In menopause, I’m ready for the freedom of a post-sex life

Nikki Gemmell is ready for a post-sex marriage. Picture: John Feder

Too exhausted for any kind of sexual activity now, any gender thank you very much, damned near over the lot of it. Several decades of child rearing four little tinlids is to blame for that, plus the loss of bodily confidence over the menopausal thickening no matter how little one tries to (not) eat. Ah, hormones, God bless you, and apologies to The Chap. Also, to the fans of The Bride Stripped Bare, because it’s now more like The Bride Gone Where? That raunchy chick of long ago preaching honesty and tenderness and wanting to instruct a man on exactly what a woman wants, precisely where and how; well, too-de-loo. All she wants now is sleep. And a room of her own. Make that an entire place of her own. While still in a loving relationship. Greedy, I know.

There is one topic returned to again and again as the morning’s constitutional (with dog) is undertaken and various women of the neighbourhood are bumped in to: snoring. How to get a good night’s sleep. Is it even possible to get a good night’s sleep? How to survive when a partner is nudged repeatedly but still does not desist. Said partner is loved, of course, but, well, you know. Or maybe it’s the woman doing the snoring. There’s talk with several about buying lottery tickets to purchase the dreamed-of “other-place”. So you can be Together Apart, i.e. in your own separate worlds but still in a loving and secure relationship. As I said, greedy.

And recently a new term of co-existence has sprung up: the “short term/long term relationship”, for those interested in a looser kind of coupledom. As a divorced mate was explaining the workable bliss of it I realised she wasn’t the only one I know who’s diving into this arrangement. It’s the long-term commitment of togetherness, but in short-term blocks of actually seeing your other half. Because you’re both so busy. And both love your other lives. So you see each other in bursts of intensity, perhaps on a holiday, then off you toddle back to your separate worlds. It is convenience. It is your own aesthetic, your own level of tidiness. It is living life how you really want to, unconventionally.

It’s the dream, for various women around me now chafing against the bit of the regular relationship. Because the wifedom model of old is not what many females subscribe to anymore. As we age we’re wanting to seize life, not necessarily glued to a partner who may not want the existence we do. All around me I see old men clinging to their jobs, refusing to give way to younger generations while women are keen to seize vivid living in all its permutations. These are the years for themselves, finally, after being there so exhaustingly for everyone else. I recently spoke of this phenomenon to a male friend who could retire but resolutely will not. He’s refusing to budge, locking out not one but two generations of talent below him. “If I retired, what would I do?” he lamented. “I’d be so bored.” I do not know of one woman who has ever said this. We have things to do.

“Life is very beautiful,” the 95-year-old national treasure, painter John Olsen once said. “Seize the day and don’t waste your life. Take a lot of memories with you when the curtain closes. I think it’s tragic to see people imprison themselves in a job or situation they don’t like, because this is the only life you’ll have. To deal with life as just a warehouse, without the magic of trees, birds, floating clouds, rivers and love, is a terrible mistake.”

There’s courage in change. In risk. Liberation in saying no, actually, if you dare. In living the relationship you want, no matter how unconventional. Who wants to hold the world in aspic? Men more than women, I’d hazard a guess, because in the past it’s worked so well for them. I’m ready for the freedom of a post-sex life.