it can seem a highly trivial subject to get so upset about being rightly no more significant than who should open the door first or open a new jam jar first and yet judging from the heartache it tends to generate it appears to matter very much indeed it's at the root of many affairs it is the catalyst for vicious arguments and bitterness the long-term future of small children can be decided by it and couples routinely end up in therapy or more often the divorce courts because of it at the heart of the drama are all the
complexities involved when late at night in the darkness one person's hand moves over to tentatively touch the others body in a way that signals a desire to initiate either sex or a cuddle and nothing much happens in return this move ends up being so much more fraught than one might imagine because it has so little to do with making love it is about knowing that we are wanted the willingness to initiate sex can appear like the litmus test of whether one is appreciated within the relationship as a whole and therefore whether a couple remains a
going concern or not for one person never to initiate or else merely to respond half-heartedly to caresses is tantamount to declaring that they cannot possibly love the person they are with in truth a lack of initiation or response can mean many things it may add points simply be a sign of exhaustion after a long day of childcare or work at the office sometimes an untouched hand is just an untouched hand the real problem in the ambiguous darkness of the bedroom is not a lack of reciprocation per se it is the way that that ambiguity is
interpreted the way that assumptions are formed without discussion and grave offenses taken without the topic having first been aired beneath this lies a more pernicious problem still game unreciprocated touch becomes properly dangerous when it comes into contact with a high degree of self suspicion or self-hatred on the part of the person who was dared to slide their hand across what might merely have been charged an innocent or temporary lack of enthusiasm comes to be taken silently and automatically as evidence of something far more catastrophic proof that the other person finds us disgusting ideally if we
all loved ourselves enough we would know better what to do when we move to hand across and didn't get much in return we would address the matter within the couple through calm and kindly discussion and try to determine what is at stake if the evidence pointed squarely to an enduring lack of interest or emotional capacity we would leave after all there's nothing wrong with ending up sharing a bed with an emotionally or physically withholding partner there is something very wrong or at least very unfortunate with sticking around once one knows this is the case but
these are not the options open to us when we feel overly ashamed or unresponsive partners reinforce pre-existing feelings of unacceptability that render us bitter mute and fragile a history of not knowing how to value ourselves makes it extremely difficult for us to complain effectively about unfortunate treatment let alone leave in order to seek warmer lover's elsewhere as self-hating lovers we cannot say with the requisite calm and strategic patience that we feel rejected that we need to be understood and that we're looking for change we will either say nothing at all and might have an affair
or us explode into a rage that guarantees our message won't be heard in the tensions around unreciprocated touch in the bedroom we catch sight of a more general problem in love the difficulties created when we aren't able to ask for what we want in a relationship when we suffer a sense that we don't deserve to be happy and cannot handle frustration or respond to our misery adequately we should not leave the untouched hand for too long in the darkness we should dare to switch on the light express our pain and consider our options without shame
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