There’s a kind of intimacy that leaves you full— Seen, grounded, connected. And there’s another kind that leaves you hollow— Touched, but not met. Held, but not known. Too many of us have learned to call the hollow version “normal.” We say we’re satisfied, Even as we lie awake afterward, wondering why we feel more alone than before.
We talk a lot about consent—as we should. Consent is the bedrock of ethical sex. Yes must mean yes. Boundaries must be honored. Choice must be clear. But there's a deeper question that lives under the surface— A quieter, more uncomfortable one: What if the things we consent to are shaped by things we never chose? In other words: Are we truly
We long for connection. For closeness. For someone who sees us and doesn’t run. But when that closeness actually arrives— When someone reaches out, gets too close, touches too gently— Something in us recoils. It’s not because we don’t want it. It’s because the same thing we crave is also the thing that once hurt us. This is the parad
You can bury the memory. You can forget the details. You can move on, change cities, start over. But the body remembers. And for many of us, that memory comes alive in moments meant to be intimate. Moments when closeness should feel safe, pleasure should feel freeing— and yet something shuts down, tenses up, disappears. Why does this happen? B
We often speak about intimacy as something warm, desirable, healing. But for many survivors of trauma, especially sexual or relational trauma, intimacy doesn’t feel safe. It feels threatening—even when it’s consensual, even when it’s gentle, even when it’s loving. And yet, many of us don’t understand why. Why we freeze. Why we dissocia