Boyfriend makes me do all the work in bed

Suzi Godson says anyone who consistently delivers sexual satisfaction and demands nothing in return is devaluing themselves. 

Q. My boyfriend is quite lazy in bed and makes me do all the work.

I don’t mind that sometimes — but how do I coax him, without being rude, to put in more effort? 

Should I worry that it means he can’t be bothered to make the effort for me?”

A. To coax is to try to obtain something from someone through a process of gentle and gradual persuasion. Forget that.

You need to stop pussyfooting around this issue and confront it head on.

Nobody minds doing the lion’s share occasionally, but when inequity becomes routine, it is simply not fair.

Sex is meant to be a team sport, and although no one is standing on the sidelines with a stopwatch, mutual satisfaction requires a roughly equal distribution of give and take.

At the moment your boyfriend is having it all his own way. He shouldn’t be making you do all the work, but equally, you shouldn’t be complying.

Anyone who consistently delivers sexual satisfaction and demands nothing in return is devaluing themselves.

In contrast, when two people are mutually invested, they both work much harder at nurturing their relationship.

Your boyfriend’s behaviour is unattractive.

Presumably, when the relationship started you were enthusiastic and happy to please him.

Of course there is nothing wrong with that, and you probably believed that any inequality would even out as the relationship matured. However, that hasn’t happened.

Have you communicated your needs to him? If not, you must.

There is a proven correlation between a couple’s capacity to talk about their sexual relationship and the level of sexual satisfaction they experience, so if you want things to change, you have to speak up.

Simply tell him that you are fed up doing all the work in bed and that you want him to make more effort.

How he responds to that conversation will tell you everything you need to know about his level of commitment to you and to the relationship.

The ideal outcome would be that he realises his mistake and promises to pull himself together and make sex more equal between you — at the same time creating an open discussion about your sex life, which is essential in any healthy relationship.

However, if he doesn’t immediately and effusively promise to change his ways, his behaviour may, as you suspect, indicate a lack of commitment.

That’s a difficult concept to process when you are still invested in the relationship, but it is definitely one that you need to consider.

The end of a relationship is not always defined by an obvious catalyst, such as infidelity or conflict.

Instead, it can be a gradual process of withdrawal, which happens over a period of months, or even years, as two people slowly disconnect the emotional, sexual, social and financial bonds they have constructed during their time together.

Sometimes one partner begins this process unbeknown to the other.

They make a unilateral decision that the relationship is over for them, but for convenience they say nothing until they meet someone new, at which point they jump ship, leaving the other partner understandably feeling bereft.

They are often left feeling foolish too, because when they think back, they realise they knew something was wrong, but either they were afraid to challenge it, or they tried to challenge it and their partner dismissed their fears as unfounded.

It is no consolation to be proved right in that situation, but it does illustrate how important it is to listen to your gut.

Sometimes we refuse to acknowledge what our instincts are telling us because we don’t think we can cope with the consequences, but staying in a one-sided sexual relationship does untold damage to your self-esteem and is unsustainable in the long term.

Change is intimidating, but it is often for the best, so the question you need to answer is not “how keen is he?”, but “how happy are you?”

Send your queries to [e-mail]