Suzi Godson

I recently came across a video clip on YouTube that features a guy who looks about your age talking about how to give good oral to a woman.

His advice is: “Talk to your girlfriend because communication usually makes things a lot better. Don't just dab down. You need to take time, warm them up. Girls are like irons. Guys are light switches.”

OK, he loses the plot after the first sentence, but he is right on the money with the talking thing.

Sex advice: My wife has discovered my bondage gear

Now the secret's out a reader wants to know if he can persuade his partner that bondage is a good idea

Sex advice: I want to meet a man after the menopause

I have come through the menopause and am ready to meet someone new. How can I ensure that my body is ready?

BACKGROUND

• What to do about painful erections

• Should my boyfriend get circumcised?

• I'm embarrassed to have sex when I'm sober

• Do I need protection during oral sex?

• Does size matter?

We are all creeped out by the idea of being exposed as sexually inexperienced or ineffective, but sex has a learning curve like everything else. Unless people are brave enough to discuss what does or doesn't work for them, they are destined to grope around hoping to press the right buttons.

We don't have enough sexual partners in our lives to be able to presume that we know it all.

According to The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, a man has an average of 12.7 sex partners; a woman, 6.5. So whether you're 27 or 72, there is no shame in asking for sexual guidance. No one can learn to be a great lover without feedback.

More women orgasm through oral sex than intercourse but many feel anxious about it. They stress about smell and taste, and relinquishing control.

And they often feel that there is no point in allowing themselves to get into the experience of oral because no man ever has had the patience to stay the distance.

Ian Kerner, author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (HarperCollins, £14.99), says: “The average man can maintain genital thrusting for two-and-a-half minutes before ejaculation, but the average woman requires 15 to 18 minutes of persistent clitoral stimulation to have her first orgasm “That twelve-and-a-half-minute difference is a gaping maw of frustration on the part of women.”

Cunnilingus is all about perseverence. And consistency - but with enough variation to keep it interesting.

Basically, most women prefer a slow, gentle technique. “Fence painting”, lapping up and down, can get boring, but continually changing pace is a distraction. Gentle suction is a nice variation and - although it's an old trick - tracing the letters of the alphabet with your tongue.

Wetter is generally better, Use props if necessary, including one of the many flavoured edible lubes on the market. When she's properly lubricated, slip two fingers inside her and curl them in behind her pelvic bone. Keep your tongue working on her clitoris and use your fingers to pulse against her G-spot. Check with her that your fingers are in the right position.

Most importantly, if she tells you not to stop, don't.

Suzi Godson is the author of The Sex Book (Cassell, £16.99) and The Body Bible (Penguin, £16.99)

Dr Thomas Stuttaford

Sexual preferences are as varied as tastes in food and wine. One person's delicacy may seem poisonous to someone else. Recently I found myself having lunch at a sports club. The man next to me at the bar, who had the strained face of the obsessive exerciser, ate only a plate of stewed dark green vegetable leaves. As I crunched my way through peanut brittle bars and drank a couple of beers I wondered what tensions, deprivations, ambitions and generally unreasonable parental influences had motivated him. He probably glanced at the peanut bars and beer and thought the same about me. As with food, so with sex. Other people's preferences may seem bizarre, even repellent, to those who don't share them.

Oral sex has become standard, accepted practice in Britain only in the past 70 years, although it appears frequently in Victorian and earlier pornography. In his report on women's sexual behaviour, Kinsey often referred to this change in attitude to oral sex.

In Britain, the Second World War and global travel allowed people to learn about the sexual habits of other nations and begin to accept oral sex. When I started medicine in the 1950s, I was surprised when my young, female continental patients told me that they regarded oral sex as a halfway house between kissing and full sex. At that time oral sex was still regarded here as being morally and emotionally far more risqué than penetrative sex.

You don't say whether your girlfriend enjoys other forms of sexual practice. Nor do you say whether she dislikes being the active partner expected to give oral sex - or whether she dislikes being passive and receiving it. Kinsey found that far more women enjoyed being the passive partner. He also showed that a woman's enjoyment of oral sex was very dependent on her sexual experience. Seasoned lovers enjoyed it more than the less experienced. Another study confirmed Kinsey's findings. It revealed that more than 70 per cent of women enjoyed receiving oral sex, but that 64 per cent did not enjoy performing oral sex and being the active partner.

In any form of oral sex, active or passive, certain rules need to be followed. Although some men or women enjoy the animal smells of the poorly-washed partner, most prefer their lovers to have had a bath. There is also considerable evidence that more women enjoy an active role if the man has been circumcised. Others don't like being the active partner as they fear gagging.

Women also may be shy about their appearance, not out of prudery but because they feel that it doesn't live up to the shiny magazine ideal. Being totally exposed - as they are during oral sex - may be more than they can tolerate.

If your girlfriend doesn't enjoy sex, you may have to find other ways of fulfilling yourselves sexually. What can you do about it? Ask her what she does enjoy about your lovemaking and build on this. In any case have a frank discussion, preferably after you have both read The Sex Book, written by my colleague Suzi Godson.

Dr Thomas Stuttaford, the Times doctor, spent many years working in a genitourinary clinic

Times recommends

• Live chat: Thrifty ways to update your winter wardrobe
• Is anybody out there really listening?
• Nutrition Q&A: Will eating late make me fat?