When physical affection disappears from a marriage, the first thing I want you to know is this: that absence is never just about touch. It’s a signal. It’s the relationship’s way of telling you that something underneath has gone cold, or scared, or shut down.
Here’s what I know about how we’re built. From the moment you came into this world, your body was wired to ask one question above all others: is there somebody here for me? Is there somebody I can reach for? That never goes away. Not when you’re 35. Not when you’re 62. You’re still that little baby inside, reaching.
And when the reaching stops, when nobody is initiating, when touch starts to feel awkward or obligation-like or just… absent, that’s your nervous system telling you the connection has gone somewhere underground.
Now here’s what I want you to get curious about, rather than afraid of. Whose reaching stopped first? And why? Because in my twenty years of sitting with couples, the loss of physical affection almost always follows an emotional injury that never got repaired.
One person pulled back to protect themselves. The other person read that pullback as rejection. And then they pulled back too. And now you have two people in the same bed, both longing, both protecting, both interpreting the other’s distance as the truth about how they feel, rather than as fear wearing a disguise.
This is protector parts triggering protector parts. Both of you are suffering. Both of you are protecting. And both of you are probably misreading each other completely.
Maybe you stopped reaching because you felt criticized, or taken for granted, or like your partner was always too tired or stressed. Maybe your partner pulled away because they felt overwhelmed, or undesired in some other way, or like touch had become just another demand on their already stretched resources.
Physical closeness cannot be demanded back into existence. But it can be invited. Carefully, slowly, with honesty. Start with the conversation that never happened. The one where you both get to say what really made you pull back, without defending or fixing or explaining it away.
Because here’s the thing: your body keeps the score. It remembers every time reaching felt risky, every time affection felt conditional, every time touch carried an agenda instead of just love. Those memories live in your nervous system, making you both careful where you used to be spontaneous.
The question worth asking your partner, and yourself, is not “why won’t you touch me” but rather “what happened between us that made it feel unsafe to reach?” That’s where the real conversation lives.
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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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