We met when we were students, fell madly in love and married. Neither of us had ever had sex with anyone else, nor have we ever felt the need to since. We have both fancied other people, but have never felt the inclination to take it any further.
We have now been together for 45 years and have had a wonderful sex life. That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges. I suffered a couple of bouts of clinical depression, which made things difficult, and these days sex is less frequent than when we were first in love, although we always enjoy cuddling and sleeping closely together. We’ve learned to relax and realise it doesn’t matter if there aren’t fireworks every time; we know there’ll always be another chance.
In our 20s, our sex life was intimately connected to having children. The first three were planned, followed – when they were eight, six and five – by a happy “accident”. Now they’re in their 30s and 40s they also seem to be having good sex, as they have given us six lovely grandchildren. We both found each of their births incredibly exciting: the other end of a continuum that began with joint orgasms. The youngest three were born at home, in the bed in which they had been conceived, which, for us, added an extra quality to the unified process of sex, pregnancy and birth.
We are very happy to have had this kind of sex life, inextricable from our love for each other, anchored by mutual respect and consistent with the promises we made to each other 43 years ago.
• Each week, a reader tells us about their sex life. Want to share yours? Email sex@guardian.com.
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