This page talks about sexual assault.
My whippet shakes after a loud noise. She trembles for a minute, and then whatever the noise stirred up has left her body. I think of her whenever someone asks me about intimacy after sexual assault. An animal that has been chased shakes afterwards and lets it go. Humans keep it. The subconscious holds it for us, locked into the body, until something makes it safe to let it out.
Can sex feel good again after sexual assault?
Yes, and it starts a long way before sex. How to enjoy sex again after sexual assault is a question about safety first, and about your no being trusted by your own body. Knowing where your no lives, in the body, is the part of my work I care about most, and I talk it through in The Power of Saying No.
The first steps look like this:
- If your no arrives, it stops everything, and no explanation is owed.
- Touch has a clear start and a clear end, so the part of you that scans for danger can come down.
- Touch can stay touch. It never has to lead to sex.
- The work begins with your own body, on your own, before a partner is involved.
Why can a memory of sexual assault come back years later?
The body can hold what the mind has put away, and it lets go when it feels safe enough. It happened to me. My body started shaking first, in a room where my psyche knew it was in a safe container, and a memory I had not been able to reach for over twenty years came flooding back. I tell the whole story on episode 64 of the podcast, and I give a content warning at the start.
What I needed afterwards was simple. Blankets, water, and people holding my feet and my legs so I could feel grounded and back on this earth. Aftercare is part of the work.
When you feel safe enough with me, what you had forgotten can start to surface. I never dig for it. When it arrives, we meet it together, at the pace your body sets.
What helps with rebuilding intimacy after abuse?
Tools matched to you, because what works for one person does not necessarily work for another. As an intimacy and touch coach in the UK, I draw on:
- RRRR®, Rapid Release Rewire Restore, my own method for releasing what the body is holding.
- EMDR and hypnotherapy.
- Spinal attunement and energy work, for when words are not where it lives.
- Somatic Experiencing.
- Tantra and BDSM tools, which I am trained in, used only with your clear yes.
To come back to safety at any point, there is Touch Base®: thumb to forefinger, feel the ridges, say “I am safe right now”, and hold for two minutes.
If you want company in this, my 12-week group programme, The Touch Reboot, is where deeper work like this belongs.
How do you approach sex after sexual trauma when you have a partner?
You start on your own, and your partner joins when you say so. Sex after sexual trauma comes back as a set of small yeses that you choose, in an order that is yours.
When a partner is ready, I teach one sentence: “May I put my hand here?” Then the partner believes the answer, and the touch arrives slowly enough for you to feel it coming. Couples who want help with this can begin with the couples intensive, where I teach partners how to touch with permission.
If you are also finding that you leave your body during intimacy, my answer on dissociation during sex goes further into that.
Your body has carried this long enough to deserve a pace of its own. Where would you want it to be a year from now?