QUESTION: My other half is very serious in bed. He never laughs when we have sex and if I get giggly he becomes upset, accusing me of “trivialising” our passion. My ex liked to laugh while making love and humour kept us together for 20 years. How can I lighten up my new love?
ANSWER: It would be easy to dismiss your boyfriend as a killjoy for trying to stifle your giggling, but you’d do better to try to understand his perspective.
Might it not be a positive thing that your partner’s not afraid to be sincere about sex? After all, many British men rush to joke about anything that threatens to overwhelm them with emotion, but your bloke appears to welcome deep feelings. Perhaps sometimes - just sometimes - sex isn’t a laughing matter.
And, just as you may misinterpret your partner’s feelings, isn’t it possible the poor man doesn’t really understand why you laugh? If he’s at all prone to sexual insecurity (and who isn’t?) he may feel you’re belittling his efforts to satisfy you.
Even the most thick-skinned of souls can be thrown off by a sudden ill-timed guffaw.
He may feel you’re laughing at him, when you’re just suddenly tickled by the absurdity of sexual intercourse. Of course, there’s another strong possibility here. Perhaps you’re the one who feels anxious in bed.
Is it possible you’re scared of revealing too much of your real self, preferring to hide behind sniggers when things threaten to get serious? You enjoyed easy laughter with your ex, yet admit he wasn’t a soul mate. Can’t humour be used to sidestep tricky questions about your romance?
You both need to talk through the issues to overcome mutual anxieties. It seems to me that if he understands your giggles are an expression of unalloyed pleasure, he’ll be unlikely to feel threatened by them.
If you can share jokes outside the bedroom, you must have a pretty good chance of learning, eventually, to laugh inside it. Once the serious business of high passion is out of the way. - Daily Mail