‘My new man compares me to his exes’

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Have you gently demonstrated what pushes your buttons? Picture: Steve Lawrence

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QUESTION: Everything about my new boyfriend is great on paper: he’s charming, handsome, clever and a hugely successful businessman. However, when we have sex he makes remarks about my occasional failure to have orgasms. According to him, previous partners didn’t have this problem and he seems tetchy at the extra foreplay required to help me climax (sometimes not bothering). Am I really so abnormal?

ANSWER: Your boyfriend doesn’t sound that charming to me and, if he’s so clever, how can he be so dim about the female orgasm? Let’s not forget that a significant number of females find it hard, or impossible, to climax at all.

According to research from the Kinsey Institute, only 29 percent of women report always having an orgasm during sex. Meanwhile the Hite Report famously reported, back in 1976, that 70 percent of women won’t experience a climax via penetrative sex alone.

In fact, the only person with a problem here is your boyfriend. He seems to have a retrogressive attitude to female sexuality and I wonder why. Even if it’s true that all his previous girlfriends climaxed every time via penetrative sex (although this is statistically improbable, especially when you consider that he’s hardly the most considerate lover), that’s no reason to make you feel inadequate in bed.

I do wonder - if he’s as handsome and successful as you say - whether some of his past lovers faked orgasms to keep the relationship going, realising he had scant tolerance for women who didn’t deliver on command. That’s the problem with faking: it can lead men to believe they’re better lovers than is the case.

I note you don’t mention the words kind or patient in the list of adjectives attributed to your man. Is it possible he’s so focused on his own sexual pleasure he doesn’t give a hoot about yours?

It doesn’t sound as if he’s prepared to go out of his way to make you zing. The best lovers are generous in bed and are actively turned on by flipping their partners’ switches. The fact your boyfriend isn’t prepared to go the extra mile augurs badly for your long-term happiness.

If he can’t be bothered with foreplay now, I don’t see him delivering in ten years time. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, it is possible he suffers from insecurity more than from sexual stinginess. He may be one of those men whose professional success, allied to good looks, makes it doubly difficult to admit to inexperience in bed. He certainly doesn’t sound like a man who’s used to admitting to missing the mark.

People who lack erotic confidence can lash out, blaming others before they themselves are identified as the culprit. Perhaps he feels clumsy when he’s called on to do foreplay. Have you gently demonstrated what pushes your buttons? Some men who seem careless and abrasive in bed become kind, attentive lovers if steered past their machismo.

You will never have an equal relationship while you are seeing to his sexual needs, but he is not tending to yours. Only you can make the final call, but passion won’t blossom when one partner makes the other feel a loser in bed. There’s no point in being ‘great on paper’ if you lack largesse in real life. - Daily Mail

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