The Difference Between Looking at Your Body and Living Inside It

Cancer can make looking in the mirror complicated.

You may have spent years looking at yourself without giving it much thought beyond the ordinary negotiations most of us have with our appearance. Then illness happens, and suddenly there can be so much more to look at. Hair changes, weight shifts, surgery scars, changes to the shape of a breast, chest, abdomen, or other part of the body you were accustomed to seeing a certain way. Sometimes the changes are obvious to everyone, and sometimes another person would barely notice them even though your own eyes go directly to them.

We tend to put these experiences under the heading of body image, which makes sense. There are real questions about attractiveness, identity, sexuality, and recognizing yourself after treatment. Friends may tell you that you look wonderful. A partner may reassure you that they still find you desirable. You may eventually become accustomed to a scar that once startled you or find clothes that make you feel more like yourself.

All of that can help, but there is another relationship with the body happening alongside appearance. There is the body you see, and there is the experience of living inside that body.

The two don’t always agree. You can look in the mirror and think you look pretty good while still feeling uncomfortable being touched. You can dislike a scar and discover that you don’t mind having it touched at all. You can believe your partner when they tell you that you’re attractive and still have no idea whether you want their hands on you tonight. You can also feel frustrated by how your body looks and experience enormous pleasure in it.

Cancer can widen the distance between appearance and experience because the body receives such an unusual amount of scrutiny. When contending with a medical issue, clinicians examine it, machines scan it, nurses inspect incisions. You learn to look closely too, checking healing skin, swelling, lumps, scars, or whatever else treatment requires you to monitor. For a long time, paying attention to your body may mean trying to understand what it is telling you medically.

Living inside your body involves another kind of attention. You realize that you’ve been standing under the shower longer because the hot water feels wonderful across your shoulders. You stretch in bed because your back wants the movement. You put on something soft and enjoy how it feels against your skin. None of this requires having reached some ideal state of body acceptance. You’re simply experiencing your body rather than evaluating it.

Noticing this distinction particularly important in intimacy. A partner’s reassurance that you’re beautiful can be sincere and lovely to hear, but it cannot tell you whether you want to be touched, whether an area around a scar has become sensitive, or whether something you once enjoyed still feels good. Those are things you learn from inside your body.

This is also where some of our familiar language about body positivity after cancer can become limiting. There can be pressure to appreciate the body for what it has endured, celebrate scars, or eventually love the changes. Some people genuinely do. Others remain angry about what treatment changed. They may miss a breast, their hair, their strength, their fertility, their sexual function, or simply the ease with which they once lived without thinking so much about their body.

You can have complicated feelings about your appearance and still enjoy your body. You can dislike a scar and love having your back massaged. You can miss the body you had before surgery and discover new kinds of touch that feel wonderful now. You can feel self-conscious naked and still experience pleasure. There is no requirement that your feelings about your appearance resolve before the rest of your body gets to participate in intimacy.

The word often used for this internal experience is embodiment, although the term makes something very ordinary sound more specialized than it is. It simply means experiencing the body from within.

You know when you’re tired, when you want to move, when you need more space, when someone’s touch feels welcome, and when you’d rather they move their hand somewhere else.

After cancer, some of that information may be new. Perhaps the touch you used to love doesn’t feel particularly good anymore. Maybe intercourse has become uncomfortable, while kissing and being held have become more important. You might discover that fatigue hasn’t reduced your interest in intimacy so much as changed the time of day when you have energy for it. Some preferences may be exactly the same, while others have to be learned again.

Sensuality gives us a generous way to explore this because it includes much more than sex. Texture, warmth, movement, pressure, scent, taste, physical comfort, affection, and closeness all belong there. Paying attention to those experiences can help you become familiar with your body without requiring you to decide first whether you like how it looks.

Knowing your body this way can also make conversations with a partner more useful. “I don’t like my scar” communicates something important. So does, “I don’t mind you touching near it, but pressure directly on it doesn’t feel good.” The second comes from knowing not only what you think about your body, but how you experience it.

Over time, that may even change some of what happens in front of the mirror. The scar may still be there. Your breast or abdomen may still look different. There may always be days when you wish cancer had left fewer traces. But appearance is no longer the only information you have about yourself. You also know where you feel comfortable, how you like to move, what kinds of touch you enjoy, and which forms of closeness feel good now.

You may never love every change cancer made to your body, and actually that doens’t need to be the price of admission for comfort, pleasure, sensuality, or intimacy. There is plenty to discover about your body without first deciding that everything about it is beautiful.

If You’d Like to Explore Further

If you’re looking for free body-image related resources to access immediately, visit the body image self confidence boosts page at CancerAndIntimacy.com. If the changes you’re carrying feel more like loss right now, the Erotic Grief Workbook offers space to explore grief around body, sexuality, desire, and intimacy.