Most evenings, with their little girl safely tucked up in bed, Charlotte and Chris Everiss 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 five 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 s3x, 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 seven-year-old, Addison, is in the next bedroom. I think if Chris really missed s3x 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 s3x, 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.’
Chris is understanding about her aversion to s3x. ‘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 s3x anyway.’
Chris, a digital marketing manager, says he doesn’t discuss with friends the absence of s3x 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.
Chris firmly believes that marriage is a lifelong commitment and says that walking out on his family has never crossed his mind.
But for a couple who have not yet reached middle age, surely the prospect of living another 40 years without fulfilling basic, primitive urges is difficult to bear?
‘It’s not as if we just stopped having s3x because we stopped loving one another, there are reasons,’ says Chris. ‘I don’t take it personally, and my wife and daughter mean far too much to me to look elsewhere for s3x.
‘Of course, men have their needs, but I think I’m better able to control my urges than some - I distract myself with hobbies, like doing up old cars.
‘However, I am hopeful that in the future, when Charlotte and I both feel better in ourselves, our s3x life will resume.’
Charlotte is less optimistic.
‘S3x was an important part of our relationship in the early days. Like most new couples we had lots of it and it was good,’ she says.
‘I do feel guilty knowing that Chris sometimes gets aroused when we snuggle up together so, out of wifely duty, I’ve tried to let him make love to me a couple of times in the past three years.
‘The one time we went all the way, after we’d shared a bottle of wine one Friday night, it wasn’t at all enjoyable for me. It wasn’t painful, but I lay there thinking: “How quickly can we get this over with?”
‘I think Chris probably sensed that, which is not great, but maybe he was just relieved it was happening at all.’
Source: Dailymail
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