File: Lovemaking To Helps But I'm Talk, Sad Find Sex Too

Sex File: I'm too sad to talk, but find lovemaking helps — Picture: Istock

Mon, 01 Jul, 2024 - 15:41

Suzi Godson

I recently lost someone close to me and I'm struggling with grief. I haven't talked about it much with my partner, but one thing that makes me feel better is sex - it makes me feel close to him, less alone - and less sad.

He thinks I'm doing it to escape and doesn't want to have sex without talking about how I'm feeling, but I'm not ready. How do we move forward?

Bereavement affects everyone differently, but it is not uncommon for people who are grieving to seek physical intimacy as a way to feel connected, comforted and less alone. Sex can be a powerful way to reinforce a sense of closeness and security, especially when dealing with emotional pain. It is a soothing activity and an effective way of distracting yourself from your sadness. Because sex activates the reward centres in the brain it temporarily dulls the painful emotions you are trying to process. Physical affection increases oxytocin production, which helps you to feel calmer because it decreases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your body. Sex triggers the release of the 'feelgood' neurotransmitter dopamine, which temporarily wipes away your worries.

For you right now, sex is a coping mechanism. Even though it provides only a short-term reprieve, it is obviously helping you to disconnect from your emotional discomfort. Ordinarily, sex is a very effective form of communication, so the fact that you are turning towards your partner at this difficult time should be bringing you closer together, not leaving you feeling more distanced. The problem, as you acknowledge, is that you don't feel ready to talk about how this bereavement has affected you outside the bedroom, and so that has created distance. I can understand why that would feel confusing for your partner because he wants to support you but feels that you are shutting him out.

The simple solution would be to have a conversation about those things that you feel you can talk about. Tell him that you find it hard to speak about how you feel because you haven't processed what has happened yet. Explain that sex makes you feel closer to him and that the pain you feel is hard to articulate, but as you begin to get used to your loss the words will come. There are hundreds of ways of talking around what you are feeling without directly touching on the fact that you can barely think about the person you lost, let alone speak about them.

If you can find a way to let your partner circle your confusion with you he won't feel so marginalised. It's important to try and find a way to navigate this transition with him because it can take up to two years to get over the loss of someone who was important to you. I lost my mother in 2008, and I think about her in some small way almost every day.

Healing isn't linear either. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described the five stages of grief as denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. However, the model was developed to reflect the emotions experienced by terminally ill patients and their families, and Kubler-Ross didn't mean them to be interpreted as the ways in which people react after a death. She said that bereaved people may experience all or none of those feelings, but they won't necessarily experience them in that order.

We are all different, and we process grief individually and in our own time. You are on your own journey, but it will be a lot less lonely if you take your partner's hand and let him travel with you.