Embarrassed to talk about boyfriends groping in the bedroom

Couples who can’t be honest with each other about sex probably shouldn’t be engaging in it says Suzi Godson.

Q. I have just started going out with a new man. Whenever we get to the bedroom, there’s a lot of grabbing, rolling around, and heavy breathing, but it never gets as far as foreplay and certainly not to sex.

I don’t find it sexy and don’t know how to get to the next level without asking — which I would find embarrassing, because he obviously thinks that his behaviour is a turn-on.

A. Being too embarrassed to talk about sex has been the death of many promising relationships.

I know a guy who was too shy to say that it hurt when his new girlfriend started stimulating his prostate during sex.

He broke up with her as soon as he regained the power of speech.

Similarly, I know a girl who couldn’t bring herself to tell a newish boyfriend that her period was due because he had taken her to a five-star hotel for the night.

The next morning it looked like a crime scene; unsurprisingly, when they checked out of the hotel they checked out of their relationship, too.

Couples who can’t be honest with each other about sex probably shouldn’t be engaging in it. However, it is sometimes difficult to be open, particularly at the start of a new relationship.

In the first weeks or months you are trying to convey the version of yourself, and, although you don’t intend to present a façade, you do want to impress.

You put more thought into what you wear; you don’t break wind; you don’t speak with your mouth full; you tell your best and funniest stories over dinner. And in the bedroom you pull out what you think are your best moves.

What you don’t tend to do is to criticise your partner or reveal anything that might make him or her think less of you.

The trouble is that the more you withhold, the bigger the gap between what goes on in your head and what goes on in your bed.

Right now you are harbouring doubts about his Mr Bean technique and whether you are ever going to get to third base, but, if you can’t tackle these relatively simple issues, how will you broach the subjects of safe sex, condoms, and contraception?

I doubt that your partner will address them because he sounds so inexperienced that I suspect he may have L-plates beneath his trousers.

If this is the case, and you are too afraid to be explicit, how are you going to help him to learn the subtleties of successful stimulation?

That which cannot be discussed with clothes on rarely becomes easier to talk about with clothes off, yet a percentage of men and women are such slaves to their shyness that they would prefer to endure compromised sex rather than risk saying the wrong thing.

Don’t be one of them.

Despite your misgivings about his sexual style, you clearly like this guy and want to take things further, so go ahead and do it.

Assertiveness is far more sexy than reticence, so next time you get him into the bedroom, throw down a pack of condoms, unbutton his jeans, take off your shirt.

Make it blindingly obvious that you are ready to go and then use words and actions to guide him as required.

Even if he is all fingers and thumbs at the start, guys are good at following instruction.

The male brain has better mathematical and spatial skills, which is why men tend to be better at reading maps, building flatpack furniture, and programming the DVD player.

Women, by contrast, have stronger verbal and social skills, and greater empathy, which makes them better at finding sensitive ways of addressing difficult or awkward subject.

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