For years, whenever Kerry* used to talk about her sex life with her girlfriends, she used to lie.

"It's weird because I'm known as this very open, ballsy woman, but on this one subject I just never felt like I could be open with people," she explained, "maybe because it wasn't just my secrets I was spilling."

Kerry has what is known online as the "dead bedroom".

She and her husband Simon* have an almost sexless marriage — managing to do the deed only every few months. 

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"That in itself is nothing new," she clarified, "I know heaps of women who talk about their dwindling sex life with some concern, but for most of them, it's either because they want it less, or because both they and their partners are so busy and tired neither one can make time for it."

Kerry would love to have more sex. She's tried toys and fantasy-talk and lingerie and therapy.

Simon, on the other hand, isn't interested. 

"And that's the part I thought was so shameful for years," said Kerry.

"You never hear about the man not wanting sex and the woman trying to convince him. Lots of my friends are slapping their husband's roving hands away constantly."

It wasn't always this way.

Back when they first got together, Kerry and Simon's sex life was what she describes as "perfectly healthy".

"We had the usual courtship — sex very regularly, multiple times per day at first — then falling into a rhythm of a few times a week that lasted for years," she said.

"Of course, that dipped over the years with young kids and work stress, but gradually it seemed we were going longer and longer between times."

The difference, Kerry says, is that the lack of interest from Simon persisted even after she made it clear she'd like more sex.

"I would initiate, and sometimes he'd be in the mood, but more often than not he'd either make an excuse or pretend to be asleep," she said.

"When we finally talked about it, he was defensive, and I felt completely and utterly rejected, even though he swore black and blue it wasn't me."

Turning to the internet, Kerry found the results were not encouraging. 

"When I googled 'husband doesn't want sex', most of the hits were forums where people — many of them men — said with confidence that if he didn't want to have sex with me, he was obviously gay, cheating on me, or found me repulsive," she recalled. "So I stopped googling." 

"I didn't want to bring this to my girlfriends and have them wonder the same thing about my marriage."

Because here's the thing — outside of their dwindling sex life, Simon was still a loving, affectionate and romantic partner.

"He's honestly my best friend, and he's always cuddling me on the couch, organising dates, telling me I'm beautiful and all the rest of it," said Kerry.

"It really was so confusing for a long time."

The final straw.

While Kerry says the dry spell continued for years — interspersed with periods where their sex life would pick up in frequency, but felt like Simon was "really having to force himself to be into it" — before she broke down one night.

"I burst into tears, told Simon to just tell me if he didn't find me attractive anymore, or if he was sleeping with someone," she recalled.

"Eventually, he crumbled. He told me it wasn't that he didn't find me attractive, it was that he had lost all desire for any form of sexual gratification."

Simon admitted he could go months without masturbating, couldn't remember the last time he had an erection in the morning, and often went long stretches without thinking about sex.

As it turns out, Simon had been doing some googling of his own.

A club with a surprising amount of members.

"He had begun to suspect he had low testosterone," Kerry explained, "but he was deeply ashamed to even bring it up. It sounds so stupid now, but we went literal years being too awkward to speak openly about our sex life."

Simon showed Kerry some of the forums he'd stumbled across — pages and pages of testimonials from people on Reddit whose sex lives had been impacted by 'low t' as they referred to it.

A blood test confirmed what Simon had been suspecting — his testosterone was well below the average for his age.

"The more I looked into it, the more shocked I was," said Kerry.

"Symptoms like anxiety, low motivation, low-grade depression and loss of libido were all there."

More importantly, Kerry saw the sheer number of women sharing their own stories — saying that they too had been too ashamed to share the truth of their sex lives with even their own friends for fear of having their relationship judged.

"It's so much more common than people think, which makes me wonder how many other women are secretly navigating male partners who don't want to have sex, believing it's got to do with their lack of desirability," said Kerry.

She's not wrong. Research suggests that on average, one in four men under 40 will experience erectile dysfunction, or difficulty remaining hard enough for intercourse.

This can be due to a variety of factors, but studies show low testosterone — something that impacts more and more men each year, with average testosterone levels declining around one percent per year since the 1980s — is a leading culprit.

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"Simon is in the process of discussing treatment options with his doctor now," said Kerry, "He's only 45, which is on the younger side to have low testosterone, but to be honest, we were both so relieved to have a reason for our dead bedroom."

"Hopefully, his treatment works, and he manages to get his libido back to a level that satisfies us both. But even if he doesn't, I've made the decision to be a lot more open about this part of our lives — with Simon's consent — when I'm talking to friends," she continued. 

"Most of the time the answer to your problem is not hiding inside a Reddit forum. But sometimes it is, and it's usually because someone was brave enough to share their own experience. So that's why I'm telling this story now."

*Names in this article have been changed for anonymity.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes).