Behind closed doors with motor neurone disease: How the disease affects the private lives of sufferers like Stephen Hawking

Images of the late British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking flanked by two bikini-clad women on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island have resurfaced online, reigniting public curiosity about the relationship between disability and desire.

In the world-famous scientist’s case, many have questioned whether he was physically capable of having sex.

Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, who died aged 76 in 2018, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) aged 21.

He lived with the degenerative, muscle-wasting condition for more than half a century, requiring round-the-clock care from a team of nurses for much of his adult life.

The incurable illness – which affects around 5,000 people in the UK – gradually robbed him of the ability to walk, speak, feed himself, swallow and eventually breathe unaided.

However it would not have necessarily affected his libido – or his ability to achieve an erection.

According to the Motor Neurone Disease Association, MND has ‘no direct impact on fertility, libido, sexual arousal, or ability to have an erection or orgasm’.

However, the nature of the condition, which typically starts with muscle weakness and eventually leads to extreme joint stiffness, means that people with the disease are forced to embrace different forms of sexual expression.

 

The Motor Neurone Disease Association suggests that ‘if your movement is affected by MND, your partner might need to take a more active role sexually.

‘This could include trying different sexual positions or sexual activities such as massage, oral sex or mutual masturbation,’ the charity suggests.

It also notes that some medications prescribed to people with MND could have a negative effect on their sex lives.

For instance, tablets to reduce saliva production are often prescribed to limit drooling and choking – a distressing symptom that occurs when the ability to swallow becomes limited.

However, in women these can cause vaginal dryness.

And as the disease progresses and breathing becomes more laboured, having sex can become exhausting very quickly.

‘Inter-abled’ couple Shane and Hannah Burcaw, who post about their lives to 1.85m YouTube subscribers, previously posted a video to their Squirmy & Grubs channel about how they maintain intimacy in their marriage.

Shane, 33, is wheelchair-bound due to spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that causes progressive muscle weakness, while his wife of six years Hannah, 30, is able-bodied.

He explained that he ‘can’t straighten [his] legs fully, and that means some positions don’t work for us,’ adding that ‘disabled people can and do have sexual relationships’.

His wife said that the couple instead aim to ‘have fun’ and ‘be creative… we found other ways of doing things.’

In 2024, Shane told Yahoo! News: ‘Like most other married couples, we have a sex life. That’s shocking to some people who think people with disabilities don’t have physical desires.

‘I’m sexual, just like most able-bodied men. Sex for us doesn’t look the way it does in every romance film. But that doesn’t make it any less worthy, satisfying, or fulfilling.’

Hawking was part of two well-documented inter-abled relationships; firstly with his wife Jane Wilde, who he wed in the 1960s and with whom he shared three children, and later with Elaine Mason, who he met in 1985 when she was hired to work as his nurse. 

They married a decade later in 1995, but divorced in 2006, amid accusations of spousal abuse – which both Hawking and Mason denied. 

In the 2020 book Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics, written by his close friend and former colleague Leonard Mlodinow, it is claimed that his sex life with his first wife had been marred by his illness. 

Mlodinow wrote: ‘[Hawking’s] condition meant that Stephen had always been a completely passive sex partner as well as a fragile one. 

‘Over time, his fragility caused Jane to worry that sexual activity might kill him… Making love to him became a frightening and empty experience. Even the thought of sex with him felt unnatural, and her desire for him faded. He had the needs of an infant and the “body of a holocaust victim,” she said.’ 

He also described Hawking’s relationship with Mason as being the distinct opposite. 

‘For her part, Elaine wasn’t put off by Stephen’s physical condition. Just the opposite: she was drawn to it,’ he wrote.  

Whilst it is not known if Hawking enjoyed an active sex life, and there is no suggestion that he was intimate with the women in the photo – who have since been identified as his ‘long-term carers from the UK’ – the scientist’s passion for being in the company of women is well documented.

After his death in 2018, stripclub owner Peter Stringfellow revealed that he was a regular visitor to his Soho nightspot. Stringfellow told The Independent: ‘He’s a man who lives within his brain and still manages to feel the overwhelming power of sex.’

He later recalled the first night he met Hawking at his Covent Garden club, where he was told in no uncertain terms that he was there purely for entertainment – and not to discuss astrophysics.

Stringfellow said: ‘I went and introduced myself and said: ‘Mr. Hawking, it’s an honor to meet you. If you could spare a minute or two, I’d love to chat with you about the universe’.

‘Then I paused for a bit and joked: ‘Or would you rather look at the girls?’

‘There was silence for a moment, and then he answered: ‘The Girls’.’

And it wasn’t just in London that the professor was reported to enjoy visits to lap-dancing clubs, with accounts also placing Stephen Hawking at the California gentlemen’s club Deja Vu.

He was also confirmed to be a semi-regular visitor of Freedom Acres, a swinger’s club in California. A member told Radar: ‘I have seen Stephen Hawking at the club more than a handful of times.

‘He arrives with an entourage of nurses and assistants. Last time I saw him, he was in the back ‘play area’ lying on a bed fully clothed with two naked women gyrating all over him.’

Tim Holt, University of Cambridge press officer, later confirmed that Hawking had frequented the swinger’s club.