A woman in her fifties who has not had sex with her husband for ten years has revealed how her libido was transformed by taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and she is now having affairs behind her husband’s back.
Nikki*, from the South East of England, has been with her husband for 20 years and they have a teenage son together.
She has been celibate for the past decade because her husband, 25 years her senior, is not interested in having sex.
Speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, the 51-year-old said: “He’s always had problems with erectile dysfunction. It doesn’t bother him anymore. I wasn’t happy about it but I just accepted that (celibacy) was the life I was going to lead.”
Nikki said being in a sexless relationship for a decade took a toll on her mental health, as she felt “incredibly alone” and “invisible”.
Nikki, whose name is not her real name, has been having an affair with a man five years her junior (file image)
He added: “You feel like you’re a housemate, with the feeling that there’s nothing more to life than this.”
Nikki has been going through perimenopause, where she has menopausal symptoms but her periods have not stopped.
She experienced mood swings, mental confusion, and periods so intense that she couldn’t leave the house.
Her doctor prescribed estrogen and progesterone patches that made her feel like a “Duracell bunny”: full of energy and unable to sleep.
She was then fitted with the Mirena device, which now lasts up to eight years, which meant she stopped having periods. She was also told to apply oestrogen gel once a day.
“One of the side effects is that you feel very excited all the time, which I didn’t expect. It was like a happy accident,” she said.
But HRT treatment helped Nikki realize she was unhappy in her marriage, leading her to seek intimate fulfillment elsewhere.
“With the hormones from hormone replacement therapy, my senses have become a little more alert and I thought I could no longer live like this,” she added.
‘I’m 51 years old, I have years and years left to enjoy it and (I thought) I’m going to have to look for it somewhere else.’
She opened a profile on the dating website Illicit Encounters (a dating site for married people) and said it has “brought her back to life.”
Nikki said she’s had a variety of different experiences on the dating website, from meeting people and having no chemistry to being ignored.
“I met someone and we had a great time. We have an emotional and physical connection,” she said.
Her lover is a married man, five years younger than her, who has a young family.
They met in February of this year and started getting physically intimate a week after meeting in real life.
Nikki and her mystery man get hotel rooms halfway between where they both live, and sometimes spend the night there.
“We never go to other people’s houses, it has to be a hotel,” he said.
A mother of a child is able to sneak away unnoticed by telling her husband that she is going to the gym or to do the shopping.
Nikki remained celibate for a decade because her husband couldn’t perform in the bedroom (file image)
She said: ‘We’ve stayed overnight there a couple of times. I’d like to stay with my family because I have relatives in different parts of the UK so I can add an extra night.’
She said her lover is also struggling with loneliness and lack of intimacy in their marriage and that they usually meet every week or fortnight.
Speaking about the first time they slept together, she said: ‘I was scared, especially knowing he was younger too, I was worried about the physical side of things, like being too dry, not remembering what to do.
‘I know it sounds really silly, but I’d forgotten how to kiss someone.
“Actually, when we first started dating, he couldn’t get an erection because I think he was so terrified, too.”
After having sex for the first time in ten years, Nikki said she felt a sense of relief that her body had worked the way she wanted it to.
She said: ‘I had forgotten how much fun it was and I thought, ‘My God, what the hell have I been doing for the last ten years?
“But I do feel guilty. Maybe a little sadder for not having had this relationship with my husband and for not having it again. We’re over that now, there’s no way that’s going to happen again.”
Nikki said she was nervous about having sex for the first time in 10 years and said she had forgotten “how much fun it was.”
Nikki said her husband is the type of man who “sweeps things under the rug,” while she describes her new lover as emotionally intelligent and sensitive.
Asked if an open marriage could be an option for them, she said they have difficulties with communication in their relationship, which is getting worse as “the age gap becomes more obvious.”
“When we were first together, we would talk about anything and everything, but now that he’s getting older, we don’t have that level of communication, to the point where we rarely talk. There’s nothing between us anymore, which is really sad,” she added.
Nikki said leaving her husband has crossed her mind “almost every day for the past five years,” but she feels guilty about her age and also about her son.
“I felt I had to stay in the marriage so that (my son) could move on, do my job as a mother and help him finish school,” she added.
The mother has not been physically intimate with anyone else and admits she is “picky” when it comes to finding a new love interest.
Speaking about the people at Illicit Encounters, she said: “Sometimes they would do weird things, like send a list of demands of things they wanted in the bedroom, things I’d never heard of, before even asking me the name. So I feel lucky for what I found,” she said.
The only person who knows about their secret relationship is one of their close friends, who said his only concern is that Nikki will end up “emotionally hurt.”
Since their romance began, Nikki said she has felt “happier, brighter and more radiant” and feels like she gets more attention in public.
She said: ‘(Leaving my husband) has been on my mind a lot. Meeting other people has made me realise that I don’t have to be in a relationship without affection, without physical contact and without communication.
“I don’t know how he feels. Maybe his pride is hurt or maybe he just accepts the fact that he doesn’t offer me a good marriage or a good relationship.”
Nikki believes her son, who is in his late teens, would be “relieved” if they split up because he “has really felt the strain.”
*Names have been changed
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