DEAR ANDREA: Lately my boyfriend has taken up grabbing me inappropriately in public. I've never had a problem with that at home, but this constant grabbing in public bothers me a lot, and I've told him as much. He seems to think I was overreacting and is certain I'm mad at him for "something else." I just don't like having my rear grabbed – or worse yet, nipples pinched – in the gym or grocery stores.

Am I overreacting? This is my first real relationship. I don't know if I'm just too much of a prude, but it seems to me that if I ask him to stop doing something, he really needs to respect my wishes. Should I press the matter, or should I just get that stick out of my ass?

Love,
Love Bites (just not in public, please)

Dear Bites: If you happened to have a stick up your ass, and you happened to remove it, I can think of a likely place to insert it next, can't you?

I don't really think his behavior merits violent retaliation, but you got it right the first time: if you ask him to stop doing some sex thing to you, he needs to stop, period. Your relative inexperience and self-described rectal rod-bearing have nothing to do with it. I doubt you're being a prig, anyway, while I'm quite convinced he's being a jerk.

On second reading, the gaucherie of his behavior and the assholery of ignoring your requests that he stop doing it pale before the really irritating part: his insistence that you're "mad at him for 'something else.' " This is one of the greatest sins against good couples' communication – he's saying, in short, that he knows you better than you know yourself, and handily burying your complaint in the process. Now it's no longer about your objections to his behavior; it's about you and your hidden resentments and how you're incapable of communicating what you really mean ... oh, ugh. I'm getting irritated just thinking about it. I imagine by now you're indeed mad at him for something else.

You'll have to sit him down, quite apart from any new nipple-grabbing incidents, and subject him to yet another tedious processing session. Explain once again that you, although by no means only you, do not enjoy being prodded and poked in public. Let's hope he realizes the error of his ways soon, since if he can't change now, he sure as hell isn't going to start later.

Love,
Andrea

Dear Andrea: I'm a 22-year-old male, and my fiancée of five years is 21. When we first started dating, she was seeing another girl who was very controlling, told her what to wear and how to act.

Our sex life has fallen into a boring same-old same-old. I find myself begging for sex. She never tells me what she wants. She lays there as I poke and rub, and depending upon the noises she makes, I know if it's good or bad. It's like a game where I have to guess the combination before she gets uninterested. She loves things at first and can't get enough, but soon she's back to the laying there. I've talked about all this, and she overreacted once by saying, "Fine! We just won't have sex again!" Lately she says she's sorry and will try and change, which just makes me feel bad because I feel like I'm the controlling type like in her last relationship.

Love,
Codebreaker

Dear Breaker: I usually consider introductions like yours to be mere column-clutter, and I chop them off first thing. In your case, though, I had to keep it, reread it, and count backward on my fingers to make sure I'd seen what I thought I'd seen: you've been engaged five years and she's 21, so her controlling lesbian relationship took place when she was 16? I was about to write, "Dude, that's fucked up," when I realized most teenage girls are involved in (not necessarily sexual) relationships with other girls who tell them what to wear and how to act. Most of those who escape such treatment do so by being the ones who inflict it. There's simply no inference of anything to be drawn from her having allowed herself to be bullied and bossed by other 16-year-old girls. None. Let it go.

You must also let go of your belief that any of this has anything to do with you. There's something going on with her, and I'm no more interested in playing guessing games about her than you are, so we'll have to leave it at that. If it's within her ability to change and become more communicative, great. That is, once again, about her, not you. Let her change. It's not like you're telling her she'd better go out for cheerleading or else.

Love,
Andrea

Note: Big philosophical sex-geek contretemps coming up in the blog (www.altsexcolumn.com/mt). Don't miss it.