Sex advice: My new boyfriend is playing hard to get. What should I do?

From: The Times

You are lucky to have found someone nice to date because the older women get, the harder it is for them to find a partner. It is partly because so many men prefer to date downwards. Women can obviously date downwards, too. Between 2002 and 2005 match.com reported that the number of women on its database who were willing to date a man who was ten years younger had nearly doubled, but ticking a box that says you would be willing to date a younger man and actually getting a date is a very different thing.

The same dating agency recently had to resort to advertising free memberships for men to balance the enormous gender inequity that was in danger of sabotaging its business.

Demographics don't help the situation. From birth onwards, the male/female sex ratio alters in favour of men. Although more boys are born than girls every year, testosterone-fuelled risk-taking behaviour means that boys have a much higher mortality rate. By the time a girl is 18 there are 51 girls for every 49 boys in the population and that imbalance becomes even more pronounced later on because there are double the number of gay men as there are lesbians, and more men wind up in prison.

Fishing from an ever decreasing mating pool forces women to compromise. Men who might not have been considered ten years earlier begin to look a lot more attractive. And a guy who has failed to deliver so much as a peck on the cheek after six dates is given the benefit of the doubt. Yes, yes, he might be just shy, but presumably you have created the right conditions for some kind of physical interaction to occur and he has resisted the bait. He may also be worried about sexual performance.

Men's testosterone levels decline with age and by the time a man is 60, he has a 60per cent chance of suffering from some form of erectile dysfunction, but that wouldn't be enough to prevent a man from putting his arms around a woman he fancied.

Your “nice man” is obviously interested in you, but I think he is hiding something. Have you considered whether he might be seeing someone else? It would make sense.

The fact that you have had no physical interaction means that he is not technically cheating on anyone, but he is not exactly being honest either. I reckon you have two options: either have a full and frank conversation with him about everything, or make yourself a lot less available. It is human nature to lust after that which we cannot have and if he is genuinely interested, he will pursue you even more enthusiastically.

Suzi Godson is the author of The Sex Book (Cassell, £16.99) and The Body Bible (Penguin, £16.99)