Can my marriage survive without physical intimacy?

QI have a simple but very loaded question: can a marriage survive without physical intimacy? I am a 48-year-old married woman and my husband is 54.

We had a healthy sex life for a few years and had our children.

But following the birth of the youngest nine years ago, sex has left the room.

We are busy, but no more so than many other couples.

Emotional intimacy is very hard when you don’t feel loved or valued by your husband.

He has no interest in weekends away; we don’t spend any time together.

He socialises locally, and I am welcome to tag along but I am not interested.

I would never leave my marriage and neither would he, as our children would suffer.

Really what I am asking is how I can, as a still relatively young woman, face the future in a positive manner and learn to cope with the fact that my marriage is based on a working relationship, a coparenting situation and not on a traditional marriage mode?

ASIMPLE answer is that yes, a marriage can survive without physical intimacy, and this can happen for a variety of reasons. However you are not talking only about physical intimacy being missing in your marriage — you are missing a whole lot more.

I have to question the relationship itself because apart from having somebody to share the care of your children, you don’t seem to be getting anything else from it.

You are apparently living separate lives although sharing a home.

This is not a good role model for your children and will cause them difficulties when they start to have relationships themselves, as the norm for them will be no affection or love being shown between a couple.

So even though you don’t want to separate and have your children suffer as a result, they are already suffering to some extent.

Things cannot remain as they are — you may end up by having an affair or by becoming very bitter, which is very understandable given the circumstances.

And you may well find yourself unable to continue with your marriage.

As neither of these options is ideal, then counselling is the answer, because if nothing else comes out of it you need to know why physically everything stopped as soon as you had your children.

If your husband refuses to seek help, then you need to speak to somebody yourself, as this will help you decide what you want to do next.