Q I’ve been with the same wonderful man for ten years. I am now 28, he is the only man I have ever been with and we are due to get married next year. The only problem is that I have never had an orgasm with him (although he doesn’t know that). Is that a sign that there is something wrong with the relationship? Or is it merely our technique?

A Something wrong with the relationship? That implies that your fiancé is in some way responsible for the fact that you haven’t told him the truth for ten years. Something wrong with “our” technique? Don’t you mean yours? The “wonderful man” to whom you are engaged is oblivious to the fact that you fake your orgasm. As far as he is concerned, everything is fine.

Good sex is not all about achieving orgasm and faking it nearly always starts out as a well-intentioned attempt to please a partner and preserve self-esteem. Women who have not educated themselves about sex mistakenly believe that being “good in bed” means that they should be having a penetrative orgasm every time they have sex.

When it becomes apparent that this isn’t happening, rather than ask their partner to help, they begin to fake it. A minority don’t know how to give themselves an orgasm, while a majority are simply too self-conscious about the length of time, or the amount of stimulation, that they seem to require to reach orgasm. Convinced that their bodies are somehow defective, they fake it to prevent their partners getting bored or thinking less of them.

They then find themselves stuck in a disastrous, vicious circle.

I don’t mean to sound harsh but at 28 years old, you have had decades of exposure to the kind of information about sex that previous generations were desperate for. Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective was first published in 1970, and Lonnie Barbach’s For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality has been knocking around since 1975.

By the time you turned 18 the internet had made it virtually impossible to avoid the subject of sex and I imagine that a curious woman would have to work quite hard now to remain ignorant about the complexities of female arousal, the comparative rarity of vaginal orgasm and the necessity of clitoral stimulation. Websites such as Go Ask Alice, WebMD, iVillage, and Cherry TV (just google them) are packed with useful advice on this subject. There are useful articles on the difficulty of achieving an orgasm at www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex_relationships/facts/orgasmtrouble.htm and www.goask alice.columbia.edu/1955.html and on faking orgasms at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4422584/, as well as a stream of advice to a young woman on how to masturbate to orgasm for the first time at www.medhelp.org/posts/Womens-Health/Never-had-an-orgasm/show/30866.

In her essay Sex is Not a Natural Act the psychologist Leonore Tiefer says that the “belief that sexuality comes naturally relieves our responsibility to acquire knowledge and make choices”.

It means that “you don’t have to talk with your partner about your love life — it will all just happen automatically”. If you had only been brave enough to say something all those years ago your lovely fiancé would undoubtedly have been sympathetic and willing to help, but admitting that you have been faking it for the past decade undermines your entire sexual history together and it would, I imagine, be very hurtful for him to find out the truth now.

Your only option at this stage is to tell him that you have been finding it difficult to achieve orgasm lately — blame hormones/stress/medication — and suggest that you need more stimulation. Armed with your newly acquired understanding of the way your mind and body work, and possibly a new vibrator, give him specific instructions about what feels good for you.

Don’t get hung up about how long it takes and, crucially, don’t fake it. You will get there in the end. Good luck.