Sex File: My new partner is overly communicative and it's turning me off, especially in bed

He is not being communicative he is being clingy, and at a certain point "checking in" turns into "checking up on", and that's no fun at all. Picture: iStock

I fancy my new partner a lot. But I find him too attentive, especially in bed. He is very communicative - almost overly so. I get morning and evening "check-ins", daily phone calls, and when we're together he is constantly telling me how beautiful and perfect I am, and putting my pleasure above his own. I hate to say it, but it's turning me off.

On paper your new boyfriend is doing everything right, yet he is getting it all wrong. No one knows the rules of social engagement inside out, yet most of us instinctively understand that if we demand too much of another human they will withdraw from us. The complexity of each and every interaction that we have with each other involves a host of complex yet unspoken understandings, and yet when people get the rules wrong, we automatically know that we don't like it.

I can imagine that all the attention may have felt nice at first, but morning and evening check-ins plus daily phone calls is overkill. He is not being communicative he is being clingy, and at a certain point "checking in" turns into "checking up on", and that's no fun at all. I imagine you may not have been explicitly clear about what level of communication feels comfortable for you, so that's the first thing you ought to do, because there is a remarkably fine line between attentive and needy.

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Whatever the cause of your boyfriend's behaviour, it's not a healthy dynamic - and it's not a sexy one either. Relationships thrive on autonomy because "difference" creates sexual tension. In contrast, feeling suffocated kills sexual desire. I'm sure that initially it was lovely to have someone put your pleasure above their own, but eventually the sense that you have to deliver an orgasm to satisfy someone else's expectations creates unwanted pressure. 

It's fine while the rose-coloured glasses are still on, but what happens when you are not in the mood? Will he feel he has failed? Will you feel that you have let him down? At a certain point, being the centre of someone's universe starts to feel horribly like a responsibility. Life on a pedestal gets lonely.

Getting this relationship to a point of normality requires you to be more honest about who you are and what you want. Accepting the compliments, answering the phone and moaning on cue only confirms to him that his strategy is working, so you need to say no to all of it. Banish any idea that you are the "perfect" woman - there is no such thing - by letting him see you in your greying underwear. Stop responding to his incessant texts. 

Try being more sexually assertive in the bedroom if he has been encouraging you to just lie back and let him do the work. It isn't unkind to be straight with him - unless you actively change this unhealthy script, the relationship is doomed anyway. By challenging him, you will be doing him a favour (and you will be doing yourself an even bigger one) because how he responds to "you doing you" will determine whether this relationship has legs, or whether it is, essentially, a fantasy of his that you have been unknowingly indulging.

In any relationship you need to know that you are loved as much for your faults as you are for your strengths. If his behaviour has made you feel not only less attracted to him but also, perhaps, that you can't reveal the parts of you that are not perfect, it wasn't a real relationship in the first place.