I'M 64 AND I'VE NEVER HAD AN ORGASM

Despite being happily married for over 30 years, Carole Baker never truly enjoyed sex

Whatever activities I imagined I’d be doing on my honeymoon, phoning my mum in floods of tears wasn’t one of them. But my husband Alan and I had just consummated our marriage – and it had been a huge disappointment. Far from sensuous and thrilling, it was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it perfunctory affair. And it didn’t help that as soon as he’d finished, Alan plonked himself down in front of the TV to watch football in the Devon hotel where we were staying for a week after our wedding. Convinced I’d made a terrible mistake, I rang my mum and told her I wanted to come home. Not sure what to say, she put Dad on the phone, who reassured me it was just early days.

This was back in 1978, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that after getting to know each other’s bodies, we went on to have a fulfilling sex life during our marriage. Particularly as we would have five children together. But though I was devoted to Alan, who sadly died nine years ago, having suffered from Parkinson’s, I did not have a single orgasm in our entire marriage.

In fact, now 64, I have never had an orgasm with a man – or, indeed, without a man.

My husband never knew I hadn’t ever reached climax. And yes, I made all the noises I’d seen women doing in films. I’m from a generation of women who believed it was a wife’s duty to care for her husband’s needs, whether putting dinner on the table or boosting his ego in bed. In fact, it wasn’t until I was well into my 30s – by then a mother of four – that I even discovered female orgasms existed, courtesy of reading magazines.