What if I can't satisfy my older girlfriend?

I am 28 and I have a new girlfriend who is 44. I am worried that she is much more experienced than me and I might not be able to satisfy her in bed

Your concern is admirable but unnecessary. Being 44 doesn’t turn a woman into a sexual diva and your new girlfriend is likely to be just as anxious as you are about being judged on her sexual performance.

If you are lucky, the fact that she is older may mean that she is more confident, more competent and more communicative, but don’t count on it. Age and experience don’t automatically go hand in hand, so it’s possible she may also be nervous.

No matter how experienced you are, every new sexual relationship induces feelings of apprehension and excitement in equal measure. This is particularly true if you or your girlfriend have been single for a long time. If you haven’t had sex for a while, getting naked and being intimate with someone you don’t know very well can be hugely intimidating. You don’t say anything about your girlfriend’s sexual history, but the average number of partners throughout a lifetime for a woman is 7.7 and if, for example, she married young and has only recently divorced, she could be less sexually experienced than you are.

Regardless of age or experience, it takes time to get to know a partner, and the most compelling emotional connections tend to happen outside the bedroom. Talking to each other is fundamental to the bonding process and this is especially true when it comes to sexual compatibility and accommodation.

Most difficulties in the bedroom are caused by, or aggravated by, one or both partners’ inability to communicate about sex. In contrast, couples who find it easy to talk about sex can often reconcile quite radical sexual differences without it interfering with their intimate connection.

It is well worth trying to talk about sex before you actually have it

It doesn’t have to be a blunt “I like X. What do you like?” interrogation. It is better to frame it around your experiences and what you have learnt from them. By revealing your intimate past and what it has taught you, you give your partner valuable insights.

You also give her permission to be open about her sexual history and preferences. If you enable this level of openness from the get-go, you will set a fantastic precedent for your relationship moving forwards.

The fact that your new girlfriend is 44 is unlikely to make much difference to sex, but it will almost certainly make a difference to the way people view your relationship. This is despite the fact that if you were 44 and your girlfriend was 28, the gap would be less remarkable. Brace yourself for a juggernaut of questions and odd reactions. Relationships between older women and younger men are contrary to social norms, and no matter how liberal people pretend to be, they find it difficult to shed their view of the world.

The 24-year age gap between Brigitte Trogneux and her husband, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, was heavily scrutinised during the French elections, and Sam Taylor-Johnson, at the age of 42, faced similar scrutiny when she began a relationship with the 19-year-old actor Aaron Johnson.

In the end, though, the age gap is immaterial. What is really worrying you is that your partner is more experienced than you, but that is true of many couples. The only sexual relationship you need to focus on is the one that she is in now. With you.

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