There is one universal sex tip. It is simple, teachable and obvious

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In the fifth season of the British cringe comedy series Peep Show about two dysfunctional flatmates, Mark tells Jeremy that, for the first time in his life, he thinks he’s getting sex right. This is thanks to new partner’s very explicit instructions. “That’s cheating,” Jeremy complains. “Anyone can please a woman if she tells you what to do. You’re not allowed to ask. That’s the whole point.”

I’ve spent a year trying to figure out why straight women are statistically last on the list when it comes to having pleasurable sex, but that one minute of television pretty much sums it up.

I’ve asked 55 women about the hottest moments of their lives and have never heard the same answer twice. When it comes to sex, the things that light us up are so specific and individual, I suspect that if I asked 1,000 women I would get 1,000 different answers.

When I asked women what they think their partner did to enable that one overwhelming moment, however, there was far less variety. Instead, I heard three answers over and over. The first two – great circumstances and great chemistry – happen by chance.

But the third answer is astonishingly simple – and obvious. It takes no luck, no money and can be learned. It is: “He just asked.”

Everyone responds to physical touch in different ways. Every woman’s fantasy life is different. Given the infinite diversity of taste, the best way to understand the person you are with is by asking them what they want.

“Ask your lover” is the only universal sex tip. Yet few men are taught it. Instead, through Hollywood films, pornography and locker-room talk, they learn that they should already know the answer (impossible). As Jeremy says to Mark, they are taught success is about the right guess.

Maya*, who is in her mid-50s, once assumed her sex life was over. With her husband of 30 years, it certainly had been. But when she started dating post-divorce, she met a man who changed her mind.

With him she went from “a fairly vanilla experience of sex” to a “whole multitude of experiences”. This partner was adventurous and knowledgable, and together they went on a “deeply physical” journey. Through this relationship she learned what she really likes and what her body is capable of.

In the early stages of this discovery period, she felt self-conscious about her inexperience and her appearance. She “hadn’t really ever experienced really great sex”, she says. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

But her partner kept asking about her fantasies, her desires and what felt good for her. He would bring her toys to try, to see what she might like. Slowly she opened up.

She learned that with the right setting and partner, she is multi-orgasmic and can experience orgasms from varied stimulation. Although that partner is out of the picture now, Maya still hums with sexual energy. It’s an energy she has brought into new relationships. Now she knows what she wants and is confident asking her partners what they want too.

Like Maya, some women I’ve spoken with did not know how to answer the first time someone asked them what they wanted. Others felt liberated, or relieved. And some women, upon realising that asking is the only trick, grew incandescent with rage. Not at the man who asked but at all the men who did not.

Talking may be the only key to a fulfilling sex life – especially in long-term relationships – but for many people, sex is easier done than said. So how does one get good at discussing sex when our genitals are synonymous with the word “unmentionables”?

Betty Martin, the founder of the School of Consent, suggests starting with a game. Given the paucity of good sex education, and the awkwardness and vulnerability that sex talk can entail, Martin says without deliberate practise “it’s amazing that anybody has a good time at all”.

For Martin, learning to ask and answer lies in action, not description. Which is why the Three-Minute Game is her cure-all.

The game is played in pairs and consists of two questions. In Martin’s version, these are: “How would you like me to touch you?” and “How would you like to touch me?” Each player takes turns asking and answering, giving feedback along the way, for three minutes at a time. The goal is to make the implicit explicit, teach turn taking and bring clarity to the sometimes murky waters of who does what and for whom.

Playing in this way expands your repertoire as you learn to ask for new things, Martin says: “So many women have never had an experience of being touched exactly the way they want. They just don’t know it’s possible.” But in the game, “nothing happens except what you asked for”.

At first, the game will feel awkward, she cautions, but, like most good things in life, it gets easier with practice.

An older couple embrace, with the man slipping the strap of a camisole from his partner’s shoulder

I also sought out men who women had nominated as excellent lovers, which is how I came to talk to Paul.

Paul also asks questions and takes a creative approach to discovering his partners’ desires. He asks them to write a list. He says the act of writing something down makes you really, rationally consider what you do and do not want. If you write that you want to be tied up, for instance, you “already have the picture in your mind”. So you have to ask yourself twice before you say, “I’m really writing that”.

Writing lists is also a game with a name: Yes/No/Maybe. Playing involves writing down every sex act and scenario you can imagine (or taking one of the several hundred prefab lists you can easily find online), and sorting them into three columns: Yes for “I think I’d like this and want to try it”; Maybe for “I’d be prepared to try this if the circumstances were right”; and No for “I never want to do this and I don’t want you to do it to me”. While you’re working on your list, your partner gets busy doing the same. Then the two of you get together, compare lists and discover all the ways in which you are compatible.

For Paul, a Yes/No/Maybe list is “like a perimeter” around where to explore.

A sex psychology researcher, Dr Justin Lehmiller, has found that people who share their fantasies with partners tend to have more fulfilling sex lives – but also that not many people are willing to do so. When he surveyed more than 4,000 Americans on their fantasy lives, he learned that supposedly taboo sexual desires like BDSM and group sex are actually incredibly common. More than half his research participants report having these kinds of fantasies sometimes, which means many couples may have a lot of unexplored common ground.

Paul says that during sex there is pressure from a young age to know everything about yourself, what you like and how to get it. This feels like a form of insanity to him. “We don’t say that for food, we don’t say that for travelling, we don’t say that for friends,” he says. Sexual exploration, just like travelling or trying a new hobby, can yield many self-discoveries. This is why he has learned to ask his partners many questions, “and I love to pay attention to their answers”.

There’s a reason the Three-Minute Game and Yes/No/Maybe, both of which are sometimes used by sex therapists, require mutual disclosure. Great partnered sex is an act of co-creation, in which all parties can take turns to ask, listen and learn.

Before Maya re-entered the dating pool, she always thought of sex as “something that’s quite organic … just this sort of fluid thing” that did not need much discussion.

But the partner who changed her approach to sex planned in advance and asked her for feedback. She says he was curious about her body: “He was like, ‘Oh, I wonder what she’ll think of this. How will this feel for her?’” That attention made her feel, “completely sexy and desired”. She learned to trust him, to relax into the situation and be “excited for … what’s next on the menu”.

* Name has been changed