From my live online chat on Improving Your Sex Life (June 5):

My former fiancée cheated on me, and now I can’t have full intimacy with a woman without feeling suspicious. If she’s sexually adept, I wonder if she’s been with lots of men, maybe still seeing others while dating me. I can have intercourse, but that’s it.

All the foreplay and wooing of sex is uncomfortable for me, as my mind’s preoccupied with whether she’s just playing a part.

Get counselling to unlock your defense mechanism that’s stuck on “Scared.” You’ve let fear dominate your emotions, thoughts, and physical responses.

Many people have a bad past relationship experience but move on to be happy and fulfilled with someone else. Trust is essential, yes, but it’s impossible if you keep playing that old movie in your head.

Read a sex manual (many are available on self-help book shelves) for sexual stimulation exercises, to get your body parts overruling your negative imagination.

My boyfriend misses all my signals. When I say, I’m going to get “waxed,” he barely looks up from his computer, even though I’ll be returning with a sexy bikini wax. If I say, I’m going to take a bath now, do you want to have one too (we have a Jacuzzi) he says he’s busy or too tired, and just wants to go to bed. What do I do short of clubbing him?

Say what you mean: I’m going to get a new-look bikini wax just for you honey. AND, let’s take a bath together so we’re fresh and sweet-scented for each other.

If he ignores THOSE clear messages, you need a different talk, perhaps along with a sex therapist who’ll bring out why he’s avoiding sex.

Doesn’t “improving your sex life” happen naturally as you learn more about each other, and show you can be trusted and won’t cheat?

I find it hard to relax with my boyfriend (dating six months) because he hasn’t convinced me he really loves me, when he’s still friends with his ex.

Suspicion between you can affect your sex life. Where there’s little trust, there’s little letting down your guard emotionally, which prevents a fully satisfying sexual bond.

But it won’t naturally develop unless you clear issues away one by one. Or, decide what you can accept and what you can’t.

Being friends with an ex does NOT automatically signal cheating. It’s how that friendship works that matters… whether he’s open with you about it, invites you when they get together, etc.

Improve your relationship, if you want your sex life to benefit.

My husband and I have an okay sex life. We understand that we’re in a different phase than when we were constantly hot for each other. We have jobs, kids, bills, and frequent extended family issues.

We’re tired, stressed, busy, sometimes just hanging on till we get to bed and breathe a sigh of relief. How necessary is it for us to work harder on sex? Are we making a mistake to think we’ll get to it later?

Yes. All those stresses, fatigue, and family issues bring out your individual responses, which may easily differ.

Sex draws you back together, reminds you that you’re a team, that you can sustain each other with love, physical pleasure, and release.

Sex doesn’t solve your stressors and other problems, but it puts them in perspective as a part of your lives… with another loving, sexual part that makes being together worthwhile.

Our time for sex is very limited between full-time jobs, and children’s needs. So we’ve learned to make the most of the time we find.

If we’re both about to shower, that’s a time and place for a quickie. If we get to bed not too tired, I’ll read something racy to him, like 50 Shades of Grey, or we’ll re-watch a movie with sexy scenes (I love an oldie, the kitchen table sex in Bull Durham).

We go for it when we can, kid about it when we can’t. But unless one of us is sick, we never let over a week go by without sex.

Wise and wonderful. Sex actually combats stress, so it’s a natural way to relax instead of letting the tension rule. “Use it, don’t lose it” has a basis in reality: the longer you go without sex, the less you miss it… and also miss its benefits, too.