Over 90% women don't tell their partners what they like in bed

Shocked yet?

If you’ve heard me speak in public, you’ve heard this anecdote. A few years ago, I was on a Feminist Book Society panel called Let’s Talk About Sex. The discussion was going so well that the facilitators did a poll. Not a mentimeter poll or a Survey Monkey either, but a real life, spontaneous, show-of-hands poll. It was pre-Covid days, life was simpler, there was no Zoom or Miro board or padlet (and no one had heard the words social distancing, and you didn’t have to do a questionnaire before giving people hugs).

The event was sold out, the discussion was sizzling, temperatures were rising. The words ‘painfully intense orgasms’ had come up more than once. (Okay, that was just me.) The poll question was: do you tell your partner what you like in bed?

It was an eyes-closed poll. And only one woman out of a hundred-odd raised their hand.

One woman.

Years later, and after telling this story a few too many times, it still shocks me. 99% women of all ages and sizes and colours, presumably many based in London, in 2019, felt like they couldn’t tell their partners what they liked in bed. I’ve rounded down to 90% in my title because, of course, this was not a big or representative sample.

I’d love to know what this is about. What are we doing? Minding our partners’ ego? Don’t want them to know that we know how to give ourselves pretty good orgasms? This will interrupt the flow - and what will happen then? What is the anxiety? What’s holding us back?

One pet peeve of mine is novels. Romance novels in which a woman knows nothing about her body and this miraculous guy comes along and he apparently knows everything because he is a sex machine (a sensitive sex machine too, he can talk, he can comfort her when she cries, his fingers are long and hard) which basically makes him god and he teacheth her how to haveth orgasms.

Like, what? Come again?

Only in films and books do men have psychic superpowers in which they’ve figured out how ALL women’s bodies work. They’ve discovered the skeleton key, the master key, the holy grail to women’s sexuality. In real life, people, partners, of whatever sex, don’t know. They can’t know because pleasure is complex. It’s made up of physical triggers, sure, but also of fantasy, history, baggage, fears, insecurities, desire, hormones, monthly cycles, and more.

It’s made of whether or not someone has other things on their mind - the neighbour’s chihuahua that is barking non-stop, a funny thing that happened on the Number 38 bus, something hilarious the kids said, oh, and the fact that a child has a playdate and that’s not been put on the calendar and it clashes with their tennis lesson. It’s also made of whether or not their partner has been attentive, looked at them, spoken to them, hasn’t just ignored them for the last week and has now raised their eyebrow and this means - are you up for it, babe? It’s made of so many things.

Maybe in very casual hook ups it’s harder to say what you want? I mean, when you’re sitting on a sink in a public loo, knickers dangling off ankles, and it smells a bit murky, and you really need a pee, maybe then a long chat about left, right, deeper, a bit harder, g-spots and the absolute importance of nipples, maybe that’s hard to pull off. But generally? Do we not talk in our relationships? Do we not give feedback and vital information? Our we so insecure we can’t handle our partners’ feedback?

I’d love to know what this is about, so please tell me. Serious and funny answers allowed.

Why do women not tell their partners what they like in bed?

Possibly a frank discussion about masturbation and female pleasure is needed?

Then there’s me, charity shop shirt from a Royal Trinity Hospice in Angel in London. And the orange, very, very soft cardigan from a Humana secondhand shop in Barcelona.

Meantime, check out my latest Regency in which women do, indeed, tell their partners what they like in bed. Which cover do you like? The American Avon/HarperCollins one (photographic) or the cartoony illustrated one? I swear it’s the same book, and I’ve set it in the Devonshire Jurassic Coast. Deep secrets, the occasional smuggling and sword fights, a few steamy scenes, fantastically funny characters, and more. Boston Globe called my last one deeply romantic and politically astute. If you buy it (UK here, USA here tell me. I’ve got exclusive bookmarks from the fabulous artist Ciara Flood who you can find on insta @floodciara)