A woman in her fifties who hasn’t had sex with her husband in ten years has revealed how her libido was transformed by taking HRT – and she’s now having affairs behind her spouse’s back.
Nikki*, from the south east of England, has been with her husband for 20 years and they have one teenage child together.
She has been celibate for the past decade as her spouse, who is 25 years her senior, isn’t interested in having sex.
Speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, the 51-year-old said: ‘He’s always struggled with erectile dysfunction. He just doesn’t bother anymore. I wasn’t happy with it but just kind of [accepted] that [celibacy] was the life I was going to lead.’
Nikki said being in a sexless relationship for a decade has affected her mental health as she felt ‘incredibly lonely’ and ‘unseen’.
Nikki, not her real name, has been having an affair with a man five years younger than her (stock image)
She added: ‘You just feel like you’re housemates, the feeling of there’s nothing more to life than this.’
Nikki has been going through perimenopause, where you have symptoms of menopause but your periods have not stopped.
She experienced mood swings, brain fog and and periods so heavy that she could not leave the house.
Her doctor gave her oestrogen and progesterone patches which left her feeling like a ‘Duracell bunny’ – full of energy and unable to sleep.
They then gave her the Mirena coil, which now lasts up to eight years, resulting in her periods stopping. She was also told to apply oestrogen gel once everyday.
‘One of the side effects of it is that you feel really randy all of the time, which I wasn’t expecting. It was like a happy accident,’ she said.
But the HRT treatment helped Nikki realise that she was not happy in her marriage, leading her to look for intimate satisfaction elsewhere.
‘With the hormones from HRT, it has awakened my senses a bit more and I just thought I can’t live like this anymore,’ she added.
‘I’m 51, I’ve got years and years left to enjoy it and [I thought] I’m just going to have to look for it somewhere else.’
She started 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 has had a range of different experiences on the dating website, from meeting up with people and having no chemistry to getting ghosted.
‘I [then] met somebody and we’ve been having an amazing time. We have an emotional connection as well as a physical one,’ she said.
Her lover is a married man who is five years younger than her and has a young family.
They met in February this year and became physically intimate one week after they met up in real life.
Nikki and her mystery man get hotel rooms halfway from where they both live, sometimes staying overnight.
‘We never go over to each other’s houses, it has to be a hotel,’ she said.
The mother-of-one is able to slip away unnoticed by telling her husband that she is going to the gym or doing a food shop.
Nikki was celibate for a decade because her husband could not perform in the bedroom (stock image)
She said: ‘We have [stayed overnight] a couple of times. I would go and stay with family because I’ve got relatives in different parts of the UK, so I can tag on an extra night.’
She said her lover is also struggling with loneliness and a lack of intimacy in his marriage and they usually meet up every week or fortnight.
Speaking about the first time they had slept together, she said: ‘I was terrified, especially knowing he was younger as well, 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 had forgotten how to kiss somebody.
‘Actually when we first got together, he couldn’t get an erection because I think he was very terrified as well.’
After having sex for the first time in ten years, Nikki said she felt a sense of relief that her body had performed as she had wanted.
She said: ‘I had forgotten how fun it was and I thought oh my god what the hell have I been doing for the past ten years?
‘But I feel guilty. Maybe a bit more sad that I didn’t have this relationship with my husband and never will again. We’ve gone past that now, there’s just no way it’s going to happen again.’
Nikki said she was nervous to have sex for the first time in 10 years and said she had forgotten ‘how fun it was’
Nikki said her husband is the type of man to ‘brush things under the carpet’ whereas she describes her new lover as emotionally intelligent and sensitive.
When asked whether an open marriage could be an option for them, she said that they struggle with communication in their relationship, which is getting worse as the ‘age gap becomes more obvious’.
‘When we were first together, we’d talk about anything and everything but now as he’s getting older we don’t have that level of communication to the point where we rarely speak. There’s just nothing between us anymore, which is really sad,’ she added.
Nikki said leaving her husband has crossed her mind ‘pretty much every day for the last five years’ but she feels guilty because of his age and also for their child.
‘I felt like I’ve had to stay in the marriage for [my child] to see it through, do my job as a mum and get them through 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 of people on Illicit Encounters, she said: ‘Sometimes they’d do funny things like send a list of demands of things they’d want in the bedroom, things I’d never heard of, before even asking your name. So it makes me feel lucky with what I did find,’ she said.
The only person who knows about her secret relationship is one of her close friends, who said her only concern is that Nikki will end up ’emotionally hurt’.
Ever since starting her affair, Nikki said she has felt ‘happier, brighter and more glowy’ and feels as though 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 non-affectionate, non-physical, non-communicative relationship.
‘I don’t know how he’ll feel. Maybe his pride will be hurt or maybe he’ll just be accepting of the fact that he doesn’t offer me a good marriage or partnership.’
Nikki believes her child, who is in their teenage years, would be ‘relieved’ if they were to split up as they’ve ‘really sensed the tension’.
*Names have been changed
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