Sex File: He only speaks Spanish in bed and I find it off-putting

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My new Spanish boyfriend and I communicate well in our day-to-day life, but he always reverts to his mother tongue when we get intimate. I don't speak Spanish and I've asked him not to do this. But he says he can't help himself. It's off-putting to have no idea what he's saying in bed. Is he doing it on purpose?

A lot of people find the idea of sex with someone who speaks another language incredibly sexy. Not being able to understand a sexual partner creates a sense of "otherness" and the tension between physical intimacy and linguistic separation can heighten arousal for both of you.

Try to focus not on the words coming out of his mouth, but on non-verbal communication and body language. Even when two people speak the same language, the gestures you make, the way you move, your facial expressions, the tone of your voice and how much eye contact you have can make a bigger impact than the things that you actually say.

In fact, research by Anthony Guye-Vuilleme at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne found that more than 65% of the information exchanged during face-to-face interactions is done through non-verbal communication. When words fail you, actions can tell someone what you want to say, often even more effectively. Indeed, Matthew J Hertenstein, a professor of psychology at DePauw University in Indiana, has established that touch is such an incredibly effective way of communicating emotions that people can decode feelings such as anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude and sympathy simply by watching the way other people touch each other.

Perhaps you need to try to tune in to his touch more than his speech, until his language improves. When a person is trying to master a second language, they still think in their mother tongue. That means that when your boyfriend has a normal conversation with you he makes an initial mental construction of what he wants to say in Spanish, then translates it into English before he speaks. It is a laborious process that requires a lot of concentration. The effort it takes to speak in a second language is the reason why, during sex, a man who is sexually aroused and physically absorbed will tend to revert to his native language. Jean-Marc Dewaele, a professor in applied linguistics and multilingualism at Birkbeck, University of London, has done a great deal of research into multilingual relationships. In 2016 he interviewed 429 people who were in cross-cultural relationships and half of them found that expressing themselves in a foreign language limited their capacity for emotional communication. For bilingual speakers, swearing, praying and saying "I love you" literally felt different when expressed in a native rather than a foreign language. Basically, an adopted tongue only becomes a "language of the heart" when a person is extremely fluent in speaking it.

In Dewaele's research female participants reported that the difficulties they had in communicating their emotions made them feel less authentic at the start of the relationship. Because women tend to be better communicators than men, in an effort to overcome the language barrier Dewaele found that women were more likely to end up adopting their partner's language. Is that something you could try? Even if you just learnt the phrases your boyfriend typically uses when you make love, you would at least be able to understand what he is saying and feel less alienated from him.

I think Spanish is an emotionally intense and sexy language, and learning a few words would show that you are willing to reach across the cultural divide and make an effort to understand him. It could be fun trying a new way of communicating during sex - and besides, all relationships should involve a mix of give and take.

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