris and I absolutely have in common is that we both like to win. We’re competitive people – a blessing and a curse.

As we tried to find activities to engage in together in this grown(ish) children phase, we dabbled in pickleball.

We played together a few times, but he’s so intent on winning that he does these spin serves that he knows I can’t return, so now I refuse to play with him.

Competition is fun; constantly feeling like a loser isn’t.

My game of choice is backgammon, which I taught Chris to play last summer – after a lot of convincing. Playing this with him was really fun, in part because I usually won.

(Soon I started to notice him practising, playing some sort of solitaire backgammon. And now when we play, I’m often the loser.)

One week we were in a funk. We just weren’t in sync, which always makes me panicky. I get worried it means we’re drifting apart – that it’s the beginning of the end.

That week every exchange between us had an edge to it. We couldn’t talk without bickering. When one of those moments turned into a full-fledged argument, I wanted to talk it out and he didn’t – same old, same old. We were at an impasse.

He left the house to run an errand. I was at home stewing when he called and said, ‘Do you want to grab the backgammon set and come sit with me while I get a coffee? We could play a couple games.’

It was an olive branch, and it worked.

We didn’t have a big talk but it got us back on the same page, or at least on pages closer together.

A couple of weeks later, I ran into an acquaintance who said, ‘A friend and I saw you and your husband playing backgammon together outside the coffee shop. We both thought it was the sweetest thing.’ I didn’t point out we were playing because we still weren’t talking.

These days, backgammon at a nearby French bistro has become something we do semi-regularly, or at least when we know we need a reset.

I don’t know if Chris enjoys it as much as I do, but he does it for me. And so I go to late-night dinners for him.

It’s important because I know that if I start living too independently from him, I’ll get really good at it, and that’s dangerous.

The idea is to grow old together, and that means loving each other isn’t quite enough. I want us to still like each other.

ADAPTED from Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old by Brooke Shields (Piatkus, £25), out on January 14. © Brooke Shields 2025. To order a copy for £21.25 (offer valid to 25/01/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.