the times Saturday January 1 202210 Body + Soul
things. Either you are not interested
in sex in general or you are not in-
terested in sex with your new
partner. If it is the former, I would
suggest asking a GP to check why
you may be struggling with your
libido. If it is the latter, I would
suggest that in answer to your
question, yes you are wrong to hold
back because I don’t think it will
achieve anything.
If you really do still feel that you
don’t want to have sex with your
partner, that could be because you
simply don’t have sexual feelings
for her, and it would be better not
to continue the relationship. Or it
could be that you really are trying to
delay things in a misguided attempt
to protect yourself. Either way, you
need to speak to her, share your con-
cerns and talk it through together.
It’s only fair that she knows where
things really stand.
Send your questions to
[email protected]compatibility is not something that you
can predict. You can do all the planning
you like, but most of us will have experi-
enced the disappointment of finding
someone who appears to tick all the right
boxes, only to discover that having sex
with them was disastrous. Similarly,
people who seem to have nothing in com-
mon on paper end up getting married and
living happily ever after.
Every relationship moves at its own
pace, but I can’t help having doubts about
the viability of a relationship where one
partner is really keen to have sex and the
other doesn’t want to. In the early stages of
a new relationship the drive to have sex is
normally so strong that rational thinking
goes out the window. Your brain tells you
to hold back and wait a while, but your
body has no intention of listening. If the
sexual chemistry between you were there,
I don’t think you would be able to resist. A
2017 YouGov survey of 1,300 people found
that 35 per cent of 35 to 44-year-old men
had sex on the first date and 60 per cent
had done so by the third date.
The ease with which you can resist your
partner’s invitations suggests one of twoSuzi Godson
Sex counsel
I want to wait,
but she doesn’t
A
Sexual compatibility is really im-
portant, so I can understand why
your new partner wants to find
out whether that aspect of your
relationship is going to work sooner rather
than later.
I’m pretty sure your previous relation-
ships didn’t fail because you were getting it
on — they likely failed because you were
not right for each other. If you can, instead
of allowing your past to hold you back, try
to think of it as a learning experience;
thanks to those failed relationships you
are now clear about what you are looking
for in a partner.
I appreciate that you have been hurt and
may be scared of investing in this relation-
ship in case it fails, but stringing it out with-
out committing to it could feel quite insult-
ing to your partner. If it doesn’t work out,
you get to withdraw without losing any-
thing. In the meantime, she has held out
for however long “a while” is in the hope
that it will give you time to heal, not realis-
ing that you are trying deliberately to hold
back from getting too emotionally in-
volved. She is right to try to take things to
the next level because genuine sexualQ
I have started dating
a new woman. We
are in our forties.
Before this relationship I had
a bad break-up and some
unfulfilling flings, so I want
to hold back from having
sex for a while. However, she
seems to be losing patience
and says we need to know
if we’re compatible in the
bedroom as well as in the
rest of our relationship.
Am I wrong to delay sex?
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nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrIf the sexual
chemistry were
there, I don’t
think you’d be
able to resist