My partner wants to start talking dirty to me

They are candid, provocative - and totally at odds with each other. Our resident 'sexperts' offer conflicting advice on Londoners' sexual dilemmas...

Q: My partner wants to start talking
dirty to me from now on. I don't feel comfortable with this. What shall I say?

Esther Walker says...

I've often wondered what it is that makes one person decide that a bit of bedroom chatter is exciting and fun and another think that it is just the most awful and embarrassing thing since they farted in front of their maths class when they were 13.

Talking dirty is certainly a totally un-British thing to do. True British sex is surely a very basic, but not unfeeling, act in between drinking cups of tea and setting up a really excellent railway system in someone else's country.

But there does, in this sceptred isle, seem to lurk a percentage of dirty-talkers. Is it something that happened to them in their childhood? Did they feel their first stirrings of lust while watching Jackanory? Was there a coincidental tumescence while listening to Just a Minute?

It's occasionally people who are normally rather quiet who spring to life after hours, surprising you by spewing out all manner of filth until dawn. Others, who you normally can't stop talking except by stuffing things in their mouths, clam up as soon as you take your shoes off. Neither is necessarily better or worse than the other, although I appreciate that you are embarrassed by the prospect of your partner's smutty mutterings. What it really comes down to is what your partner expects you to do while they are jabbering away.

Do they want some kind of response? Because it's one thing being talked at but quite another being expected to conjure up lines of purple prose yourself. Another consideration is just how dirty your partner is going to get. There is a certain sort of person who, in the heat of the moment, enjoys flinging insults around the bedroom. While you might be prepared, perhaps, to listen politely to a bit of light banter in order to humour your loquacious lover, you really don't want to be startled by being called names.

If I were you, I'd express your concerns to your partner — whether they are that you feel you will die from embarrassment, or whether you are worried that they will get carried away and call you a slut — but also agree to try it, if only to show a bit willing. If you want to shut your partner up in the bedroom for good, your argument will carry far more weight if you at least appear to be open-minded.

Nirpal Dhaliwal says...

In the heat of the moment all kinds of things are said, even by people who love each other, that would never be spoken outside the bedroom — including things that in other circumstances might be regarded as racial or sexual abuse. I've been called all kinds of things that I wouldn't tolerate in a different scenario, even if a lot of it did happen to be true.

What makes such language mutually acceptable or exciting is the rapport of the couple involved and their shared taste. Some people like to be as base as possible during sex and lower the tone to the lowest possible common denominator; others like to spell out their fantasies in explicit detail. Whatever the contents of your carnal discussions may be, it should always be within the limits of what both of you want.

The mistake that a lot of people make, especially men, is confusing salacious conversation with trash-talk. Calling your partner filthy names out of the blue while you're having sex with them can have a disconcerting effect, leading him or her to believe that you're expressing your true hidden feelings. Most people like things to be steamy in bed but few want to feel they're being treated with contempt.