Intimacy After Trauma: How to Move at Your Own Pace

If you've experienced assault, pressure, or another difficult event, intimacy may feel nothing like what people describe. Your body tenses, your thoughts drift far away, desire disappears entirely. This doesn't mean something is wrong with you or that intimacy is closed off forever. This article isn't about "getting back to normal as quickly as possible" — it's about moving at your own pace and not hurting yourself along the way. The decision about any step belongs to you alone.

Your Pace Is the Only Right One

Let's start with what you deserve to hear from someone else, if no one has said it before. There are no deadlines here. Not "it should pass within a year," not "once you truly fall in love," not "other people manage somehow." Other people's timelines are other people's circumstances, and you know almost nothing about them.