I am a 62 year old retired civil servant. My husband died many years ago and I live with my father, who is 82. Until he suffered stroke nine months ago, we led a good life together. We went for walks, read, listened to music and shared the household chores. I have no close friends but I enjoy my own company. I love travelling by train and used to do so regularly here and abroad. Although my father has made a good recovery, our lives now consist of shopping and watching television.

My husband and I appear to have the perfect marriage and family that everyone wanted. In fact, many people said so. The truth is, it was not as great as they or I thought. He is successful in his job and his colleagues speak very highly of him. By chance, I discovered that he had been sending sexually explicit photographs to a woman he works with. I had met her a couple of times but never thought she could rival me for my husband’s affection.

Sex means so many things to different people. To a large extent, what we think about sex and how we feel about it, depends largely on our individual experiences. While sex can be much fun and so, so pleasurable for some, others may find it uncomfortable and irritating, and some others, unbearable. However, sex is a game that comes with its own set of rules, and players need to try to abide by them. When these rules are breached, the partners are not likely to get the desired result. To get the best out of your partner, you must create an enabling environment to suit your purpose, and up your game at any given opportunity for a rump in the sacks.

IN general, when experts talk about fine-turning a relationship, they suggest ways both partners can compromise and adjust. Not so with the older man/younger girl pairing. “In testing the waters of male-female love, the girl has to splash—and pay attention to her own strokes,” says Janice, a seasoned relationship expert. “She needs to be childish at times, to fret, to go beyond the bounds of conventional behaviour to act on impulse, and sometimes to enslave herself to the loved one. It is therefore up to the man to measure whether he is the right person to chase and hold her.

After only five years of marriage, my husband seems not to be interested in sex— at least with me! We didn’t have sex before we married for religious reasons, but since we’ve been together, he’s avoided getting intimate.