How Intimacy Changes Through a Woman’s Life And Why Nothing Has Gone Wrong
When I was a teenager, I was insatiably curious about intimacy. Sex wasn’t particularly good, we were young, fumbling, learning but it was thrilling. There was excitement in the unknown, in being desired, in discovering that my body could evoke something in someone else. It was playful, risky, alive. Back then, I believed that was what intimacy was: spontaneous, passionate, effortless. Something that simply happened and, more importantly, something that would always feel that way.
In my early twenties, intimacy blurred into a haze of freedom and excess. College years were less about connection and more about experience, the late nights, too much alcohol, fleeting encounters. Those were the days. Then, almost without noticing, life shifted. By my late twenties, I was married. I remember the excitement of building a life together, the rituals we imagine will define adulthood: moving in, creating a home, imagining candlelit dinners and slow mornings tangled in sheets. But what quietly replaces those fantasies is something far more ordinary. Routine. Conversations become logistical. Evenings become structured. Intimacy becomes scheduled, implied, or forgotten. Trips to hardware stores replaced the delicious lazy mornings. Television and house chores replaced real connection. And without realising it, desire becomes something you assume will return “when life calms down.” It rarely does. That marriage ended, not dramatically, but quietly, through disconnection. Intimacy doesn’t disappear overnight. It fades in the spaces we stop tending to.
Years later, I entered a new chapter: motherhood. And nothing prepares you for how profoundly this reshapes your relationship with your body. After my son was born, intimacy wasn’t just low on my priority list, it felt inaccessible. My body no longer felt like mine. It was functional. Needed. Exhausted. Breastfeeding. Pelvic floor issues. Birth trauma. Hormonal shifts on top of severe sleep deprivation. Emotional overwhelm. Desire didn’t just decrease, it disappeared. And in its place came something many women recognise but rarely articulate: resentment, disconnection, noise. Even when I tried to be intimate, I wasn’t present. My mind was elsewhere, running through lists, anticipating the next interruption, craving rest more than touch. If I’m honest, the only time I could access any version of desire was when I’d had a few drinks, and even then, it felt performative, like I was stepping into a role I used to know how to play.
Women I work with now say it exactly: “I can’t switch off.” “My mind is too busy.” “I just want it to be over so I can sleep.” This isn’t dysfunction. It’s simply overstimulation and the exact reason I teach what I do now.
“I just want it to be over so I can sleep.”
Fast forward to my mid-forties: a new relationship, a renewed sense of self, and desire returned. Yippee! The chemistry was undeniable. I felt alive again. Sensual. Open. Connected. For a while, I believed I had “fixed” the problem, that my previous lack of desire had simply been about the relationship, the exhaustion, or the stage of life. And for a few years, intimacy felt easy again. Until my body shifted again.
This time, it was different. There was no obvious external cause. My relationship was stable. I was happy. Connected. But something inside me changed. I began to recoil from touch in a different way, and this felt really odd. I loved my partner, he was kind and considerate and yet his touch, and even his presence, started to irritate me. A sense of wanting space where once I wanted closeness. And with it came a cascade of symptoms I couldn’t ignore: fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, sensory overwhelm, night sweats, a loss of softness I couldn’t explain. I didn’t feel like myself. In fact, I felt like I was disappearing.
At times, I convinced myself something was seriously wrong, searching symptoms late into the night, fearing the worst. My Google history looked like this: “Do I have dementia?” “Early signs of brain tumour?” But the truth was far less spoken about. I was entering menopause. This was in 2019, at the age of just 42, when I completely lost my bleed.
What I didn’t understand then, but now teach every woman I work with is this: hormonal shifts don’t just affect your body. They affect your capacity for intimacy. Oestrogen and progesterone influence everything from mood to stress tolerance, from energy levels to how safe your body feels receiving touch. So when women say, “I don’t want to be touched,” “I feel irritated by my partner,” or “I’ve lost my desire,” it’s not failure, and it’s not simply “low libido caused by menopause.” It’s communication from your body. Your body is asking for something different.
This is where everything changed for me, not by forcing myself back into who I used to be, but by learning how to meet myself where I was now without labelling my body as broken. As a pelvic floor coach, I began exploring the deeper relationship between hormones, the nervous system, and pleasure. What I discovered reshaped everything I thought I knew about intimacy, and it’s why I now do the work I do to help other women navigate changes in their body so that pleasure doesn’t die, it’s reborn.
I learnt that intimacy in midlife isn’t about passion and lust. It’s about safety within myself and my ability to allow my body to soften and land before I expect something from her. It’s about slowing down enough for your body to trust the experience so that you actually feel more sensation within. In doing this practice, I actually began to have vaginal orgasms through penetration alone,something that had never happened before menopause. It’s about moving away from goal-oriented sex and into something far more profound: connection, sensation, presence.
“Intimacy in midlife isn’t about performance or pressure anymore. It’s about safety, softness, presence, and allowing your body to feel fully met.”
And here’s the part most women are never taught: your body isn’t shutting down, and it’s not “low libido.” It’s becoming more discerning. Where once quick, spontaneous intimacy worked, your body now asks for time. She wants you to receive more and how beautiful is that? You deserve a softer touch, more touch that feels devotional. Your body is asking for more depth and connection. For many women, this becomes the most fulfilling phase of intimacy when they’re shown how to access it.
Here are my top three tips. First, slow the beginning. Before any movement, allow stillness. Ask your partner to hold you without expectation. This allows your nervous system to regulate rather than react. Second, reframe what’s happening. This isn’t rejection. It’s intelligence. This isn’t simply libido loss, it’s a change in your response to touch. Your body is asking for more presence, more safety, and more time to become receptive. Third, breathe. Breathing into your abdomen, rather than shallow chest breathing, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the state where relaxation, arousal, and pleasure become possible.
Intimacy isn’t something you lose. It’s something that evolves. And each stage of your life is not a problem to fix, but an invitation to deepen your relationship with your body. And when you do, everything opens again, just differently, and often more beautifully than before.
This is the foundation of everything I teach inside my work.
To work with Emma: FK This Sh*t Retreat, perfect for the woman that wants it all: to scream, rage, cry, sleep, rest, and have a fun time.
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