After their respective long-term relationships ended, Sylvia and Charlie foresaw a future of sexual DIY. Now, after six months together, they’re having lots of fun

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

It’s indescribable how different it feels to be intimate with someone after so many years

I’ve never felt so close sexually with anybody than I do with Sylvia

Enlarge / A large family can come with some unfortunate downsides (in addition to that weird cousin). (credit: Oliver Rossi )

Analysis of genomic and behavioral data from the vast UK Biobank finally demonstrates that genes that promote reproductive behaviors come with the ultimate price.

Aging stinks. You get marks on your skin, you’re slower, you forget stuff, and everything hurts. Your joints crack and pop. Evolution has achieved so many remarkable things; how is it possible that we still have to put up with growing old?

The antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis states that your body falls apart when you’re old to pay the cost of being reproductively fit when you’re young. If the same gene has different effects (called pleiotropy) at different times of life—if it enhances your chances of reproduction when you’re young but is deleterious somehow once you get older—that gene will still undergo positive selection and remain in the population because reproduction is that important.

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Now that I want to start something deeper with a new partner, I feel that telling him what I really want will spoil everything

Please help me before I mess up another relationship! I’m a gay man who is very comfortable having no-strings fun. I have recently met someone who has the potential to be more than that and we had a few dates before getting down to it. My issue is that I seem to be more free sexually when there are no strings. I almost wish we hooked up first, because now that I know him I feel too shy to be my full sexual self in front of him – or expressing what I like kills the fun of it in some way. What is going on? What’s stopping me? It’s a pattern I want to break . My last relationship was the same; I didn’t/couldn’t communicate what I wanted for whatever reason and never really opened up. I don’t want to do this again.

Your issue seems to be that you have a fear of becoming truly intimate with someone you care about. True intimacy involves sharing exactly who you really are with your partner – and that includes letting them know what your sexual preferences are and even the things you might be ashamed of in yourself. It may seem risky but, in letting someone in and asking for what you truly want, you are trusting another person with knowledge that may increase the bond between you. Perhaps you have never let anyone know you well before. Perhaps you are afraid you will not be acceptable or lovable to a person who knows certain things about you or who sees you as a sexually creative and potent human being. You have internalised shame about this; try to let it go and just be yourself.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions .

Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Jayda has lost desire in the past, but is loving the “vanilla-plus” sex she has with Syd – who has motor neurone disease
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

We can lay naked together without having sex, or we can have sex, and I never have to worry about feeling vulnerable

I don’t fit the normative idea of masculinity – and that attracts people who are looking for something different

Dr David Brown says erectile dysfunction drug, subject of a BBC drama, could have been scrapped if a miner hadn’t spoken out

It was the ultimate serendipitous discovery: a failed heart medication that became a multibillion-dollar erectile dysfunction drug. But the blockbuster story of Viagra could have ended differently were it not for the frankness of the Welsh miners who took part in a clinical trial just before the drug was due to be scrapped, according to Viagra’s co-inventor.

Speaking before the screening of Men Up, a new BBC drama, executive produced by Russell T Davies, about the ordinary middle-aged Welsh men who took part in early trials, Dr David Brown said the drug’s unexpected side-effect was almost overlooked.

My husband and I used to be well-matched in our sex drive, but after the birth of my second child my body does not feel like my own

I have recently had my second child, who is now 14 weeks old. Since then I have had absolutely no interest in sex . I enjoy it once I start but it takes me a while to reconnect to my sexual self again and until that happens I feel extremely lack lustre about what I’m doing. I’m breastfeeding and my body just does not feel like my own . My husband and I used to have a very good sex life and our sex drive was well- matched, but now I can’t think of anything less sexy than being a mum to a baby . How do I get my mojo back?

Let nature take its course. It is entirely normal for a woman to be less interested in sex after giving birth, because focusing on your baby is exactly what you’re supposed to do. You don’t need to be anxious about whether or not your libido will return; it will do so in good time. Once your baby develops a bit more, your hormones will return to a state that supports healthy desire. Hopefully your husband will understand this and be patient. Some partners do need reassurance, especially if they are feeling a little left out as you bond naturally with your baby. Make sure he knows this phase is normal and temporary.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions .

Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Helena and Noel met on a swingers site for married couples but they’ve made a deep connection. So what’s next?

How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

When Noel began to touch me I could sense him watching and listening, trying to work out precisely what gave me pleasure

I tell my wife I’m at the office and my employer thinks I’m working from home

Uncoupled doesn’t have to mean incomplete. Eight writers - from their 20s to 90s - celebrate single life as a destination of its own

When my friend Moya and I got out of the taxi in my home city of Leeds, there was a period pad on the pavement, which set the tone for the night out we ended up having. I wanted to get with someone, and I knew it would happen because I tend to have a lot more success in Leeds than I do in London – up there, guys like girls in fake eyelashes who ignore the rule: “If you have your legs out you can’t show your cleavage.” I thought I’d found him at the first bar, when this guy introduced himself to me. He had curtains and a cheeky smile, was big and broad. Nice, I thought, here we go.

A new documentary examines the work of bestselling author Shere Hite and her absence from the feminist canon

Depending on your age, you likely either have some feelings about Shere Hite or know nothing about her. In 1976, Hite, an independent researcher of qualitative experience, sparked a “revolution in the bedroom”, as Ms Magazine put it, with her anonymous surveys on female sexuality. Namely, as she stated often and without equivocation, that women knew how to have orgasms when and how they wanted, with or without intercourse.

The Hite Report was an immediate bestseller – it has sold over 48m copies worldwide – and turned Hite into a media fixture. She was a frank interviewer and thus a lightning rod for criticism, having committed the cardinal sin of promoting female pleasure, which many took as demoting men, and then, in subsequent books, describing how men really felt (lonely, isolated, emotionally stifled) and women’s feelings on love. Facing intense backlash and lack of support from her longtime publisher, she eventually decamped to Europe for self-imposed exile, where she remained until her death in 2020. Her books went out of circulation and her notoriety as a feminist trailblazer waned. The Hite Report is, by some estimates, the 30th bestselling book of all time, yet many young feminists have never heard of her.