Are You Stuck In The Middle?

“Stuck in the middle. That’s my life,” she said. 

“I’m caught between my kids on one side, and my aging mom on the other. And then there’s my brother. Like he’s helpful. #Not. Not at all.”

She was expressing a common and very challenging complaint. It was the feeling of not-enoughness that so many of us have in our busy lives. 

She went on. “My husband has so many opinions about how I could do things better with Mom, with my kids, with my brother. He’s always criticizing me. I just can’t win. And then, he wants me to be a sex goddess. That’s not happening.” 

The stress she described was powerful. Sometimes she had panic attacks on errands in town, sometimes even when she was driving. She took a meditation class and learned to breathe through them pretty well, but still, they were terrifying. She started yoga and that helped some. But her jaw was tight. And she had migraines.

Her husband kept on about the sex thing. She loved him, but she’d never been someone who was super comfortable talking about sex. She didn’t like feeling like she was being bullied into “lovemaking.” Sometimes she did it to appease him and ended up crying alone in her bed after he fell asleep. He didn’t even notice. 

The last thing she wanted was to try to resolve the long standing intimacy problems she’d had with him. She didn’t have the energy to take that on when everything else was so difficult. 

I understood. I told her when you’re stuck in the middle between parents who need you, and kids who need you, and a partner who needs you, it can be hard (if not impossible) to have any libido whatsoever because you’re just surviving.

And your lack of turn on just makes everything more difficult. It makes you feel completely disconnected from your partner. It can even make you feel like you’re much less vital and youthful than you really are. 

The answer isn’t simple. These aren’t simple times in your life. You have so many competing interests. You care deeply about the people around you. And you feel overwhelmed. 

We worked together to help her get some space in her life. They were small things that made a big difference.

She learned to set better boundaries with all her peeps. She got better at prioritizing the things she needed to do.

Doesn’t sound like “sex coaching,” but it made a huge difference in her day-to-day. Which meant she was less stressed and more open to her husband when he wanted to touch her. 

They spent some lovely times together when she wasn’t stressed to the max. She started trusting him again. He learned how to help her be present with him when they were alone. 

Slowly, things got better. It was possible for her. It’s possible for you, too. Honest.