3. “I love you and want to be closer to you.”
Most women want to feel close outside the bedroom in order to feel close inside the bedroom. Tension or distance are not part of our recipe for intimacy! In fact, because most women have receptive desire, we are deciding to get intimately engaged with our spouse based on how he has made us feel the rest of the day (or the week…).
But many men are very different. When he feels tension in the air or when he knows something’s just not right … he misses you. And as it happens, sex is one of the only times that a man’s brain releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone, which brings a great feeling of closeness with someone. When he reaches for you, you may think, I cannot believe he would want sex now, when we’re distant or arguing. But here’s what’s really going on: He’s reaching for you in order to recover the feeling of closeness with you that he longs for.
Now, of course, if you’ve been feeling really disconnected, you may not be in a place to respond in the moment—and that’s okay. You may want to work some things through and have some talking-type reconnection before you take that step. But it will make so much difference if you see his reaching for you as what it most likely is: not a selfish demand but a signal of a longing to restore closeness.
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