Dear Joely: The Bedroom Goes Quiet

Dear Joely,

My wife and I have been married just over four years. It is a second marriage for both of us. I’m 53, she’s 49, and until recently we’ve always had a very active sex life. That’s partly why I’m so thrown by the sudden change.

For the past few months, she always seems to have a reason not to. She’s tired. She’s stressed. She wants an early night. She’d rather read, scroll, or disappear into a game than come to bed in any meaningful sense of the phrase. She’s friendly enough, and not cold exactly, but there is a distracted quality to her now, as though I’m approaching her from slightly too far away.

I’ve tried not to make a big performance of it. I’ve been patient. I’ve made dinner, brought flowers, made an effort. She seems touched by those things, but not moved in the direction I’m hoping for. The more I try, the more I begin to feel like a man laying rose petals in front of a door that isn’t opening.

So now I’m wondering what I’m meant to think. Is this just a phase in a marriage and I’m being oversensitive, or should I be worried there’s someone else?

Signed,

Missing My Wife

Dear Missing,

The first thing to say is this: a drop in desire is not, by itself, proof of a third party lurking in the shrubbery.

People go off sex for all sorts of reasons. Fatigue, resentment, distraction, hormones, low mood, buried irritation, feeling unsexy in their own skin, or simply getting stuck in a pattern where avoidance becomes easier than explaining what is going on. The human libido is not a punctual little clerk. It wanders off, goes silent, and sometimes needs coaxing back under less pressure than flowers and hopeful dinners can create.

That said, you are not wrong to notice the change, and you are not shallow for missing your wife in this particular way. Sex is not the whole of a marriage, but neither is it nothing. When it goes quiet without explanation, people start telling themselves stories. Usually unpleasant ones.

Before you leap to infidelity, I would ask a duller but more useful question: have you actually spoken to her plainly, without the bouquet, without the seduction campaign, and without making the conversation sound like a charge sheet? Not “Why don’t you want me?” Not “Is there someone else?” But something closer to: “I miss you. Something feels different between us. Is anything going on that I’m not seeing?”

Because at the moment you are trying to solve a communication problem with romance, which is understandable but often ineffective. A woman can enjoy a lasagne and still not want to take her clothes off. The flowers are not the issue. The silence is.

If she brushes you off repeatedly, refuses to talk at all, and leaves you alone with your increasingly inventive theories, then yes, you may have more cause for concern. But don’t promote yourself to detective before you have first tried being a husband in a chair, asking a difficult question and waiting for the real answer.

There may be someone else. There may equally be stress, sadness, menopause, anger, boredom, or some private knot she hasn’t yet untangled into words. Your job for now is not to guess correctly. It is to open the conversation without accusation and see whether she meets you there.

You say she is friendly. I would aim for something more intimate than friendly. Friendly is for baristas and neighbours. Wives should, at the very least, be reachable.

Yours, with a steady hand,

Joely

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Dear Joely: An Inconvenient Crush

Dear Joely,

I am a woman in my late fifties and, until recently, believed myself to be beyond the age of behaving like a sixth-former with a biro and a pulse. Then I developed a crush.

It is not on a film star, which would at least be private and convenient. It is on a man I know in real life. He is charming, bright, entirely age-appropriate, and, maddeningly, just attentive enough to keep me flustered without doing anything so obvious that I can call the whole thing to heel.

Nothing has happened. He has not declared himself. I have not flung myself across a table. We are simply in that intolerable territory where eye contact begins to feel like an event and one finds oneself thinking far too hard about what to wear to somewhere that didn’t matter at all before he might be there.

Part of me feels thrilled to be capable of this sort of fizz at all. Another part feels faintly humiliated. I am too old, surely, to be mooning over a man like a girl in a ponytail. And yet I also resent the idea that desire should have an expiry date, as though one is meant to become a tasteful lampshade after a certain birthday.

So my question is this: should I enjoy the feeling for what it is and let it pass, or is there ever a dignified way to do something with a crush at my age?

Signed,

Unexpectedly Flustered

Dear Flustered,

First, let us bury the idea that desire is only attractive in the young. That is nonsense invented by people who prefer women to become decorative once they’ve learned a few things.

A crush in later life is not pathetic. It is inconvenient, certainly. Occasionally ridiculous. But also rather cheering. It reminds you that the shutters are not up, the blood still circulates, and your powers of anticipation have not been pensioned off to sit in a cardie by the fire.

The trouble with a crush is not the feeling itself. The trouble is what the feeling tempts you to do. It can turn an intelligent woman into an amateur codebreaker, forever analysing pauses, glances, and whether a man said “see you soon” with intent or merely manners.

So enjoy the quickening, by all means. Stand in front of the mirror a little longer. Feel your pulse misbehave. There are worse things. But do not build a cathedral out of crumbs. If he is interested, let him become clearer in ways that would be visible even to a woman who was not wearing your particular perfume and hoping for signs.

And if an opening genuinely presents itself, there is nothing undignified about warmth, wit, or a little well-judged boldness. The only thing I would avoid is tipping a whole bucket of fantasy over a situation that may yet amount to no more than pleasing chemistry and a decent jawline.

You are not too old for this. You are simply old enough to know the difference between delight and self-abandonment. Try to keep the first and avoid the second.

Yours, with eyebrows raised,

Joely

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Dear Joely: Exit Group?

Dear Joely,

I’ve been added to a school WhatsApp group and I already hate it.

I know it’s meant to be useful, and sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s just endless messages about things that don’t seem to require that many messages. Every day there’s somebody asking something that has already been answered, or reminding everyone about something, or sending a stream of updates about snacks, costumes, pick-up times, forms, or who’s bringing what.

What gets me is that I can’t tell whether I’m being unreasonable or whether everyone else is just pretending this is normal. Some of the women in it seem to live there. They’re constantly replying, offering to do things, thanking each other, sending little kisses at the end of every message, and somehow making quite ordinary school admin feel like a full-time emotional ecosystem. I find it exhausting.

There’s also a certain tone in there that gets under my skin. It’s all very friendly on the surface, but I can never quite shake the feeling that there’s competition and judgement bubbling away underneath. I don’t want to be rude, and I don’t want to look unfriendly, but I also don’t want to spend my life reading forty-three messages about a missing drink bottle.

Is it acceptable to mute it, ignore most of it, or even leave altogether, or is that social suicide?

Signed,

One Ping from Murder

Dear One Ping,

The first thing I want you to know is that you are not oversensitive. You are having an entirely normal reaction to being trapped in a digital village square with no closing time.

WhatsApp groups of this sort are a very modern species of suffering. They begin in usefulness and end in low-grade occupation. A quick note about sports day becomes a hundred and forty-seven messages, three theories, one volunteer spreadsheet, and an undercurrent of feminine territorial warfare thinly disguised as helpfulness.

You are not obliged to enjoy this simply because it involves children and snack-sized administrative duties. Nor are you required to mistake access for intimacy. These groups create the illusion that because people can reach you instantly, they are therefore entitled to do so constantly. They are not.

Now, as to what to do. I would not dramatically leave unless you are genuinely prepared to be talked about by women in activewear for a fortnight. The elegant answer is almost always the less theatrical one. Mute the group. Archive it if necessary. Turn off previews. Remove it from the front of your mind and let the urgent things surface by other means, as truly urgent things usually do.

And if someone asks why you are a little quiet, you may say, perfectly pleasantly, that you are trying to spend less time on your phone. This has the additional advantage of sounding virtuous while being entirely self-protective.

What you must not do is get drawn into the false morality of constant responsiveness. There is a particular kind of social nonsense that thrives on women feeling they must always appear agreeable, available, and faintly delighted to help. It is a racket. Step outside it where you can.

You do not need to surrender your peace over a visor, a raffle roster, or twelve messages about whether Friday is mufti. Keep your manners, keep your distance, and keep the group on mute.

Yours, on mute,

Joely

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Dear Joely: Mixed Signals

Dear Joely,

I’ve been seeing a man for six months. He can be thoughtful, funny, and incredibly attentive when we’re together, but in between he goes oddly vague. Sometimes he texts constantly for days, then disappears into silence and resurfaces as though nothing has happened. When I ask where I stand, he says he’s “confused” and doesn’t want to rush things. I am old enough to know better, but apparently not old enough to stop checking my phone like a woman awaiting news from the front. He says he cares about me. I think he probably does. I’m just no longer sure that caring is the same thing as showing up. Am I being impatient, or am I volunteering for my own heartbreak?

Signed,

Still Waiting in Wangaratta

Dear Still Waiting,

There are many humiliations in life. One of the more avoidable is mistaking inconsistency for depth.

A man who wants you is not usually this confusing for this long. He may indeed be confused, but confusion can be surprisingly comfortable when someone else is doing all the waiting. It allows him warmth without responsibility, intimacy without decision, and your hope without the inconvenience of your standards.

You are not asking for too much. You are asking for coherence. There is a difference.

The trouble is not that he disappears now and then. The trouble is that each disappearance is followed by just enough tenderness to keep you interpreting the gaps as mystery rather than information. But gaps are information. Vagueness is information. “I don’t want to rush things” after six months is information wearing a soft hat.

If you want to give this one last, dignified chance, do it plainly. Tell him you’re no longer available for half-presence and see whether he steps forward or blurs again. Then believe what happens next.

Love may be complicated. Interest is usually not.

Yours, but not surprised,

Joely

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