The dilemma My boyfriend has something of a sex addiction. He follows porn accounts on Instagram and Twitter; he has it on his phone and searches for it on nights I’m not about. It’s never bothered me, because I also have an interest in it, but not to that extent.

A while ago he started texting another girl inappropriately. When I caught him, he said he didn’t mean anything by it, that it was just words. Afterwards we weren’t as intimate, but his addiction calmed dramatically.

When I felt like being intimate again I would ask for nights to ourselves but we never had them – he was always busy with his car or working. It’s like he has another side to him that he won’t reveal to me, and if I asked him to tell me his sexual secrets he’d be embarrassed but it would be fine to tell the girl next door.

Mariella replies Interesting. You describe your boyfriend’s problem as “sex” addiction but the one thing he doesn’t seem too interested in is having sex. He’s not alone. Extreme immersion in sex with strangers appears to make sex with the one you love a turn-off.

It’s a state of affairs that we really need to investigate further. We spend ever-increasing time online, conducting our working lives, social lives, family lives and even our darkest fantasies via our phones and tablets, and in the process we’re becoming increasing disconnected from tangible experiences. The huge, inexhaustible supply of stimulation that’s out there on the web makes focusing on our humdrum lives seem confining, less animated and less enticing.

Cyberspace is the new wilderness and it’s created a whole new breed of explorer as it becomes increasingly addictive. Whether you’re crashing into strangers on the street as you scroll down your smartphone, or having virtual sex with a screen sex worker in a far-flung nation, the world we inhabit is being downgraded to a storage environment for the body while the mind is active elsewhere.

Your boyfriend’s migration from the place you call home to a cyberworld and his ability to better share intimacies with total strangers are both symptoms of an increasing malaise. Like many new viruses, it seems to have been born at the further reaches of human experience before spreading to all and sundry. Our increased migration to virtual sex is a perfect example, beginning with committed porn addicts for whom the internet means instant gratification without having to leave their bedrooms.

Your boyfriend has joined a fast-growing minority for whom the world we live in is more alien than their online habitat

Now more and more people are finding themselves adrift from the physical expression of human desire. Your boyfriend seems to have joined a fast-growing minority for whom the world we live in is more alien than their online habitat. Where once pornography was used as stimulation for flagging sex lives, or an occasional treat for adventuring lovers, now it’s become an online cult from which a return to normal life becomes ever more difficult. The quagmire of exploited human misery that is the online sex industry is preferable to acts of passion that require engagement with real people. And how little we seem to be worrying about a phenomenon that is shaping new generations.

Despite the deep dark web waiting to entice them, sex education for our children remains misguidedly optional on the school syllabus and eschewed in an economically challenged education system with little room for subjects that don’t contribute to positions on league tables. The vast majority of our children will learn about sex from watching often-criminal acts of violence performed by strangers on a mate’s computer. How do we expect them to aspire to or even understand the potential of fulfilling adult relationships?

So many letters arrive in my mailbox from partners – generally women, it has to be said – whose lovers are so busy watching porn that they can’t find the inclination to actually have sex. It’s like the great British appetite for cookery programmes, which are also, for the most part, a spectator sport; we’re a nation of guzzlers, supine on our sofas, watching other people cook while devouring ready-made meals so as not to disturb our viewing time. To describe it as ironic would be to seriously underplay the dysfunctionality of such behaviour. It’s hard work these days to figure out what is desirable, what is acceptable, what is a basic minimum requirement and what we can’t live without when it comes to the sexual smorgasbord.

The easy answer in your case is that until your boyfriend musters up an appetite for human contact and interaction, I’d consider myself single and find one of the many remaining individuals who still believe that a bird in the hand is worth more than the multitude you can Google.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1