This is how we do it: ‘I’d distract myself to avoid climaxing – until the time I said out loud, “I need to take the bins out”’

Ana Sofía, 33

I knew I would have some kind of baggage around sex due to my previous relationship, but I didn’t quite know how it would manifest

Alfredo and I got together after my previous (seven-year) relationship was coming to an explosive end. We had just been friends but it wasn’t long before we became an item. I’d dreamed of sleeping with millions of people as soon as I became single, but it didn’t turn out that way. I only slept with one other person before this became an exclusive thing. And I think that’s due to the sex I was having with Alfredo.

It was really exciting because I’d been in a fairly sexless entanglement that had brought me down mentally. So to be out of that and sleeping with someone who was actually interested in me was so refreshing. He was so attentive – I’d never had someone go down on me so much before in my life. It was amazing.

I knew I would have some kind of baggage around sex due to my previous relationship, but I didn’t know how it would manifest. Alfredo and I have now been together for three years, we live together, so things have slowed down, though we make sure to have sex at least once a week. I’ve noticed that I’ve lost that initial burst of confidence I had, which I think is a hangover from my previous relationship.

I have a fear of doing things wrong; that it will push him away and make him not want to have sex with me. This stems from my own insecurities, but there has been the odd time he’s said something unintentionally that’s made me feel self-conscious, like when he said he didn’t like blowjobs. I’m trying to work out if he means mine specifically or blowjobs in general. He’s said it’s the latter, but I can’t help feeling it’s me, which is a bit stressful.

But he also has his own insecurities. When we have penetrative sex, he usually climaxes before me, sometimes after a few minutes. He’s so considerate with his hands and tongue that it’s never been an issue. There’s have only been a couple of times where I’ve thought: I really fancy more today, so it’s a shame he’s already finished.

We’ve now got to the point where we both want to develop things in the bedroom, experiment and just try to have the best sex we can.

Alfredo, 32

Now that I have sex consistently, it’s like it’s fallen down on my priority list, because in theory we can have sex whenever we want

Ana Sofía is my first girlfriend. At the beginning it was extremely exciting. Her previous relationship had recently ended so I assumed that she wouldn’t want to get into something straight away, and that our sex life might end at any point. I think that elevated the sex and our desire.

So it’s been interesting to see how my relationship with sex has changed as we’ve formalised our partnership. I’ve noticed that now we have sex consistently and whenever we want, it has fallen down my priority list. Now that I have it, I need it less. The fact that things have slowed down is not a problem because, in the end, I’m still having more sex than ever before. If you boil it down to numbers, I’m still winning.

The biggest challenge is the expectation of my prowess. I never thought climaxing too early would be an issue. But it happens sometimes and I think that was because alcohol or other drugs – which can delay ejaculation – were often a social lubricant when I was single. Now Ana Sofía and I mainly have sober sex. It’s not a big problem as there are ways around it. I try to do things to control quick release like counting how many deep thrusts I do in comparison with shallow ones. I used to try thinking about other things, but I’ve stopped that because sometimes my mind really does just go elsewhere. Once I realised I’d forgotten to take the bins out, which I then said out loud while we were still having sex.

But I think the main way we get around it is foreplay. I try to ensure that Ana Sofía has at least one orgasm. That’s really important to me. When I was a teenager I read a book called She Comes First about the importance of women climaxing first. All the sex education I’d previously had was just about the very functional ways of sex. So from this I learned about the importance of cunnilingus and all these other ways of pleasuring women. That for me was an early eye-opener.