How to Explain Being ‘Touched Out’ To Your Husband Or Partner Without “Rejecting” Them

We need to start a video. Picture this. It's 9pm and you are finally getting cozy on the couch. After. Oh, wow. After an entire day of watching the kids, they've been literally hanging on you. Maybe you've been breastfeeding. They've been touching you all day long. You are just ready to relax, right?

Done.

But now your partner comes up to you and they start just like, lovingly, tenderly stroking your back and your shoulders, and you feel yourself just instantly recoil. It's like every cell in your body is just screaming, do not touch me. Today we are talking about being touched out and specifically how to explain this to your partner. So a lot of women these days have heard of the phrase touched out. It basically means when you have been having physical contact with your kids, it could be with pets, even other people that you're taking care of. You've been having this physical contact all day long and you literally get touched out. You can't have any more touch. So we've talked about this a lot on our Instagram account, and women are always really thankful to have this conversation, but a lot of them will tell us, how do I explain this to my partner? Partner? My partner just doesn't get it. And so my partner will, like, feel me recoil from their touch and be like, what the heck? Like, I was just trying to give you a nice back rub. Like, why are you treating me this way? So today we are going to get into how to describe this very common and very harmful experience to your partner. Before we go any further, though, we want to hear from you. Have you ever felt touched out? Even if you didn't realize this was a thing, there's even a name for it. Have you had this experience? So let us know down in the comments box below.

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All right, so let's get into it, shall we? So we've already established that you are touched out. That's why you're watching this video. First, we just want to validate the fact that feeling touched out, it is totally Normal. And it is totally common and totally understandable. Like you have been literally touched all day. You know, like you can eat food all day and be full. So why can't you be touched all day and then be touched out? Sounds pretty logical to me. The other thing I want to say though is that it does not make you a bad partner and it doesn't make you a bad parent. This is a normal thing. It doesn't say anything about you. It's not some failing of yours. But we do want to say there are ways to work with it so that it passes. So how do we explain this to your partner? Especially if they don't seem to get it or maybe they don't believe you.

I think this does tend to come up a lot with men in particular, you know, that they haven't had that same experience and they just really understand what that means. So we'll talk about like some of the gender dynamics that can come up too.

All right, so the first thing is that you want to tell them what is going on in a non combative setting. So like don't wait for an argument. Ideally don't do it in the moment when you are feeling touched.

Me?

Yeah, like, you know, that's hard time to try to explain. Oh my God, it's so horrible. Like no, wait for a neutral setting.

So the most important thing that you want to convey to your partner is that it's not about them. So I think the thing that makes this touched out reaction so complicated in relationships is that it's very easy for your partner to think that you're reacting to them.

Yeah. And they just touched you.

Yeah. It's like I just touch you and you're like pulling away from me. Like what does that mean? And it can feel really scary to feel like the person that you love the most in this world. Like, especially if you're just going in for like a little hug or like trying to hold their hand, like to feel them recoil that way. So you really need to help your partner understand it is not about you. It is what has been going on in my entire day leading up to this touch. So it's not that I don't want you be around. It's not that I'm not in love with you anymore. I don't ever want you to touch me again. Like it's about what I've gone through today. So it can be really helpful to actually walk your partner through the touch that you experienced all day. And I think this can be particularly useful if maybe you're a stay at home parent and your partner is out of the house, maybe they're not even seeing what it is that you're going through all day. So you can sort of walk them through, like, yeah, this is, you know, from this hour to this hour, this is what was going on. The kids needed me in this way. I was breastfeeding for this long. Like, literally walk them so they get this full picture of all this touch that you're experiencing all day long. Another thing that can come up for a lot of new moms in particular is you already feel like your relationship with your body has really changed. So you've just gone through pregnancy, all these changes. Now the baby is here. It maybe is, you know, it is relying on you for survival. You might just feel uncomfortable or not at home in your own body. So including that in this description to your partner can be really beneficial as well. This feeling of like, my body doesn't feel like mine anymore. And so when you touch me, it's just kind of this reminder of like how alien I feel in my own skin. The other thing that you want to convey to your partner is like being touched out. It's not an incurable thing. It's not like all of a sudden, you know, you've hit your touched out threshold and you can never be touched ever again.

Yeah, it's not permanent, exactly.

Like, what happens is that you just need time to regroup. So this can be one of the most valuable aspects of the conversation is like explaining to your partner how they can support you in reconnecting with your own body. So basically, you just need a little bit of time to, like, come home to your own skin, feel like your body is your own. Nobody else is needing anything from your body or trying to touch your body in any way. So we've found, you know, with the couples that we've worked with, that alone time in particular can be really, really beneficial. So you can ask your partner, like, yeah, are there ways that we can kind of switch up our schedule where you can allow me to have some alone time? Even if all that you can manage on certain days is like five minutes, right? Or something like that. And finally, another part of the conversation that you might want to have is to talk about how you and your partner might want to split up your workload. So a lot of times women in particular can feel touched out if they've been taking on like, all of the childcare responsibilities, all the household responsibilities. It can just feel like you're overwhelmed, you've got too much on your plate. And sometimes our bodies register how stressed out and overwhelmed our brains are. So that's why you're having, like, such a strong bodily reaction. So we just really quickly wanted to mention that we have a mental load workbook. It's a great exercise for seriously any couple, and it'll help you get really crystal clear on what are all of your household responsibilities and figuring out how to divide them up in a way that feels right and equitable and good to the two of you. Gonna be different for every couple, every relationship, of course. But it's just such a huge relief to have this process of speaking, splitting that workload up and getting really clear on who's doing what.

And at the end of the day, it is okay if your partner doesn't fully get it. Especially if your partner is a guy, he's never going to know what it feels like to have another human being literally relying on their body for survival.

Yeah. Yeah.

But, you know, one. One idea if you want to try to make a comparison that he might be able to understand better, especially if he works outside of the house all the time, is you could compare it to a job. You could say, you know, like, if I were a chef and I'm cooking all day, when I get home from work, I'm not going to be very excited about immediately getting into the kitchen and cooking dinner. Like, I'm cooked out. Right. Like, but that doesn't mean that you're never going to cook again. Like, I bet on your day off, if you know you're not working cooking all day, then you're probably excited. Like, hey, let's cook. Let's cook a meal. So, you know, making these kind of comparisons can also be really helpful. The bottom line is that even if your partner doesn't understand it fully, they should still be able to support you.

Yeah. So it's like, it's fine if your partner doesn't get it, but they still need to be there to support you and to talk about different ways that you guys can be a team in dealing with this.

So the bottom line is this feeling is not going to last forever, and neither will this season of life. That's, I think, an easy thing to forget about in the moment, but important to just continuously remind yourself about. You're also allowed to have a relationship with your own body, and taking some time for yourself to reconnect can be super helpful. And I just want to remind you as well, it is okay to ask for what you need to feel better.

All right, well, that wraps up our video on how to explain feeling touched out to your partner. And again, we will link to that Mental load workbook in the description box below.

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