When the Heart Says "Yes" But the Body Says "No"

Sexual intimacy is a necessary and nourishing element of commitment in intimate relationships. Connecting with our partners in this way is profoundly good for us. Intimacy builds emotional closeness, strengthens our shared sense of safety and security, and creates a powerful cascade of neurochemicals that benefit every system in our bodies.

The goodness of sexual intimacy touches every element of our partnerships, but it's not always "good" in the way we want — or hope — it will be.

Instead of enjoying sexual intimacy with our partners, we might find ourselves shut down, overwhelmed, numb, frustrated, or dissatisfied.

Our minds might exhaust themselves, searching for why that is and landing on any number of possible reasons. Maybe, we reason, it's because of “bad chemistry” or incompatibility with our partners. Or maybe we believe there's something deeply wrong or broken within us.

Perhaps we suspect that whatever is wrong can’t be fixed. We might give up or stop trying to make things better, slowly allowing apathy and resentment to rob the color from one of the most important parts of our lives.

That is nothing short of a tragedy, because most of what gets in the way of experiencing the goodness of sexual intimacy is trauma-related, one way or another.

It might be that we — or our partners — carry unresolved sexual trauma from past experiences that impact how our bodies are able to show up for sexual intimacy or even physical affection.

These experiences might include early sexual abuse, sexual assault, or coercive sexual experiences from previous relationships. There might not even be an obvious “thing that happened,” but instead be a series of experiences, like being exposed to pornography at a young age or enduring ongoing sexual harassment.

Whatever it was, our bodies learned that our sexuality can be more of a liability than a gift.

Navigating sexual trauma can become a minefield in relationships, because we love and adore our partners. We care deeply about them and are committed to the families we've created together. Of course we want things to be good, emerging from the warmth, playfulness, and connection we feel in our hearts towards them.

We want the goodness and closeness that sexual intimacy creates.

We just don’t know how to get there because our bodies keep getting in the way.

How Trauma Impacts the Safety We Need for Sexual Intimacy

During sexual intimacy with our partners, our bodies often send us confusing or even conflicting messages.

We might freeze or hold our breath, suddenly rigid and motionless, as if something startled us. Some of us might feel spacy, like we're floating above or outside our physical bodies and distanced from the physical intimacy of our partner’s warmth and weight. We might find ourselves trapped in intrusive memories or suddenly feel tearful or even angry without knowing why.

What’s harder for us — or our partners — to notice are "fawn" responses, when our nervous system defaults to people-pleasing our partner to try to feel safe. “Fawning" is named from how a baby deer plays cute when caught by a predator, hoping to ingratiate itself in order to survive. When we fawn, we orient our attention externally — towards our partners — because we don’t feel safe.

This can look like performing or enduring, and they often happen below the level of conscious awareness, when our bodies experience sexual intimacy as a threat. During sexual intimacy, we perform or mimic a sexual response that we're not actually having. Or we endure, trying to "get it over with," because we're uncomfortable but not sure what else to do.

It can be uncomfortable to recognize that we’re doing these trauma responses. They’re also painful for our partners to encounter.

After all, when we’re freezing, dissociating, performing, or enduring during sexual intimacy, we’re not present with or connected to them.  

It's hard to recognize these responses in ourselves without immediate self-judgement, because they arise with the person we love most in the world. It's normal to feel shame, wonder what's wrong with us, and question why we can't enjoy the kind of intimacy we want — because we genuinely, deeply love our partners.

What's Confusing about Trauma and Sexual Intimacy

When our bodies say "no" in different ways to intimacy with our partners, and there's no clear present-moment reason for us to do so, the answer is often because of unresolved trauma. It's not because of anything that's happening now, but because the past is coming up.

Even the most anticipated and welcome sexual intimacy can unintentionally remind our bodies of other times when sexual contact or sexual material wasn't welcome and when our limits weren't respected.

The way that trauma responses intrude into our most vulnerable and private experiences can take us and our partners by surprise. But when we recognize that our bodies are holding onto the past because we haven’t yet healed, we create more choice and opportunity together.

We often mistakenly think that we “should” be able to keep the past in the past.

If we just "try not to think about it," we reason that "time will heal" and the intrusive thoughts, memories, emotions, and physical sensations of a trauma response will spontaneously disappear.

Sadly, this approach only makes things worse.

Reading this now, that might be obvious.

But in the moment, when all we want is to have "normal" and enjoyable sexual intimacy with our partners, it's easy to try to push past a freeze response or dissociation and decide to do our best and "fake it 'till we make it."

How We Treat Sexual Shame from Trauma

Our trauma responses point towards wounded places. Instead of ignoring or self-abandoning, we need to turn towards it.

Only, it’s easy to feel paralyzed by shame.

Self-shaming is a natural and normal reaction to sexual trauma.

When control has been taken away from us by someone who harmed us, we get a false sense of power back when we heap shame – and blame — on ourselves.

But this shame and self-blame also keeps us stuck.

We hesitate to speak up and share what’s happening with our partners because our bodies’ trauma responses remind us of past humiliation and abuse. This makes all closeness and intimacy challenging, but especially sexual intimacy with our partners.

Part of healing is taking responsibility for our lives and our relationships, and "giving back" the blame for what happened to the people who caused it.

What Partners Need to Understand about Sexual Trauma

When our bodies say "no" to sexual intimacy by freezing, dissociating, performing, or enduring, it can feel like a painful rejection of our partners.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Pushing ourselves to be intimate because we love and care for them only makes things worse.

To heal, we need to work together to restore safety to our nervous systems and create a clear channel for trauma responses to come up — and resolve.

This might sound too good to be true, but it’s the most surefire, tried and trusted way to transform trauma into the safety and vulnerability required for us to relax and enjoy sexual intimacy.  

When we know how to restore safety to the body and the nervous system, intimacy can create goodness and connection again — not just because of the closeness and pleasure we experience, but because whatever arises gets to be witnessed, honored, and loved.

Creating the safety for a trauma response to resolve, during sexual intimacy, is a shared undertaking that we need to do together with our partners.

Instead of getting stuck in silence and shame, we call ourselves back into connection to heal.