How couples can lose intimacy without losing love

There are couples who would tell you, quite sincerely, that their relationship survived cancer remarkably well. They figured things out, got to appointments, made decisions, picked up prescriptions, rearranged work schedules, managed the household, managed the fear, managed each other, and sometimes managed to have a pretty good time in spite of it all. Cancer asked a lot of them and, together, they rose to the occasion. 

And now they are still together. They clearly love each other. They make dinner and talk about their day, watch television on the sofa, deal with the laundry, complain about relatives, plan vacations, remember to buy the good coffee. There is affection and companionship and a real sense of us.

They just don’t touch very much anymore.

Maybe they haven’t even noticed. Or it could be they have noticed and neither one knows quite what to say about it.

One reason this can happen is because cancer gives touch so many new jobs. The hands that once reached across the bed looking for intimate touch are now changing a dressing or helping someone stand up. A hand on the forehead is checking for fever. A hand on the back is helping someone make it to the bathroom. There is holding and soothing and rubbing and helping and tending, and all of it is intimate in its own way, but it is a very different kind of intimacy.

Meanwhile, the playful stuff can start disappearing. The long kiss in the kitchen. Or the little squeeze while passing in the hallway. Even the hand that wanders under a shirt just because it can. Getting undressed without thinking about who is watching. Crawling into bed and automatically finding each other.

Obviously, nobody sits down and decides to stop doing these things. Why would they? Life simply becomes very serious for a while, and bodies become serious and, in certain ways, off limits too.

There may also be good reasons to be careful. Touch can hurt. Energy can be unpredictable. A body that has been examined, scanned, poked, operated on, radiated, medicated, and discussed by a great many people may occasionally want everybody to leave it alone. Sex may be the last thing on someone’s mind, or it may be very much on their mind while their body has other ideas. A partner who loves them is paying attention to all of this and, hopefully, trying not to make things harder. So the partner whose body doesn’t have illness learns restraint.

Maybe they stop initiating sex because they don’t want to create pressure. Perhaps they stop touching breasts after surgery because they don’t know whether those breasts are welcome territory anymore. It could be they stop suggesting a shower together because the last few showers involved helping rather than playing. Or they may even wait for the person with cancer to signal that sex is okay again.

This can be a very loving thing to do, but it can also become a habit.

This particular possibility is very moving because two people can be lying inches apart in bed, each one longing for the other, while both are trying to be considerate. One is thinking, I wish you would reach for me. The other is thinking, I don’t want to bother you. One is wondering whether they are still desirable. The other is desperately trying not to be the person who asks too much of someone who has already been through enough.

Nobody is doing anything wrong. In fact, they’re both trying awfully hard to do something right. The difficulty is that we cannot know what another person wants by being exquisitely considerate from a distance. At some point we have to ask.

And perhaps the conversation doesn’t need to begin with the words “our sex life.” Those three words can carry an awful lot of baggage, especially when sex has already become complicated. It might begin much more simply: I miss touching you.

Or, I miss kissing you.

Or even, I don’t know what I’m allowed to do or what would be welcome anymore.

That last one may be especially useful because cancer can make two people surprisingly unsure of the rules with each other. Before cancer, nobody needed to negotiate every kiss. You knew each other’s bodies and had habits and signals and familiar moves. You knew that when your partner did that, it usually meant this. There was a shared language for intimate partnership.

Then a body changes, desire changes, energy changes, roles change, and suddenly two people who have known each other intimately for years can become very polite with each other.

Politeness is lovely and even essential in a relationship, but it probably shouldn’t run the bedroom. Intimacy also needs consideration, consent, curiosity, playfulness and enough freedom to try something, change your mind, laugh, ask for something different, or simply enjoy what is happening without needing it to lead anywhere.

That last part can be especially valuable after cancer. A kiss can be a kiss. Lying together can be lying together. Someone can say, “Rub my back,” without accidentally ordering the full sexual tasting menu. When touch is allowed to have many meanings again, couples may find it easier to relax into affection without wondering what is expected next.

This can also reveal things that have gone unsaid. One person may want much more touch but not intercourse. The other may miss flirting but has worried that flirting would create pressure. Perhaps both miss making out like teenagers. Or one may discover that something they used to enjoy simply isn’t appealing anymore. An awkward truth between two people is usually more useful than an elegant misunderstanding.

Of course, caution isn’t always the whole story. There may be anger, changes in attraction, sexual difficulties that existed before cancer, or differences in what each person wants now. Those experiences deserve attention too. But when a couple has become careful because being careful was once a form of love, it may be worth finding out whether all that caution is still needed.

Rather than beginning with the enormous question, “How do we get our sex life back?” there are smaller and perhaps more interesting questions to ask. What do you miss doing together? What kind of touch disappeared somewhere along the way? What have you stopped initiating because you assumed your partner didn’t want it? What would you love for them to do again?

Cancer asks couples to learn a tremendous amount about caring for each other, including when to help, when to wait, when to be gentle and when to give each other room. Eventually, there may be something else to learn together: how to reach for each other again. It doesn’t have to look the way it did before cancer. These are the bodies and the relationship that exist now, and there may still be plenty of room for touching, playing, flirting, laughing, comfort, pleasure and love.

It would be a shame to leave all of that sitting there because both people were trying so hard to be nice!