Question

I have been with my boyfriend for over three years. Almost every time we have sex, I go down on him; but he only returns the favor about 20 percent of the time. He gave me oral sex a lot more at the beginning of our relationship. How should I let him know that I would like for this to change without hurting his feelings?

Answer

You bring up a very common complaint. There are often times that we would like to change, increase or decrease certain activities in our sexual repertoire with our partner. People often become comfortable within sexual patterns after being together for several years. Of course, the difficulty in changing matters is knowing how talk to your partner about this issue and trying to figure out what it all means. As you can imagine, communication is a huge issue in relationships and it can be even more difficult to talk about uncomfortable topics.

What does this all mean? There may be several reasons why your partner is not going down on you. One possibility is that he may not know that you actually like it. Unless you communicate verbally (outright telling him) or nonverbally (spontaneously wrapping your legs around his neck) that you enjoy this activity, he may not have a clue that this is something that you would like to engage in on a regular basis.

Another possibility is that he may feel as if he is unskilled in giving oral sex. Some men experience performance anxiety around sexual expression. They receive messages from society that they must be a "stud" and please a woman no matter what it takes. He may need to be reassured that you enjoy it when he performs oral sex on you.

An additional possibility is that he may feel that oral sex is wrong. There are individuals who were raised to think that genitals are dirty or smelly and that it is certainly not a place to put your face. You will never know the answers until you talk with him about his feelings on this topic.

Here are some ways to address the issue with your partner:

• Find a neutral time to talk. Don’t bring up the issue in the middle of sex play. There are one of two ways to go on this: Tell him that you would like to talk with him about an issue and set up a time to talk at home (bringing up this issue in public can be hard). Or, bring it up when you are talking about sex -- whether it be driving in the car, talking on the phone, etc.

• Talk to him openly. Tell him that you would like to talk to him about something that feels uncomfortable to you. Let him know how much you care about him and especially how attractive and sexy that you find him. Let him know that you miss him performing oral sex on you. Tell him that you would like for him to do it more. See how he feels about your words and the go from there with the conversation.

• Praise him. While you are being sexual with him, tell him how desirable you find him and when he does perform oral sex on you, reinforce his behavior by saying that you love what he is doing. Then, when you are out of the sexual situation, let him know how much you appreciate him caring about you and making changes to help better your sex life with him.

Dr. Sandor Gardos

MyPleasure provides up-to-date and useful sexual education materials in combination with a store that allows people to buy, try, and learn about new aspects of sexuality. We believe everybody deserves a great sex life.