The Bristle Reaction

Foreign. Get ready with me again while we talk about the bristle reaction. I'm Vanessa. I'm a sex therapist. I did another video about why my husband and I make out every night. Make sure to watch that first and a few of the answers from that video. The robes from Parachute. All the skincare is from Skin Better. Oh, except for vitamin C serum, which is from Emergency. So in that first video, I mentioned the bristle reaction, which is the name that I came up with to describe this reaction that we have when our partner comes in for a hug or a kiss, we feel ourselves bristle. Like, your whole body reacts. You do not want to be touched. And it's a really confusing reaction. Like, how is it that we can react so strongly and so negatively from very simple touch from a person that we really love? So I found that there are three main causes of the bristle reaction. The first is what I mentioned in that original video is that you and your partner don't have that much touch throughout the day. So you've made this connection that any sort of touch is supposed to lead to sex, which makes you bristle in the moment if you're not immediately interested in sex. The second reaction is that you're touched out. This happens really commonly with parents and primary caretakers. Your body has just had enough touch throughout the day. You really don't want to be touched anymore. And the third reason actually has to do with sexual initiation. So I have a name for another thing. I call it the inhibition effect. I found that the longer we are in relationships, the more uncomfortable we get around sex with our partner. So a lot of us in long term relationships feel very vulnerable and awkward initiating sex. So instead of being direct, using our words, saying what we want, we initiate in these really roundabout ways, like leaning in for a kiss, trying to extend it a little bit longer. There's also the classic, like, boob honk coming up around your partner and squeezing their boobs, which everyone loves, right? That was sarcasm, in case you didn't pick that up. So I've found that we initiate in these ways because we can play it off if it doesn't go over well. Like if we try to initiate with a boob honk and our partner's not into it, we can just be like, oh, I was just joking. I was just playing around, right? But what that does is it makes your partner just be on guard with your touch. They don't know what it is that you're trying to do. Like, are you trying to initiate? Are you not? So they immediately just go on the defensive and, and that leads to having the bristle reaction, even when you're coming in to actually just give a hug or just get a kiss. So let me know in the comments which of the three or which combination of the three you think might be impacting your relationship. And if you want to learn how to overcome the personal reaction in your relationship.