Gavin, 48

double quotation markBecause I haven’t slept with anybody else for decades, my sexual skills don’t feel transferable; they are specific to Lisa

Lisa and I met at university in 1996, when we were 19. Since I’ve known her, she’s grown from a willowy teenager into a middle-aged woman – and I’ve become a middle-aged man with a belly and a bad back. But a 30-year relationship isn’t about how you look. She’s the person I’ve latched my life on to. I still see shades of younger Lisa – in her eyes, her face, the sounds she makes when we have sex.Because I haven’t slept with anybody else for decades, my sexual skills don’t feel transferable; they are specific to Lisa. And although we don’t have loads of sex now, when we do – once or twice a month – it’s better quality and more meaningful than it was in our 20s.I snore, so we don’t sleep in the same bed, meaning sex has become less spontaneous. We have to schedule it, or Lisa might say: “Let’s turn the telly off and go to bed.” A look is often enough. Lisa has a double bed in the main bedroom, whereas I have a single bed in the attic, so we have sex in her bed. Or sometimes I’ll lead her to another room in the house, like the bathroom, and we’ll do it in the shower.We have three kids (aged six, 15 and 17) and while having them didn’t really affect our sex life, we try not to do it when they’re awake and we’ll stop when we hear them, pretending to be asleep if they walk in on us. Whenever we have the house to ourselves, we take advantage. But the last time we did this, a couple of weeks ago, the eldest came home, so we had to stop.For me, intimacy is reserving a space for someone, whether that’s a bedroom or an emotion, beyond the perimeter that you put up for the rest of the world, because you trust them. I see myself as part of a whole, a bigger picture. I haven’t lost sight of myself within that picture, but it’s not just me, it’s us.The thrill is different now – it’s less new and exciting and more of a familiar excitement. But the thrill still exists in the familiar. In the future, I want more of the same. We know what works, what doesn’t, and what the signals are. That familiarity is part and parcel of intimacy.Lisa, 48