Sex advice with Suzi Godson: Girlfriend doesn’t realise I need foreplay

My new girlfriend seems to think that men get turned on automatically — that she doesn’t need to touch me before sex and that all the foreplay should be directed at her. I also love to be kissed and teased, but if I want that, I have to ask her every time. How can I make her realise that I deserve foreplay too?

The kind of mutual, egalitarian foreplay you describe is a relatively recent expectation. Until the 1970s and 1980s the word “foreplay” was interchangeable with the words “blow job”, and oral sex was never automatically expected to be reciprocal. Things have changed, thank goodness, and sex is much more balanced.

Increased awareness about “real” — as opposed to “idealised” — female sexual function challenged the inequity between male and female orgasm and democratised sexual pleasure. Most adults realise that women take longer than men to achieve orgasm but are unlikely to do so if they don’t receive sufficient, or appropriate, clitoral stimulation.