Catherine Townsend: Sleeping around

I should have known dark clouds were on the horizon of my budding romance when James, a 36-year-old screenwriter with a passion for Buddhism, let it slip on our fourth date that all his past lovers had told him he was fantastic in bed. This kind of ominous remark is the sexual equivalent of the sinister movie character who says: "I'll be right back," before heading down into the dark basement, never to return. Still, things seemed to be going well as we undressed each other back at his flat.

"Look into my eyes," he murmured as we got into bed; then, after about 20 seconds of gazing at each other in the missionary position, it was all over. When he assumed that I'd had an orgasm, I was on the point of correcting him when he said: "That was so intense for me, I felt like I was looking into your soul," and almost started crying. I wanted to burst into tears myself, but for entirely different reasons.

Communication is everything in bed, but I've found out the hard way that once you deflate a man's ego, everything else tends to deflate along with it. So I held my tongue. The next night we tried again. This time he insisted I stare into his eyes for so long that they morphed into one giant Cyclops eye. He was utterly convinced that this would make us burst into spasms of pleasure. I was left wondering how often he plucked his eyebrows.

I was reminded that great sex is relative during a Coco de Mer Japanese rope bondage class at Soho House on Sunday, during which I was frustrated by my inability to tie the perfect knot. "You may think you have the perfect technique, but if you aren't living in the moment with your partner, it's all pointless," Midori, the instructor, told me.

My girlfriend Amy, who hated her ex-boyfriend's oral technique so much that she told him she was ticklish "down there", agreed. "You have to tell him the truth, because you are not helping him - or the next girl he sleeps with - by lying."

So I decided to tell James that I wanted him to stop looking into my eyes and venture lower during a calm moment while we were discussing the Tao over green tea. "I don't quite know how to say this," I blurted out, "but my clitoris is about an inch away from where you think it is."

He reluctantly agreed to stop the staring matches, and give my ideas a shot. But after about five minutes he became decidedly un-Zen like when he said: "So how much longer do I have to do this? None of my exes have ever had a problem coming the regular way."

I told him the chemistry just wasn't right and that we had to end things. I think he was relieved since he obviously preferred his fantasy views to the rather messier reality. In the spirit of James' obsession with cosmic balance, I choose to believe that everything happens for a reason - after all, without bad sex, there would be no such thing as great sex.

I have to confess that I nicked a bottle of merlot from his wine rack to share with my flatmate that night. Unlike James, it felt great going down.

c.townsend@independent.co.uk