Age: 47
My Story
The washing up was nearly done when he came into the kitchen and put his hand on my waist. I moved. Not a flinch, nothing that dramatic. Just a small sidestep towards the draining board, as though I’d remembered something urgent about a saucepan. He took his hand back. Neither of us said anything. The radio was on, a phone-in about parking permits, and I remember thinking how odd it was that the kitchen looked the same as it had ten seconds earlier.
We’d been married nineteen years by then. We were the ones who held hands in the supermarket, which our daughter found unbearable. He still made me laugh in that specific way where I’d be cross about something and then suddenly not be. I want to be clear about that, because of what comes next.
It started so gradually I couldn’t have told you when. I began going up to bed twenty minutes after him. Then half an hour. I’d find things to do down there, wiping surfaces that were already clean, sorting the recycling with real attention. By the time I got upstairs he’d usually be asleep, and I’d feel the relief go through me like a hot drink, and then straight after it, the shame.
I started wearing a T-shirt to bed. Then, in June, a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. I’d lie on my side facing the window with my arms folded across myself. If his foot touched mine under the duvet, I’d move it. Not unkindly. I just moved it.
It wasn’t only him. If our son leaned on me on the sofa, I’d last about four minutes before I needed to get up and put the kettle on. My mum hugged me at the door one Sunday, and I counted in my head until it was over. A woman at work touched my arm when she talked, and I began arranging my coffee breaks around her.
I thought I was becoming cold. That was the word I used, on my own, in the car. Cold.
Looking Back
I spent about a year assuming this was a verdict on my marriage. That the feeling had gone and I was hiding it badly, and that at some point I’d have to be honest with him and it would end. I remember reading things at one in the morning with the brightness turned down. Most of what I found was written for women with new babies. Touched out, they called it. My youngest was fourteen.
What I couldn’t square was that I still wanted him near me. I wanted him in the room. I wanted to hear about the man at his work who kept reversing into things. When he was away for two nights, I slept badly and was glad when his car pulled up. None of that had changed at all. It was only my skin that had opinions.
He asked me in the car, eventually. We were on the ring road, both looking straight ahead, which I think is the only way either of us could have done it. He said, “Is it me?”
There was a gap before I answered. Only a second or two, but I could hear it. I said no, and it was true, and the gap had already done its work.
What Helped Me
Telling him. Badly, in pieces, over about a fortnight rather than in one big conversation. I couldn’t explain it because I didn’t understand it, so I ended up saying things like, “It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that I don’t want anything on me.” That sounded worse out loud than it had in my head. He was quiet for a long time and then said he’d been assuming something much worse, and that this was, in a strange way, easier.
Working out that touch is not one thing. We landed on this almost by accident. A hand on the back of my neck for two seconds while the kettle boiled was fine. Being held from behind while I was concentrating on something was not. Sitting close on the sofa with a blanket between us was fine, and I couldn’t tell you why the blanket mattered, but it did.
Having some time in the day when nobody could reach me. Twenty minutes in the car outside the house before coming in. It sounds ridiculous written down. It changed my evenings.
I talked to my doctor about a few other things going on around then, mostly the sleep. I’m not going to pretend I walked out with an answer, because I didn’t, and I don’t think there’s one tidy explanation for what was happening to me. But saying it out loud to someone who didn’t look horrified was worth the appointment on its own.
What I Wish I’d Known
That not wanting to be touched and not loving someone are two different facts about two different parts of you, and one does not prove the other.
That the body can change what it wants without asking permission first, and that this isn’t a character flaw or a failure of effort. I had spent months treating it as something I ought to be able to correct by trying harder, which is a bit like trying harder to be less tired.
That saying “not tonight” without a full explanation attached is allowed. I used to think I owed a reason, so I’d avoid the moment altogether rather than produce one.
And that he was frightened too. I’d been so busy managing my own guilt that it genuinely hadn’t occurred to me he was lying there working out what he’d done wrong.
Reflection
I’d like to tell you it resolved. It’s more that it loosened.
Some weeks are almost like they used to be. Some weeks I still want the bed to myself, and I say so, and he says all right, and takes his book to the other side. That’s not a compromise we’d have been capable of a few years ago. We’d have made it mean something.
Last Tuesday I was waiting for the kettle, and he came and put his hand on the back of my neck, and I stayed where I was. He didn’t make anything of it. He asked whether we had any of those biscuits left. And I stood there with his hand there, and the kettle getting loud, and thought, right. All right then.
That’s where I am not fixed. Just less frightened of my own body, and considerably less alone in the house.
Every woman’s experience is different. I share this story to help others feel less alone, and it’s not intended to replace professional medical advice.
If this story felt familiar, we hope it reminds you of one thing: you’re not the only one. Every woman’s journey is unique, but understanding often begins by hearing someone else’s story.
