Married for 16 years - and we didn't have sex once: The agony of living with a partner who's gone off sex

Various observers assumed marriage Martin Langley was not only happy, but physically met. Her husband, Chris - sophisticated, worldly and 24 years his senior - who parades her beautiful young woman and flirt with her ostentation.

His jokes between friends is always risky. His goal, it seemed, was to solicit their admiration and envy.

Yet the public image of Chris and private persona could not disagree more. When the audience had dispersed, any intimacy with his young wife has ceased. Although Martin tried desperately to raise the passion of her husband, she has always failed. In fact, during their marriage of 16 years they did not have sex once.

"Chris and I shared a bed even though we never consummated our marriage," said Martin, 52. "He had to deploy a litany of excuses to avoid physical contact. One night he told me that it was too hot, the next day it was too cold. Then there would be something vital, it would look on television. I even lost the Grand Prix.

"I constantly asked myself why he did not want to have sex. I guess there was something wrong with me. And he swore he was not being unfaithful.

Married Chris Martin, a divorced father of two adult children and a successful businessman self-made, when she was 25.

"I tried everything - seduction techniques that I have read about, very underwear, massage - but nothing worked. His brush-offs made me feel cheap, dirty and humiliated.

"He was intelligent, too. When I questioned about this, he replied: "Not that I'm not going to have sex with you that is the question - is your reaction that is the problem."

"He always blamed on me, yet I was not remotely sexually before. He seemed to want to create animosity, if sex is the last thing on our minds. "

Although we live in a society increasingly obsessed with sex marriages that are deprived of sex, it seems, nothing exceptional - even in glamorous couples in Hollywood.

Indeed, former mistress of Arnold Schwarzenegger said he spoke of his "sexless marriage" to his wife Maria Shriver to justify his adulterous affair with her.

It is not surprising that the frequency of sex decreases in long marriages. What is surprising, however, is the relatively high number of marriages in which it does not. Then these relations will always be happy?