QUESTION: My new boyfriend is 15 years younger than me, and while we get on famously out of the bedroom, our sex styles are very different. At 41 I know what I like and prefer to keep it simple and leisurely, yet he enjoys incorporating an assortment of energetic positions at a million miles an hour. While I adore his enthusiasm, I’m starting to feel too old for all this. Is this inexperience on his part or have I lost touch with the current bedroom trends? And how do we reconcile our sexual differences?
ANSWER: I blame Madonna and Demi Moore for your predicament. They have fuelled the myth that women in their 40s and 50s are all yoga-honed, sexual athletes with the stamina of top-flight courtesans.
Indeed, you can hardly move for media stories about cougars and their doting younger men, suggesting a de facto parity between the two groups’ amorous energy.
Just look at the word “cougar”, with all its connotations of a predatory animal.
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to conclude that your boyfriend thinks you want, and expect, a bedroom gymnast. But back in the real world, I would say that for every middle-aged woman who wants her sexual pleasures in the fast lane, there are ten who are happier taking the slower, scenic route.
A friend who finds herself single at 50 was recently asked if she wanted to join a dating website for cougars. The site’s founder said she would give her free membership as, while they have plenty of young men signed up, they don’t have nearly enough older women.
My friend declined, saying: “No thanks, I’m looking for someone more my speed.”
Another good mate is in almost exactly the same position as you, with a lovely partner 15 years her junior. She says they don’t live together as she couldn’t cope with his sexual appetite seven days a week, though they adore one another. So you are hardly alone.
Your boyfriend’s whirlwind multi-positional style certainly bears all the hallmarks of youthful enthusiasm. It sounds as if he’s recently found a copy of the Kama Sutra, but hasn’t realised that it’s supposed to offer a lifetime’s inspiration rather than the work of two sessions.
Does he read lads’ mags? If so, bear in mind that most are heavily influenced by pornography and tend to suggest all women are up for anything, all the time.
They offer a plethora of “hot sex” tips, which are aimed at the gullible, rather than the experienced. Most couples, in fact, tend to rely on a fairly limited repertoire of tried-and-tested positions.
One thing I can assure you is that you haven’t “lost touch with current bedroom trends”. There’s nothing in the latest sex manuals that would shock the Romans, 17th-century Japanese Shunga artists or the late Alex Comfort (author of the 1972 version of The Joy Of Sex).
One thing that may have changed, however, is that the cowering New Man of the Nineties, who was raised in the shadow of feminism and felt guilty about penetrative sex, is pretty much an extinct species. His successor is less abashed about his appetites and many women welcome having a franker partner.
It sounds to me as if your 26-year-old partner is doing what most of us do at his stage in life: he’s experimenting. It also sounds as if he neglects the slow delights of foreplay in favour of wham-bam action.
Now, there’s no point being an older woman with a younger guy if you don’t tutor him a little. Tell him you adore his passionate energy, but that you’d appreciate it even more if he learned a bit of restraint and modulation. The thrilling fast movements of concertos are as nothing without the emotional swell of slower sections.
You need to tell your chap that most women (young ones, too) find it hard to respond properly - or climax - if there aren’t slow sections to lovemaking.
Buy him a copy of Nicole Daedone’s excellent book Slow Sex, which bestselling author Tim Ferriss called “required education for every man on the planet”. The book explains why women can become desensitised with too much hard thrust and insufficient gentle stimulation.
I am not saying you should totally jettison his approach to sex, but you need to coax him to integrate it with your own requirements.
Generosity is the key: the best lovers will happily perform sexual acts that give more pleasure to their partner than themselves, if that kindness is reciprocated.
The point is that if the two of you get on swimmingly in every other walk of life, it can’t be beyond you to make things work in bed.
Yes, a man your own age might be more attuned to your sexual pace, but there are no guarantees. I know women dating older men who are fast and furious in the sack, but then there’s the bad-back and dodgy-prostate brigade who barely make love at all.
Maybe you should relish the fact that you’re in bed with someone who’s reaching for you, rather than his cocoa. - Daily Mail