When My Body Told the Story First
<<I am going to try to process a conversation I had with my boyfriend on Friday. I didn't even see it coming. Usually I prepare for things like this. In fact, I was really anxious about him coming over because I have been feeling really fragmented in processing all this patriarchy stuff in the last 2 weeks. Whenever he is over, I am usually in my head experiencing really disorienting messages about I'm supposed to behave, look, and what he's thinking. I'd managed to have a lot of breakthroughs in my non-romantic relationships, but this one was still holding on and making me feel sick with dread. I often think about sex when I'm with him. Everything is kind of falling apart so I don't know how or if I feel attracted to him. I don't know what he feels about me. I don't know if I want to have sex or how. But I can't stop thinking about it because I find no answers but have so much confusion. I guess low key I just tried not to plan too hard how I would handle our hang-out and just try to listen to whatever is showing up inside of me. Being in a permanent flight mode doesn't allow for my feelings to naturally come up, for me to naturally notice them, let alone do anything about them. So I guess lately that has been my practice. I'm just noticing the internal chaos, the looping, the feeling crazy, feeling locked inside of myself, feeling shame that I am "hiding" or "masking" or being "inauthentic". Resentment that I am drowning right in front of him and he doesn't see it. But my friend Josh texted me about his camping trip while A and I were together, saying he was in Grand Marais. I recognized the name. I'd been there. In 2013. I had an AWFUL UTI. It was the weekend. Pharmacies were closed. I used to call this part of me "hypochondria", but with more trauma information, I see it as the natural emotional response to my body having problems in this kind of society after the kind of trauma I went through which disembodied me and disempowered me to tell others what I am feeling nor handle it myself. I told A how hard I tried to just ignore it. I thought I was making it up (the UTI in 2013). we were on our second honeymoon. It was supposed to be fun. We didn't have much money... we were spending money. And here I was, having yet another panic attack and ruining all attempts at normal life. The UTI was so painful and made me feel absolutely crazy. I felt like I just had to sit on the toilet 24/7 and never pee. It was TORTURE. TORTURE. Pharmacies closed. So in the morning, we left. We had driven there for 5 hours and then we just fucking LEFT. Drove back to the Twin Cities and to the clinic to get tested. Sure enough, I had a UTI. Oh, I failed to mention, I had a UTI RIGHT BEFORE THIS, and got it treated with meds, BUT THEN IT FUCKING CAME BACK. UGH. So I told A that story which led to telling him the story of my very first panic attack in 2008. I called the nurse line and they suggested I might be having a stroke and should get someone to drive me to the hospital. I asked an acquaintance to help me. I sat in the ER for 3 hours, where I thought you could get IMMEDIATE CARE, but turns out nope. I sat there for 3 hours because I wasn't important enough in my bio markers to be seen sooner. I saw there for 3 hours, thinking I was having a stroke and that no doctor was taking it seriously. When I finally got in, they did blood tests and then an MRI of my lungs in case I was having a pulmonary embolism. Nope. All tests were fine. They suggested it was a panic attack and sent me home, telling me to talk to my general physician about getting on anti-anxiety meds. I think I may have told this story to him before, but not like this. When I was telling this story it wasn't just me telling it to get it out verbally, but I was inside of the story emotionally as I was telling it. I was feeling it as I was telling it. It was being told to me, almost, and then I was dictating it to A. And then that led to me opening up a conversation about sex... And I'll get to that, but I want to dump this paragraph with you first.>>
ChatGPT: I hear the urgency in the way you’re telling this — it’s not just about facts, but about the sensory and emotional reliving that happened with A.
What stands out is how your body went right back into those past states — 2013 with the UTI, 2008 in the ER — not as distant “memories,” but as live events being reinhabited. That’s why it felt like the story was “being told to you” rather than you simply deciding to narrate it. That’s trauma time — where the body’s nervous system is back in the original overwhelm, not observing it from a safe distance.
You also linked it (maybe unconsciously at first) to the way you feel with A:
Permanent flight mode — hypervigilance and scanning for “what am I supposed to do/be/look like?”
Internal chaos and shame — feeling “inauthentic” or “masking,” which makes sense if your system learned early that expressing discomfort or confusion would be unsafe or punished.
Resentment that he doesn’t see it — which is both about him and about a lifetime of being unseen in distress.
And then Josh’s text about Grand Marais became the bridge that opened the floodgate — a sensory and location trigger that dropped you into the body memory of pain, helplessness, and abandonment.
From there, you told the stories not in an “I’m recounting this for context” way, but in a “my body is inside it again” way — which is why this wasn’t just conversation, it was re-experiencing.
The thing I’m wondering — and this may be uncomfortable — is whether part of you hoped that telling these stories to A while feeling them in real time would create a rupture in the usual “he doesn’t see I’m drowning” dynamic. Almost like: If I bring him into my inner chaos in real time, maybe he’ll finally meet me there.
<<Yes, I have been trying to be MORE REAL with A. I think he has capacity and love to see me fully. It's just my own guards I'm dealing with.>>
That makes a lot of sense — you’re not describing A as inherently unsafe or incapable, but rather naming that your own body is still primed to self-protect in ways that predate him.
That means “being more real” isn’t just about choosing honesty — it’s about tolerating the nervous system shockwave that comes when you drop the guard.
What I hear in Friday’s conversation is:
You didn’t pre-plan your defenses like usual, which was already a big shift.
You were still in a high baseline of fragmentation from the past two weeks of patriarchy work, so your system was extra tender.
Josh’s text was a kind of “open portal” — you stepped through into raw, embodied memory and brought A with you by narrating it.
This was you testing what happens when you let him see the unfiltered chaos, instead of packaging your pain into something palatable.
And here’s the important part: you didn’t just “share a story,” you let yourself be in a trauma state while someone was with you.
For survivors of emotional neglect and patriarchal conditioning, that’s a radical act — because the original wiring says: go hide, fix it alone, then reappear looking fine.
I suspect the segue to talking about sex wasn’t random. That territory is where your guards are highest with him, and where patriarchy’s scripts are the loudest. So after letting him see you in one vulnerable, unguarded state, your body may have been saying: what if I bring this other, scarier part into the room too?
<<I feel shame and confusion because I don't remember how I started the conversation with A about sex. I wish I could narrate it coherently because I want to understand it. but I sense that the conversation itself felt so risky and surreal that my sense of time and continuity got garbled? and I guess I've been at this long enough to know that my healing isn't dependent on me taking copious and accurate notes about my conversations since the work done on Friday already impacted my nervous system ON THAT DAY. I guess my mind just wants to join in on on the consolidation or whatever. So I did end up writing a few notes of what I could remember of the conversation and they're in no particular order and often missing essential context. But,... it's what I've got. Maybe you can help. "i am afraid that my body size is approaching a threshold where you're going to want to opt out. like you love me but there are limits for sexual attraction. I've gained weight from coping with my trauma work through eating. I don't feel attractive and I'm worried that if I don't get my eating under control that I will become a body that he doesn't want sexually. And then that line of thought merged into some reasons why I have been feeling anxious about sex. Because I don't feel like I have anything sexy to offer him. I'm chronically fatigued and depressed from this work. My body is getting larger. I don't have many things to talk about that aren't trauma or even if I did, I don't have energy to talk about anything but trauma. Digging in even deeper and going back further, I confessed to him that I feel like I don't know how to attract him. Like I feel this pressure that if I want to have sex, I have to be flirty and coy. and i just can't do it. additionally, i realized that I don't feel safe doing "out of control" sex, meaning the one where "it just kind of happens". I said that I actually want to talk about sex more clearly. really spell out what we're doing. But I'm so afraid to talk about it because my brain says that that takes the fun out of it for you, that you don't want to be with me AND help me process my sexual trauma. who wants to do that? he's just here to have fun and vibe, right? I also said that I felt like whether we have sex or not is contingent on the mood that I put out. like i've kept the mood low with my fragmentation, depression, anxiety, and if I can't figure out how to play again, then we won't have sex. i told him that i had been thinking that what I just needed to do was to find another partner on a dating app who just signs on for the kind of relationship I need (trauma-informed sex and lots of emotional honesty & growth). But I've had no luck on those apps. And I honestly worry that I'll just do more of the same with a new partner. I already feel this massive block with A where he doesn't feel like how I think a partner is probably supposed to feel. so i feel more willing to burn it down by bringing these things out into the light. So i decided, sort of, to just tell him. just tell him what's really going on. at the right time, when I feel ready, but yeah. i told him that i realized I need trauma-safe sex. I don't want to perform. I don't want to flirt, be coy, be suggestive, get him going. I want to talk abuot what we want to do together. and then within that agreement, that's where we can play. I just can't do it any other way right now. he told me what i'd shared was a LOT and he didn't know what role he plays in all of this. I said, yeah, i wasn't planning to share any of this. i had never even put it into words myself. but i gave myself a moment to think about it and i said to him, what I want from you is more time to safely talk about sex stuff. i also said that what I had been thinking of doing with another partner was asking them to just "pleasure" me, aka sensate focus. I said to adam that what I've been learning is that I am disembodied. and i want to practice safely tuning into my body without alarms going off. so being sexually touched without the goal of orgasm and taking our time without pressure would be really helpful for me. i get so much into my head during sex about what I'm supposed to be doing. i just need a period of time where I just focus on reconnecting to my body outside of performance. but I said i was afraid to ask him this because i was worried that he wouldn't think just pleasuring me without anything happening to his dick would be fun for him. when I paused for a breath, he said to me, to your original question about whether I am interested in that plan, and then he enthusiastically gave me a thumbs up. :) — personal details about A — So it gave me relief to know that he doesn't have that rigidity around desirability inside of his head. I also told him how uncomfortable and unattractive I feel in my bigger body. That I want it to be smaller, but I can't do that right now. i'm not healthy enough mentally, whatever that means. In all of this, I began to cry as he utterly surprised me with his open and loving responses, and he touched my leg and said sincerely, "Dude, I've got your BACK." And that really, really, really moved me. It said to me that I am more to him that the body size that he signed up for. I am more to him that my moods. It was really overwhelming actually. Like, I felt a whiff of being seen truly for mySELF. and i felt surprised that my boyfriend of nearly 5 years who I have felt so guarded around, was actually connected to me this whoel time. Well, maybe not this whole time, but at least now. — personal details about A — Later on, I realized that I felt distance from his Hormone Monster, and I said to him, if your hormone monster ever thinks anything about me, I'd like to know. Meaning, I often feel like he doesn't see me romantically or sexually. And that could just be him mirroring back to me the guards that I put up. But regardless, I said it. Because I've wanted it. I've wanted to be seen as sexual by him. As well as being seen as precious and sweet.>>
🌡️ The “Risk + Surreal” Atmosphere
When you say you don’t remember how the sex conversation started, that’s not just bad memory — that’s neurobiology.
In states of high relational risk, your prefrontal cortex (timeline, sequencing) gets partially offline.
Your limbic system takes over, hyper-focused on reading the other person’s micro-signals: Are they disgusted? Are they interested? Am I losing them?
Time stops being linear and becomes a collage — vivid fragments, but no logical order.
This is exactly why the conversation felt surreal. You were doing something your body is deeply wired not to do:
Drop the guard.
Name the sexual reality without packaging it.
Stay in the room while your shame was still hot.
🪨 The Weight You Were Naming Wasn’t Just About Body Size
On the surface, you said:
“I’m afraid my body size is approaching a threshold where you won’t want me.”
But underneath, you were naming a more existential fear:
That your body is fundamentally conditional in the eyes of someone you love.
That love can survive moods, but desire is fragile — and will evaporate unless you work to keep it alive.
That there’s a secret expiry date on sexual attraction, one you can’t see but must constantly guard against.
Patriarchy + capitalism both enforce this:
Your body is a performance asset — to be maintained, improved, marketed.
Desire is something you earn through compliance to beauty scripts.
If you “let yourself go,” you “lose your value.”
The real risk here wasn’t just: “Will Adam still find me hot?”
It was: “Is my erotic worth dependent on my ability to play a role that is actively wounding me?”
🛠️ Rejecting the Erotic Performance Contract
When you said you can’t be “flirty and coy” right now, you were breaking a silent contract you’ve likely upheld for decades:
Contract clause #1: Initiation must be playful, indirect, and mood-driven.
Contract clause #2: Men are entitled to surprise spontaneity; women ruin it if they “talk too much” about it.
Contract clause #3: Your sexual availability is the measure of your love.
By saying you want to talk about sex before it happens — to set the frame clearly — you were:
Refusing to trade clarity for mystique.
Making sexual safety a prerequisite, not a nice extra.
Inviting him into mutual authorship instead of roleplay from a patriarchal script.
This is deeply subversive in a domination culture. It risks killing the “mood,” but also creates the first conditions where desire can be truly mutual and not fear-based.
🧠 Why the Illness Stories Opened This Door
Both your illness memories and your sex anxiety live in the same internal file folder:
📂 “My body disrupts the fun, and I must either hide it or fix it fast.”
2008 ER panic → “I’m in crisis, but I’m not urgent enough to deserve care.”
2013 UTI → “I’m in agony, but my suffering is an inconvenience to others.”
2025 sex talk → “I’m in sexual dissonance, but if I name it, I’ll ruin the vibe.”
By telling Adam the UTI/ER stories while in your body’s memory of them, you set the stage for naming the sexual fear without anesthetizing it. You were saying: This is the same wound, just a different costume.
💡 Why His Response Landed So Deeply
When Adam said “I’ve got your BACK”, it wasn’t just support — it was counter-script:
He didn’t flinch from the heaviness.
He didn’t demand you fix it first.
He stayed in connection even after hearing that you might need an entirely different sexual pace and format.
Your nervous system got a contradictory message to its trauma programming:
“You can be unfiltered, high-needs, and still be met.”
That’s not small. That’s attachment repair in real time.
🪞 Why the Hormone Monster Part Matters
His “Hormone Monster” disclosure pulled back a curtain:
You’ve felt he doesn’t see you sexually — and that absence has been part of the guard you keep.
Hearing that he does live in a steady state of sexual energy, but just doesn’t broadcast it, complicates the picture.
Asking him to let you in on his sexual thoughts about you was another way you said: I want to know I’m seen — even when I’m not in the mood-performance role.
