Sex File: He only wants to make love in one position 

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I have been married for 20 years and have noticed that recently my husband only wants to make love in one position, which apart from being boring, makes me worried he doesn't want to make eye contact any more. What can we do?

Sexual experimentation does not automatically equate to satisfaction. For example, lots of couples only have penetrative sex in the missionary position because it is such a good all-round position. It allows you to touch, feel, kiss, speak and, most importantly, see. If you can't see each other, you are presumably in spoons.

Spoons is a nice, easy position and perfect for an early morning nuzzle. It is slow, sensuous and low-impact and provides whole body skin-to-skin contact, so it can be a deliciously erotic way to start the day. However, as a go-to sex position it is problematic because you can't kiss each other and it restricts eye contact.

During sex, we communicate with our lips and eyes as much as with our words, so there is something unsettling about your husband limiting himself to a position that makes non-verbal communication almost impossible. Unless the two of you are having a verbal dialogue during sex, which I doubt, you have no way of knowing what your husband is thinking or feeling while you are making love, and the same is true in reverse. That is more than boring. It completely depersonalises your experience.

After 20 years of marriage, I wonder why don't you feel able to voice your opinion and simply ask for change. I suspect the real reason you haven't challenged him about it is because you are worried that he will say he doesn't "want" to see you when you are having sex.

Perhaps he likes having sex like this because it means that he has the option to fantasise without feeling that he is being scrutinised. It is much harder to do that when looking straight at your partner.

Because most couples never talk about their sexual fantasies, there tends to be a lot of guilt and insecurity around them, but fantasy is completely normal. The British Sexual Fantasy Research Project (which had about 19,000 participants) estimates that 96% of males and 90% of females have fantasised at some point during sex, but because most of these fantasies revolve around someone other than a present long-term partner, 95% of people never share their fantasies with another person. For example, in a recent survey by Lovehoney of 1,300 people 46% of women and 42% of men admitted fantasising about someone else when having sex.

Although fantasy is not real, it can cause real feelings of jealousy and hurt if the fantasy is about a third party. However, unless your husband's fantasy sex life is creating emotional distance between the two of you, it doesn't really mean anything. For middle-aged men such as your husband who may be beginning to experience unreliable erections, fantasy can be really helpful in maintaining an erection. He may be embarrassed to talk to you about it and hiding behind your back may be a form of avoidance.

If this is the case (and you probably have some inkling of this already), you need to talk to him about seeing a GP. Erectile dysfunction can be a sign of underlying health problems, so he ought to get checked out and if there is nothing wrong he can get a prescription for Viagra and Cialis.

It is also possible that your husband prefers spoons because it is the least energetic sex position in the book. If it works for him because he has mobility problems, fine. If he is just being lazy, you need to be more demanding. Sex is meant to be pleasurable for both partners so if you are being short-changed, speak up.

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