Intimacy Block #2: Her Body is Wired Against You
Part 2 in my series of 10 different answers to the question: “Why won’t my wife have sex with me anymore?”
Answer #2: Her nervous system is wired against you.
This is one of the most demoralizing to confront of all the reasons.
Whenever you come anywhere near your wife, her body bristles against you. Her muscles tense up. The hairs raise on the back of her neck. She shoots up her “don’t touch me” force field or finds some excuse to draw back or scurry out of the room. If she had a little less self restraint, she’d hiss at you. Her whole body is one big “hell no” to your body.
Oof.
This feels awful — awful to her, awful to you.
The good news is, when there is no threat to actual safety, when it’s JUST the nervous system reacting body-to-body, it’s pretty straightforward to rewire a stress response. It’ll take a few weeks, perhaps a few months, but it does not have to last forever. And EITHER PARTNER can be the one to turn it around.
This doesn’t have to be anybody’s fault. It isn’t about love or attraction or even sex drive. This is about being an animal with a body of nerves and flesh and blood that reacts to its surroundings. We are social animals. Our nervous systems tune to those of the people around us. So even if you see this as a “her body” problem, understand that your body is participating beyond your conscious intention. It’s a dance. One person’s stress response co-opts the other. But we can shift the dance.
If your relationship is otherwise pretty healthy, but your wife’s body is bracing against you, notice how your body responds. Your spine goes on edge. All the little hairs go up on your back. Your muscles tense up. Your head swims. Your posture slumps.
Then what?
If you’re a fighter, you snip.
If you’re a fleer, you retreat.
If you’re a freezer, it’s stonewall season.
If you’re a fawner, you’re bending over backwards self-abandoning to try to smooth the discomfort away.
Just notice. What is the pattern? In most couples, one person doubles down on pursuit and the other withdraws. It isn’t gender specific who does what, which is why you have to take the time to learn your own relationship patterns. Some example patterns:
She just wants to TALK ABOUT the hard thing, but her need for talk feels insatiable, and every time she brings it up, he retreats into his laptop with his headphones on. His focus on work enrages her, and escalates her pursuit. (This is a big one in my grief parents!)
He feels insecure and starts to worry that there will never be sex again, so he makes more bids for sex, but they get lazier as he conserves his energy and braces for rejection (think: grabbing her ass). She, in an effort to avoid saying “no,” starts avoiding him before he can even get close. She goes out with her friends. She finds some excuse to bring a child into the bed. She announces another nightly headache so he knows not to even try.
Or, if she’s trying to meet his needs at the expense of her own, she says “yes” to sex but just lies there, body still tense and force-field still up. This is not the absolute surrender of a luxurious pillow-princess who revels in receiving. This is rigor mortis. She’s tense and cold and somewhere else. The really sad thing about this one is that she may think she is meeting his need, but he isn’t looking for a vagina to put his dick in. He’s looking for a partner to share mutual pleasure and closeness. This is worse than nothing because it’s such a perversion of intimacy and, over time, it wires her body to associate sex with pain.
Many couples who come to this awful point try therapy, but the problem is, TALKING ABOUT IT is one of the triggers in the cycle. Very often the talk therapy is just another extra circle of this hell, the same awful dynamic, this time, with a referee and a copay.
No thank you!
So how to deal with this one?
Start with nervous system regulation. You need exercises — concrete things to do with your body — that disengage the stress resopnse and tell the whole body-mind, “It’s safe. I’m safe.” You can start all by yourself just you and your nervous system.
Then move on to partner exercises. Exercises that re-train the body to associate each other with a state of relaxation rather than a state of panic. Instead of bristles and force field, when you walk up to your wife, her body’s going to remember: “Ahhh, it feels good to be with this guy.” And she will open her body to you accordingly, facing you, melting into your hug, and smiling.
There is no sex worth having until you get that big sigh out, that soft body, that lovely heavy, easy feeling of your body in the present moment. And just like any kind of fitness, we can train for this.
One of the things I love most about the way VITA Coaching approaches couples, is that we train nervous systems first. We do not try to talk through the hard things until the bodies know how to sit softly together. From there, all things feel possible. Tough conversations aren’t so tough and touching comes alive again.
If you want to go all-in on this work, book a free inquiry call with me. We’ll make a plan just for you and your marriage.
If you’d rather try this on your own, email me. Tell me a little about your pattern, and I’ll pick out a nervous system exercise just for you. I’ve got dozens of them.
Tomorrow: Reason #3, we’ll talk about The Elephant in The Bedroom. Stay tuned.