He leans in for the kind of hug that used to cost you nothing, and your shoulder is already turning before your mind has caught up. You register it half a second later. The small step back. The arm gone stiff. You didn't decide that. Your body did.
Say the plain thing out loud: you are not going off him. Something in your baseline changed, and nobody warned you that touch would be one of the first casualties. The heat that rises without notice. Skin that used to want contact and now reads any contact as one more input on a system already running hot. A hug used to be nothing. Tonight it is one more thing your body has to process, on top of everything else it is already managing.
Why the reflex beats your thinking to it
Your nervous system is not being difficult. It is triaging. When the internal weather is already unpredictable, a flash of heat with no warning, sleep arriving in fragments instead of whole nights, a body that no longer signals the way it used to, touch gets filed under "more input" before it gets filed under "someone I love." The step back happens in the reflex, not in the relationship. By the time you've registered what you did, it already happened.
The advice that makes it worse
Everyone tells you to relax into it. Set the mood, light a candle, let it happen naturally. That advice assumes the old system is still running, spontaneity working the way it used to before your hormones changed the terms. Candles are atmosphere. What your body needs now is a container, not an atmosphere: touch offered in a size it can accept today, with an obvious start and an obvious end, so no part of you has to brace for where it might go next.
What actually rebuilds the threshold
This is not about pushing through it, and it is not about him withdrawing forever either. It is about your body getting small, contained doses of touch it can honestly say yes to, so trust rebuilds one accurate yes at a time. Start with the anchor that is entirely yours, no one else's timing attached. Touch Base®: press your thumb to your forefinger. Move slowly, soft as melted chocolate, no rushing it. Say to yourself, I am safe right now. Keep going for the full two minutes. Do it on your own, before you ever bring it near him. It teaches your own nervous system what safe touch feels like again, on your own terms.
Capacity that changed once can be rebuilt. It rebuilds in the size your body can actually carry, not the size you think you should manage.