I hate it when my girlfriend asks for sex

I am uncomfortable about my girlfriend taking the lead in our sex life. We have great chemistry but I feel too much pressure if I’m taken by surprise. Is it unusual for a man to feel like this?

You are not the only man in the world to feel this way. However, most confident, communicative, committed couples take turns, because if they didn’t, sex would never happen.

At the start of a relationship no one needs to think about “initiating” because life is a full-time sex fest, but by the time the lustometer has been restored to normal, it becomes rarer for couples to find themselves in the same mood, at the same time, under the same roof.

More usually, one partner feels like sex while the other is, say, busy at the chopping board making dinner. When this happens, which partner compromises is a crucial indicator of the health of their sexual relationship.

No matter how politely he expresses it, if the budding chef rejects his partner’s advances, he undermines her confidence. If, however, he smiles, washes his hands, dries them and follows his lover into the bedroom, he knows that his generosity will be appreciated and reciprocated.

Within intimate relationships, sex is a resource and that means it can be swapped for rewards (intimacy, orgasm, gratitude). Unsurprisingly, research by the sociologist Dr Susan Sprecher has found that an alternate initiation pattern is related to greater relationship satisfaction too.

Sprecher identified two main reasons for this; firstly, the partner who initiates sex can be confident that their partner will not reject their advances, and, secondly, the responding partner is reassured that they are sexually desirable.

Importantly, by swapping those roles, both partners get the chance to experience feeling confident and desired.

In an ideal world, couples would talk to each other about their sexual desires but in reality the gulf between what men and women want, and what men and women do, is as wide as it ever was. In my 2012 sex survey of 3,500 people, for example, one of the questions was: “Who normally initiates sex in your relationship?”

The results for men showed that 60% of men initiated sex, 30% said that both partners did, 6% said their partner did and 8% said neither initiated sex.

When women were asked who initiated sex, their answers were contradictory; 46% of women said that both partners initiated sex, 33% said their partner did, 16% said that they did and 7% said neither of them did.

A similar discrepancy also cropped up in a 2012 sex census, carried out by British counselling organisation Relate, where 20% of women said that they initiated sex, but when men were asked who initiated, only 8% said it was their partner.

Of course, not all couples conform to the idea that both should be initiators and there are a minority, like you, who prefer to be the one who initiates sex because they don’t like, or know how to process, unanticipated sexual advances.

Usually, people who feel intimidated in this way have some form of anxiety disorder. Perhaps you worry that you won’t be able to perform if sex is “sprung” on you. But if you were to relax and let your guard down, your body would respond perfectly normally.

Above all, you need to be honest with your girlfriend about how you feel. She may feel humiliated or defensive at first, but if you explain that your issues stem from insecurity she should understand. I suspect that even explaining your anxiety would go some way to alleviating it and talking would bring the two of you closer together.

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