Daily Mail

He’s my rock but there’s no passion

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DEAR BEL, I HAVE a business with a man I had a sexual relationsh­ip with for a few years.

Several years ago our business floundered and I developed a serious illness. As a result our affair dwindled to nothing, but we remained friends. The business revived, all is well and we’re now both in our 50s.

He is keen to rekindle our relationsh­ip. He wants us to be a ‘proper couple’ and possibly live together.

I love him and he loves me and we spend a lot of our spare time together, but there is something inside me that recoils from formalisin­g this.

I still have no desire for sex, so worry that the lack of passion would spoil what we have. Also I love spending time alone in my lovely house and could resent the intrusion into my time and space. Yet I know that if he were to meet someone else I’d be devastated.

He is my best friend, confidant and (to be corny) my rock.

We get invited everywhere as a couple. To be honest I am happy with the way things are and have not actively looked elsewhere but he is clearly not and needs a change in his life.

Is it better to settle for a steady love and put up with sex, or hope for passion, longing gazes and thrills? ANDREA

YOUR last question could be the theme of a best-seller by Joanna Trollope or Jodi Picoult, both writers who understand the dilemmas of the human heart. In fact, this very question is also at the root of some of the great classics of world literature (Anna Karenina, for example) because the deep desire for thrilling passion so often trumps common sense, leading to untold misery. Many a marriage is destroyed because of a yen for sexual excitement.

I want to highlight a slight contradict­ion within your letter, in order to help your own thought processes. Halfway through, you say you have lost all interest in sex, yet at the end you imply that there remains a deep- seated desire for ‘passion, longing gazes and thrills’. Which is true?

Are you in fact holding out in the hope that something better (or at least, more exciting than your old friend) comes along? Or are you holding back from being with the man you really love, because you can’t bear the thought of him touching you?

It’s interestin­g that you confess your possessive­ness: you don’t want to live with him, yet you would be jealous and angry were he to meet a lady who jumped at the chance.

You know this isn’t reasonable, but what did reason have to do with love? Mind you, as soon as I write the word ‘love’ I wonder about the nature of his feelings for you.

Friendship can morph into love and be the very best basis for a good marriage. How do you know he would not be perfectly contented to have the sort of sexless partnershi­p — sharing a bed without love-making — which marks many happy marriages?

Don’t listen to sexual experts: many men and women have had enough sex after many years but adore coupledom.

Since you’re close, my next question ought to be superfluou­s. Do you talk? Are you honest? Have you spelled out your complicate­d feelings? If not, then now is the time to start the change he longs for, by being scrupulous­ly frank. Let him talk — and listen hard, repeating his points. Then you talk — and repeat that process. After this you can work out what common ground you share.

You see, it seems to me that a man like this would be the very person to share a good life with, because (unlike an exciting stranger) he would understand your need for your own ‘time and space’ within your ‘lovely home’. Oh, how relaxing, not to have to jump through all the hurdles of getting to know somebody’s foibles!

Perhaps you should book a wonderful holiday, sharing a room with no strings. In a new environmen­t you might talk, think, share the deepest confidence­s, and decide whether or not you have a future. I hope you do.

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