QUESTION: "I’m a 40 year-old woman and I’ve been married for ten years. I’ve never had an orgasm with my husband and I been faking it all along, but I can have them on my own. How do I tell my husband the truth, and how do we go about solving the issue--having orgasms together?"

ANSWER: Oh boy. After ten years of faking it, breaking the ice with your husband on this sensitive subject is going to be like breaking an iceberg – and I assume you saw Titanic. Unless you throw a life preserver at this situation pronto, I fear your marriage is going to go down with the ship.

So I’m going to suggest that for the time being you navigate around that iceberg and let it melt in your wake rather than confront it head–on. Listen, the truth is you’re not alone: the #1 complaint of women about sex is an inability to consistently reach orgasm. That’s because most guys know more about what’s happening under the hood of a car than the hood of a clitoris, and this powerhouse of female sexual response is often neglected entirely during intercourse.

So first and foremost you need to start having orgasms during sex. That means taking some responsibility for your own pleasure and actually communicating (not faking it) about what works and what doesn’t work. The truth is that guys crave feedback and guidance; we’re just too inhibited to ask for it. It’s time to freshen up your “sex scripts,” and incorporate some pleasurable new techniques and positions into the act.

The truth is that even those women who do orgasm consistently from intercourse need assistance in some manner, either through oral stimulation, manual stimulation or a sex toy. Men tend to heat up and cool down quickly during sex, whereas women need more time to simmer, so your husband needs to spend more time on foreplay and taking you much closer to the point of orgasm prior to penetration, if not through your orgasm. (Hell, I didn’t write She Comes First for nothing).

Then, when you’re really close to orgasm, you need to transition into a sexual position that will provide persistent, clitoral stimulation, like the female superior position (woman on top) or a male superior position (missionary) where you’re both focused on deep penetration with lots of pelvis-to-clitoris pressing rather than rapid “porn-star” thrusting.

Your guy needs to get “cliterate,” and after ten years of faking it it’s time you stepped up to the plate to teach him. And with the innate female capacity for multiple orgasms, it’s never too late to make up for lost pleasure. Trust me, once you’ve taken the lead and introduced some fresh new sex scripts into your life, that iceberg will be nothing more than water under the bridge.