My wife has decided she’s done with sex – could it be the menopause?

After eight years together, she says she loves me and there is no one else. But she can’t tell me why she no longer wants to be intimate. I am afraid this will end our marriage

My wife has decided she is done with sex. She hasn’t given a particular reason. I asked if there may be a deeper resentment about me – but she said not. I asked if she perhaps had feelings for other men – but she said not. She is in the later stages of menopause – eight years ago, when we first met, it was a bigger part of her life. But last week she just said that although she loves me very much, and there are no issues, she doesn’t want to have sex or anything else. She wants me to be there for her as a celibate partner, indefinitely, leaving me, faithfully, in limbo. I love her, but I feel the lack of physical intimacy could break us up.

No doubt your wife’s decision is devastating for you, and you may have to decide if this new scenario is possible for you, but it would probably be worth trying to glean more information to help you to understand “Why this? Why now?” Menopause can have a devastating effect on a woman’s libido, and there can be all kinds of other issues such as genital dryness and pain. Learn more about this, then demonstrate your understanding about it to your wife, and inquire about being helpful to her in some way, such as helping her get to doctors’ appointments and being available to listen to her physical and emotional concerns. A sexual compromise might eventually be possible through gentle negotiation, but I imagine it would have to be very much on her terms at this point. Some women elect to boost their hormone levels in one way or another, which can help restore libido, but that is an individual choice. After eight years together I do not recommend that you make a hasty decision to walk away, as there are many avenues to explore.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

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Published: May 13, 2025, 7:00 am

US tech firms secure AI deals as Trump tours Gulf states

Nvidia to sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia and Cisco also signs deal with UAE company G42

A swath of US technology firms announced deals in the Middle East as Donald Trump trumpeted $600bn in commitments from Saudi Arabia to American artificial intelligence companies during a tour of Gulf states.

Among the biggest deals was a set signed by Nvidia. The company will sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia, with a first tranche of 18,000 of its newest “Blackwell” chips going to Humain, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth-fund-owned AI startup, Reuters reported. Cisco on Tuesday said it had signed a deal with G42, the AI firm based in the United Arab Emirates, to help the company develop that country’s AI sector.

Published: May 13, 2025, 6:26 pm

ChatGPT may be polite, but it’s not cooperating with you

Big tech companies have exploited human language for AI gain. Now they want us to see their products as trustworthy collaborators

After publishing my third book in early April, I kept encountering headlines that made me feel like the protagonist of some Black Mirror episode. “Vauhini Vara consulted ChatGPT to help craft her new book ‘Searches,’” one of them read. “To tell her own story, this acclaimed novelist turned to ChatGPT,” said another. “Vauhini Vara examines selfhood with assistance from ChatGPT,” went a third.

The publications describing Searches this way were reputable and fact-based. But their descriptions of my book – and of ChatGPT’s role in it – didn’t match my own reading. It was true that I had put my ChatGPT conversations in the book, but my goal had been critique, not collaboration. In interviews and public events, I had repeatedly cautioned against using large language models such as the ones behind ChatGPT for help with self-expression. Had these headline writers misunderstood what I’d written? Had I?

Published: May 13, 2025, 4:00 pm

UK government to launch AI tool to speed up public consultations

New system will analyse responses 1,000 times faster than a human and save millions, ministers claim

An AI tool has been used to review public responses to a government consultation for the first time and is now set to be rolled out more widely in an effort to save money and staff time.

The tool, named “Consult”, was first used by the Scottish government when it was seeking perspectives on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as lip filler.

Published: May 13, 2025, 11:01 pm

Microsoft to lay off 6,000 workers despite streak of profitable quarters

Cuts follow push to slim management ranks, despite headcount still being up year-on-year in March

Microsoft says it is laying off nearly 3% of its entire workforce.

The tech giant didn’t disclose the total amount of lost jobs, but it will amount to about 6,000 people. Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. About 55% of those workers were in the US.

Published: May 13, 2025, 4:33 pm

FaceAge: the AI tool that can tell your biological age through one photo

What if a simple selfie was enough to show scientifically how well or badly we’re ageing? That moment’s getting closer …

Name: FaceAge.

Age: New.

Published: May 13, 2025, 2:55 pm

Trump strikes a blow for AI – by firing the US copyright supremo

As the UK debates AI and copyright, Trump hands a gift to big tech, drones proliferate along the India-Pakistan border and a robot dispenses methadone

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Sometimes it helps me to write by thinking about how a radio broadcaster or television presenter would deliver the information, so I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. Today in tech news: questions hover over the automation of labor in the worker-strapped US healthcare system; and drones proliferate in a new conflict: India v Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. But first, how fights over AI and copyright take very different shapes in the UK and US.

Published: May 13, 2025, 12:14 pm

The Cybertruck was supposed to be apocalypse-proof. Can it even survive a trip to the grocery store?

Thanks to poor engineering and Elon Musk, Tesla’s road rage-inducing street tank can’t even win over its core demographic: doomsday preppers

The Cybertruck answers a question no one in the auto industry even thought to ask: what if there was a truck that a Chechen warlord couldn’t possibly pass up – a bulletproof, bioweapons-resistant, road rage-inducing street tank that’s illegal to drive in most of the world?

Few had seen anything quite like the Cybertruck when it was unveiled in 2019. Wrapped in an “ultra-hard, 30X, cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton”, the Cybertruck was touted as the ultimate doomsday chariot – a virtually indestructible, obtuse-angled, electrically powered behemoth that can repel handgun fire and outrun a Porsche while towing a Porsche, with enough juice leftover to power your house in the event of a blackout. At the launch, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said the truck could tackle any terrain on Earth and possibly also on Mars – and all for the low, low base price of $40,000. “Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes [that the] apocalypse could come along at any moment,” Musk said. “Here at Tesla, we have the best in apocalypse technology.”

Published: May 14, 2025, 11:00 am

Readers reply: If you were prepping, what would your top five items be?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts. This week’s followed the Spain/Portugal outages

If you were prepping, what should be your top five things to hoard in light of the recent power outages in Spain and Portugal? Alina Ahmad, Johannesburg

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Published: May 14, 2025, 10:51 am

Baroque breakout hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is unlike any game you’ve played before

This might be the most French game ever – but there is more to the small-scale development of this belle époque-inspired beauty than you think

Much has been made of the fact that the year’s most recent breakout hit, an idiosyncratic role-playing game called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was made by a small team. (It has just sold its two-millionth copy). It’s a tempting narrative in this age of blockbuster mega-flops, live-service games and eye-watering budgets: scrappy team makes a lengthy, unusual and beautiful thing, sells it for £40, and everybody wins. But it’s not quite accurate.

Sandfall Interactive, the game’s French developer, comprises around 30 people, but as Rock Paper Shotgun points out, there are many more listed in the game’s credits – from a Korean animation team to the outsourced quality assurance testers, and the localisation and performance staff who give the game and its story heft and emotional believability.

Published: May 14, 2025, 2:00 pm

Despelote review – a beautiful, utterly transportive game of football fandom

Panic; PC, PS4/5, Xbox
Set during Ecuador’s 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign, this fascinating, semi-autobiographical game gives you control of the life of a soccer-mad eight-year-old

Video games have been simulating football since the 1970s, but they have rarely ever thought about simulating fandom. You can play a whole international tournament in the Fifa titles, but what they never show is the way the competition seeps into the everyday lives of supporters, how whole towns are overtaken, how a World Cup can become a national obsession. The way most of us experience the really big matches is through stolen moments of vicarious glory on televisions and giant pub screens, surrounded by friends and family and the sounds and images of real life.

This is the territory of Despelote, a beautiful, utterly transportive game about childhood and memory, set during Ecuador’s historic 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign. Football-mad eight-year-old Julián – a semi-autobiographical version of the game’s co-designer Julián Cordero – has just watched the team beat Peru, but now four more matches stand between Ecuador and the World Cup finals in Japan and Korea. Structured as a series of short, immersive tableaux, Despelote gives us control of Julián as he goes about his life, buffeted by his parents and teachers between shopping trips, car journeys and school lessons.

Published: May 14, 2025, 9:00 am