I want you to know that what you’re carrying right now is really painful. Sexual rejection from your partner, the person who is supposed to be your primary emotional bonding partner, that cuts right to the bone. It goes right to the heart of those two questions I talk about all the time. You’re asking “are you there for me?” and you’re probably also starting to ask “am I enough?” And when the answer your body keeps receiving is silence, or distance, or turning away, that is devastating.
Here is what I want you to sit with for a moment.
What’s happening between the two of you in this department almost certainly didn’t start in the bedroom. It started somewhere much earlier, in the everyday moments of connection and disconnection. Because sexual intimacy in a long term relationship is rarely just about desire. It is almost always the physical expression of how safe and seen and acceptable two people feel with each other.
So when a man pulls back sexually, my first question is never about his libido. My first question is, what does “not enough” feel like for him? Where is he contracting? Because often, what looks like not wanting you, is actually a person who is so shut down emotionally, so defended, so terrified of disappointing you, that his whole body closes up. The body knows. The body keeps score.
Now I am not saying this to excuse what you’re experiencing. Your pain is real. Your longing for connection is real. And you deserve to be wanted by your partner.
But here is what I’d gently ask you to explore. When you bring this up with him, or when the distance becomes palpable between you, what do you do? Do you pursue? Do you ask? Do you get frustrated? Because if you do, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, it makes complete human sense, but if you do, there’s a real chance that the way you’re expressing your longing is landing on him as one more piece of evidence that he is a disappointment to you. And if he already has a wound around not being enough, your reaching, even your beautiful, legitimate reaching, might actually be pushing him further away.
This is the tragedy I see over and over. Two people who both want connection, and what they co-create together is distance and pain.
What I’d encourage you to do is get underneath the frustration or the hurt and find the most tender, vulnerable version of what’s true for you. Not “you don’t want me.” But something closer to, “when we’re not connected that way, I start to feel like I’m invisible to you, and that scares me, because you matter so much to me.”
No request at the end. Just the raw, soft truth of what it feels like to be you right now.
And then see what happens in him.
This is worth working through with a good couples therapist who can hold both of you in that room at the same time. Because this is not a you problem or a him problem. This is a system the two of you have built together, and systems can be changed. I’ve seen it happen.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Feeling Disconnected from Spouse? What It Means and What to Do
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If you’re ready for in-person help in the Bay Area, Empathi’s San Francisco couples therapy practice offers Emotionally Focused Therapy with Fiachra “Figs” O’Sullivan, LMFT and Teale Taxis, LMFT.
