Sunday's Observer had a quite remarkable account of a 29-year-old woman's epiphany about the true nature of sexual liberation, which reveals why the Government's proposals to make sex and relationships education compulsory in all England's schools are right - in as far as they go. Indeed her "'nearing-thirty' sex revelation" would have made a perfect case study for our forthcoming book, Just Sex: Is it ever just sex?:

"I felt like dating had become a burlesque comedy where we all pretended we were emotionless and cool - when in actual fact dating was a fruitless, haunting quest for a snatch of intimacy, a warm body, a less-lonely night. Sex had become an obligation, not a choice. I wanted sex to be, quite simply, special again.

"I was utterly incapable of separating sex and emotion and was sick of pretending otherwise. I was sick of having sex before I knew someone properly, sick of physical intimacy preceding emotional.

"I'd been unable to separate sex and intimacy.

"I still think sex is an integral part of a healthy relationship, but holding back from sex until you've forged a strong, solid friendship ensures that sex doesn't dominate a relationship, that it becomes another component holding equal weight with trust, friendship, honesty, mutual support.

"These days I feel like I've rediscovered an intimacy that was somehow absent in my sexual life - I guess we live in an age that almost celebrates the death of intimacy. For me, it was only by stopping and taking time out, concentrating on my work and friendships, that I could actually step back and see that my sexual liberation was perversely trapping me in destructive relationships, while intimacy had become something elusive, insubstantial, disappointing, surreal - a utopia of sorts."

Sex education alone, however good, would not have helped the 29-year-old who described her "dating and mating" lifestyle in the Observer. For her to discover how "surprisingly fulfilling" a counter-cultural lifestyle can be would have required effective relationships education.

Until now, schools have only been required to teach pupils the biology of reproduction. Consequently, most children have not been presented with a rounded understanding of sexual relationships in the much wider context of personal, social, political and economic relationships. If young people are to be equipped to make more informed decisions about when and with whom to engage in sexual activity, they need to grasp that sex cannot be considered in isolation from either their own personal development or other personal interactions and that sexual relationships have an inevitable impact on all our other relationships.

The Government should however be advised against prescribing the content of the sex and relationships instruction too rigidly. School communities, including parents, teachers and governors, and the children themselves, should be given the freedom to decide locally what content would be most appropriate in their classes. Lessons will need to be sensitive to local cultural and religious dynamics, as well as to the age of pupils. Otherwise, if the state is perceived to interfere and we increasingly come to expect the Government to do everything, then many parents and families will further abdicate their own responsibilities to the next generation, which will undermine the very network of relationships that we ought to be promoting. The more people are encouraged to share responsibility in preparing children for the challenges of life, the greater the chances will be that the initiative might prove successful.

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