Please don't get me wrong, I love my husband. I never wanted to hurt him, but I will be sixty one in a couple of weeks time, and I'm afraid that so much that is enjoyable in life seems to be passing me by. However, my recent behaviour is probably inexcusable and I'm sure that most respectable people would judge me harshly.
We have been married for thirty five years, and in all that time my husband has been kind and caring — what many would think of as a model husband in fact — and unlike so many of my friends' husbands, he does his fair share of the cooking and housework. The trouble is, and this is very hard to say — he just isn't interested in sex. As far as I know he doesn't masturbate, and I have never found even one concealed girlie magazine. I occasionally search the hard drive of our computer, but there are no hidden files or links to pornographic sites — absolutely nothing of a sexual nature at all. He is very sweet and loving, and we still share a bed and kiss and cuddle before we go to sleep, but that is as far as it ever goes.
I was in my mid twenties when I married Kevin — who is about fifteen years older than me — at a stage when we were both well established in our respective careers. Like many people of our class and upbringing, we didn't have sex before we were married, and the first few months of our marriage were fine — not spectacular, but still fine. But as time went on we made love less and less often.
It's not that Kevin was impotent, and we managed to produce three fine children in the space of five years without any difficulty. In those early years, much of my energy was devoted to the children and our home, and I went back to work once the youngest child was at secondary school. That was very satisfying, but as time went on I started to miss sex more and more. Now I can't even remember the last time we made love. At first I thought it must be my fault, but however hard I tried he just wasn't interested. Of course, all the usual doubts and suspicions went through my mind. I wondered whether he might have a mistress, but apart from going to work in the morning and returning in the early evening, there was no time when we apart long enough.
In order to satisfy my need for release, I would masturbate after he had gone to sleep or on my days off, and I surreptitiously bought a couple of dildos and a vibrator. In recent years I have started reading erotic literature — nothing exotic, just love stories with an explicit sexual content. Solitary sex is okay and my orgasms are nice, but it is not the same as making love to a flesh and blood male. Again, I'm not interested in anything out of the ordinary, vanilla sex would satisfy me, and I'm certainly not attracted to group sex or swinging.
A recent article in a Sunday newspaper about happily married couples who never have sex made me wonder whether Kevin is asexual. A psychologist commenting on these celibate marriages said that just as there are men and women with an unusually high sex drive — such as President Kennedy — there are others who seem to have no sex drive at all.
If Kevin and I were twenty years younger we would most probably have had sex before marriage and found out about our sexual incompatibility before it was too late. We would at least have had the choice to separate, however painful that would have been, or found a solution that was acceptable to both of us. I suppose that Kevin might have agreed to allow me to take a lover as long as that didn't threaten our marriage, although I still find the thought of making him a cuckold upsetting. In fact, the sadomasochistic tone of some of the cuckold stories I have read is actually distasteful, and I have wondered whether women who get pleasure from humiliating their husbands are taking revenge for abuse by a close male relative in their teens. It's not as if Kevin is under endowed — as far as I can see his penis is actually above average size — and I don't believe he would get pleasure from watching me be fucked by another man. No, I have been forced to accept that he is truly asexual and comfortable with his nature.
As it is, Kevin's one real passion is for making highly detailed working models of trams which he runs on a scale tramway in the loft. He claims that it helps him relax after a hard day in the office, but he spends hours in his workshop and I hardly see him except at meals. The grandsons love it, however, and he lets them drive the trams under his supervision. I'm afraid that it is not a pastime I share, although I do accompany him on his regular visits to the Tramway Museum where he takes hundreds of photographs to help him get all the details right. So apart from the grandchildren, to whom he is devoted, we no longer have any interests in common these days.
My girlfriends laughed when I told them about my problem, and suggested I should get a toy boy. But I didn't want some callow and inexperienced youth, but to be made love to by a sensitive and experienced partner. In fact, I'm just a very ordinary woman with quite simple desires, and until recently I would never have dreamed of being disloyal to my husband. That was until I met Derek.
I have always loved dancing, and for many years I have gone to a weekly dance session at our church. There have always been far more women than men in our group, so I was rather excited when a couple of years ago Derek joined us. At least it meant that I wouldn't have to take the male lead quite so often. He also joined the church choir at the same time and we quickly became friends, and would occasionally go for a quick drink in the local pub at the end of the evening.
Derek is a couple of years older than me and recently widowed. He retired early to look after his wife who sadly developed dementia in her early fifties — fortunately, he had received a sizeable legacy from his parents and was able to live comfortably on the income from his investments. When she died he moved to our village to be closer to his daughter and her husband — and to escape painful memories I suppose, although he never complained. He isn't spectacularly handsome — definitely not a Sean Connery or Michael Caine — but just averagely good looking with a neat beard and short grey hair. The only striking thing about him is his height — he is well over six feet tall — and he is still quite slim for a man of his age, unlike so many of my girlfriends' husbands who have suffered the consequences of too many nights in the pub or the nineteenth hole of the golf club.
Quite by chance Derek and I discovered we had another common interest in addition to dancing and singing. It was about this time last year, and we were sitting in the pub after choir practice when we had been rehearsing a chorale from Bach's Easter Oratorio. There were a number of leaflets scattered around the tables advertising an exhibition of watercolour paintings by a local artist in the church hall of a nearby village. Derek remarked that he had heard that the painter was attracting a growing reputation and that it would be nice to have a look at his work. He asked whether I would like to go with him sometime the following week. I agreed that it would be interesting and that I could arrange to leave work early on Wednesday, and suggested he picked me up after lunch.
From there it was quite natural to talk about painting and what we liked and disliked. He told me that he dabbled a bit himself, which was rather surprising as he did not appear to be the arty type. When I expressed my surprise, he said that when his wife's condition had started to deteriorate he had enrolled in art classes as a way of finding some relief from the daily pain of watching her slowly fading away. He showed me photographs of some of his watercolour paintings on his iPhone, and it was clear that he definitely had talent. I had expected rather conventional pastoral scenes, but his style was quite striking and what one might call semi-abstract. Amongst the paintings, he showed me were a number of male and female nudes, and he told me that he had particularly enjoyed the life study sessions and the technical challenge presented by portrayal of the human form.
Rather sheepishly I admitted to Derek that I did a bit of watercolour painting myself — just pictures of gardens and flowers, what my husband called my 'chocolate box' paintings. He replied that I should not be so disparaging about my work, and that he would be delighted to see it. He added that it would be rather fun to go on painting expeditions together and compare the results of our different approach to the same subject.
I mentioned this to Kevin a few days later and he said that he could see no harm in it — he had met Derek at church and they seemed to get on quite amicably — and that it would give me something interesting to do after I had retired from work on my sixtieth birthday which was in a few weeks time. When I saw Derek the following Friday evening I told him that I liked his idea of painting expeditions, and that I had spoken to Kevin who had given it his blessing. However, I suggested that it would be better to wait until after my retirement as that would give us a whole day free.
Derek and I decided that Wednesday would be our painting day. If the weather was nice we would drive to a suitably scenic location in the neighbourhood in the morning, set up our easels and set to work; and on days when the weather was inclement I would go to his house and we would work on a still life subject together. We would work until teatime and then compare notes and discuss the differences in our approach and the technical aspects of trying to capture the subject. This was great fun and I learned a great deal from his gentle tuition. As I gained in confidence my technique began to improve steadily and after about three months I was producing paintings of which I was quietly proud — even Kevin noticed the difference and suggested that I might even like to consider exhibiting my paintings at church at the Summer Fair.
