Diary of Desires by Uliana Sunny

Diary of Desires by Uliana Sunny

Contents

From My Diary: My Body Closed Down…

Why Does the Body Shut Down?

Chronic Stress and Exhaustion

Early Experience and Attachment

Guilt, Pressure, and the Vicious Circle

The Gap Between “I Want To” and “I Can”

Why Is Intimacy the Most Vulnerable Area for Every One of Us?

How Stress Steals Desire, Lightness, and Intimacy

Hormones Change Everything

The Quiet Tension of the Body: The Invisible Armor of Stress

Stress Steals Sleep, and Lost Sleep Steals Desire

The Vicious Circle

Signs You Are Living in Survival Mode

Why the Problem Isn't Always the Relationship

Life Stages and Crises

Why It Is Easy to Blame the Relationship

When the Problem Truly Is the Relationship

What This Changes

Reclaiming a Sense of Safety

5–15 Minute Practices

Relationships After Recovery

A practical guide for women who love their partner, but no longer feel like themselves around him. How to reclaim your ability to love, to feel, and to be close.

Structure:

Why the body closes down.

How stress steals desire, ease, and intimacy.

Signs of living in survival mode.

Why the problem isn't always the relationship.

5- to 15-minute practices.

The relationship after self-restoration.

From My Diary: My Body Closed Down…

One morning my husband reached for me to kiss me. Truly, deeply, the way he used to, back when every kiss was a promise and every touch was a bridge between us. I felt his warmth, his intention even before his lips touched mine. And once again, I turned my head away. The movement was habitual, almost automatic, as if my body had decided to protect itself before my conscious mind even had time to react. It was a reflex honed by hundreds of moments like this, a mute refusal I hadn't had time to think through or stop.

And then I saw his face. The sunlight from the window caught his profile, emphasizing every wrinkle, every shadow. He didn't say a thing. There was no reproach, no anger, not even a question. What flickered in his eyes wasn't resentment so much as a deep, almost physical exhaustion. The exhaustion of a person who has spent too long knocking on a closed door. He slowly lowered the hand that had just reached for me, picked up his keys from the small table, and walked out the door. I heard the lock click shut, and I felt how, with the closing of that door, a heavy, pressing silence descended on the room. It wasn't simply the absence of sound, but a palpable weight settling on my shoulders, on my heart, on every nerve.

Sometimes I wonder: how many times can a person reach out to you before their hands drop for good? How many attempts can love endure before it turns into a habit, and then into indifference? This question haunts me like an echo every time I push him away again, every time my body, contrary to my will, chooses withdrawal. With every moment like this, I feel something irreversibly shifting, I feel the slender thread connecting us growing thinner, threatening to snap.

I distinctly remember the moment I realized we were standing on the edge. This awareness didn't arrive in a single day; it had accumulated through many small "no's" spoken against my own truth, through imperceptible compromises and concessions that gradually erased who I was. Every "yes" to someone else's expectations, every suppressed need, every swallowed word—each was a brick in the wall I was building around myself. It seemed to me that I was becoming stronger, more resilient, but in reality, I was losing myself, my internal compass, my capacity to feel and desire. I had stopped listening to my inner voice, which had once spoken so clearly about my desires and my boundaries.

It was the beginning of the week—midnight on a Monday. Rain drizzled outside the window, and the city had slipped into sleep, but inside me an invisible storm was raging. He came into the bedroom and paused in the doorway. His silhouette was sharp against the dim light from the hallway. I lay with my eyes closed, but I felt his gaze against my skin—like an invisible touch that brought no warmth, only heightened my internal tension. Every muscle in my body was taut, braced for something I couldn't even name. Then came a quiet, heavy sigh—as though a whole lifetime of unspoken hopes and disappointments had settled inside him, as though he were exhaling everything that had gathered over the long years. He lay down at the very edge of the bed, leaving between us a distance measured not in inches, but in silence—thick, cold, almost tangible. It wasn't merely physical distance, but an abyss carved by years of unspoken feelings and suppressed desires. An abyss we were both afraid to acknowledge, but which had already become part of our shared reality.

Once, we used to fall asleep with our arms and knees tangled together, our bodies instinctively seeking touch to feel safe and warm. His arm around my waist, my breath in his hair—it was as natural as breathing air. Now, an emptiness lay between us. Cold, thick, almost tangible. Back then, I was still searching for its cause like a lost object, not realizing that this emptiness was a reflection of my own inner detachment, my inability to let him in even when I wanted to. My body seemed to be living a life of its own, separate from my thoughts and feelings.

I was nearly thirty-four. Five years of living together. Two children from my husband's first marriage, both nearly grown. A career built through my own efforts, step by step, against all the odds. A husband who still tells me I'm beautiful, yet every time I slip away from his touch, confusion shows in his eyes. Do I not believe him? Or do I not believe myself? What is happening to me? Why does my body, which once responded so hungrily to his closeness, now instinctively contract as if bracing for an impact, as if defending against an invisible threat? It wasn't a conscious choice; it was a deep, ancient instinct that overrode all my desires.

He looked for an explanation for my detachment. He tried to understand what had changed, where he had gone wrong, what he could have done differently.

I was searching too. I ran through all the possible reasons in my mind: exhaustion, stress at work, age-related changes, routine. But none of these explanations felt complete; none answered the essential question: why do I no longer feel like myself around him?

It felt as though the support inside me had cracked. As if the very foundation holding up the entire structure of my life had been damaged. The sensation was akin to having the ground slip out from under your feet, leaving you suspended in midair without your familiar anchor. I felt fragile, vulnerable, like a house of cards ready to collapse from the slightest breath of wind. My inner wholeness, which had once seemed unshakeable, was now in question. I had lost the connection to my desires, to my boundaries, to my true self.

From the outside, I kept hearing the same things: exhaustion, stress, advice about yoga, warm baths, and a glass of wine before bed. Those words felt so far removed from my reality, so superficial. They didn't touch the essence of the matter; they didn't penetrate the depths of the abyss that had opened inside me. It was like trying to patch a deep wound with a band-aid.

And inside, a scream was rising. It was the silent scream of my body signaling deep inner distress, warning that something fundamental had broken. A cry for help that no one could hear because it carried no sound. A cry to return to myself, to my true nature, to the ability to feel and to be alive.

It felt like a slow, inexorable descent underwater, where every breath took incredible effort, and the world around me was losing not only its bright colors, but its clear contours. Sounds were muffled, thoughts grew viscous, and the air seemed to thicken. Every day I lived with the feeling of fleeing from something shapeless yet relentless, something constantly breathing down my neck. It was an invisible stalker that would not let me relax for a single minute, forcing my body into constant combat readiness, as if anticipating an attack. My shoulders were hunched so high they nearly touched my ears, my neck was tight to the point of stone-like hardness, my jaw was clamped shut to an aching pain, and the muscles in my back remained in constant tension, ready to spring. This was not merely physical strain, but a deep-seated spasm that refused to let go even in my sleep. My heart could leap into a frantic rhythm at three in the morning without any apparent reason, dumping a massive dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream that had nowhere to go. It surged through my veins, leaving me in a state of acute, exhausting anxiety and total depletion. It was survival mode, in which a nervous system built for an immediate response to an actual threat remained perpetually locked in "fight or flight," unable to distinguish real danger from everyday occurrences: a ringing telephone, an unscheduled work email, or even a simple question from my husband. My body was living in anticipation of a catastrophe that did not exist, yet felt inevitable.

Somewhere within this endless, draining tension, intimacy became completely inaccessible. It became alien, unwelcome, almost hostile. Touches that had once been a source of warmth and comfort were now perceived as an added burden, another stimulus demanding an immediate response from a nervous system already stretched to its limit. My brain instantly read them as a potential threat, as an invasion into my already fragile personal space. Any attempt to connect, whether a heart-to-heart talk or a simple glance, felt like yet another demand on a system with virtually no strength left, where every resource had to be counted. Any movement toward closeness, emotional or physical, triggered an almost instinctive impulse to step back, to pull away, because intimacy made me unbearably vulnerable. The fear of letting someone in that deep manifested as this detachment, an obsessive need to control everything, an involuntary clenching at the slightest hint of emotional or physical closeness. I was terrified of being seen, terrified that my weaknesses would be discovered, that I would be hurt again. This protective reaction was stronger than I was, stronger than my desire to be close.

At the time, I could see only one thing: my husband was slowly but steadily drifting away. With each passing day he grew more distant, his gaze increasingly detached. And inside me, an unbearable sense of guilt was building for my own protective armor, for this invisible yet so dense wall I had built between us. I understood that I was pushing him away, that I was causing him pain, but I could not stop, as if my body were living its own separate life, refusing to obey my desires, my pleas. My mind wanted to be near him, but my body shrank away.

The most painful, heart-wrenching part was that he never once reproached me. Not a single word of condemnation, not one reproachful look. His silence was louder than any words; it spoke not only of boundless acceptance, but of a deep, hopeless helplessness. He saw that I was suffering and, perhaps, did not know how to help.

He grew quieter. His voice, always so confident, now sounded muted. He touched me less often, and those rare touches were cautious, almost hesitant, as if he were afraid of scaring me off or hurting me. He stopped suggesting date nights, walks together, those small moments that had once given meaning to our life. We turned into polite roommates, tied together by children, endless to-do lists, and rare, almost mechanical goodbye kisses that had become more of a ritual than an expression of true feelings. We planned everything: from grocery shopping to vacations, from after-school activities to home repairs—everything except time for each other. It was as if our relationship had become just another task on an endless to-do list, something we kept postponing for later in the hope that someday the right moment would come, that someday our strength would return. But that moment never arrived.

At get-togethers with friends or in cafés, I watched the couples around us. Their ease, their invisible yet palpable connection that revealed itself in the most ordinary, almost imperceptible gestures. How her fingers seemed to find his palm of their own accord, intertwining in a silent promise of support and tenderness. How his hand rested on her waist without words, without an invitation, simply as a natural extension of their shared space, their unbroken bond. They exchanged glances that only the two of them understood, smiled at private jokes, and a deep, comfortable intimacy filled their silence. And every time I saw this, I felt a heavy, crushing wave of sorrow rising inside me. It was not envy of their happiness, no. It was a deep, piercing loss of what was formally still present in my life—a husband, a family, a home—yet remained behind an impenetrable glass wall. We were side by side, breathing the same air, but an invisible, cold barrier lay between us, permeable neither to touch nor to real, living feelings. I could see their closeness, but I could not feel it in my own life, as though I were an outside observer of someone else's happiness, locked inside my own cage.

One night, around two o'clock, I couldn't sleep again. Insomnia had become my constant companion. An unfamiliar, ringing silence hung in the house. Usually at that hour, his even breathing or the distant noise of the street could be heard, but now there was only complete stillness, and I sensed that something was wrong, that this silence foreboded something significant. I got up and found him on the couch in the living room. The television screen was a black mirror, the room submerged in deep darkness, with only a faint, ghostly light from the window drifting in, outlining his silhouette. He was just sitting there, motionless, as if frozen, immersed in this silence that seemed denser than air, thick and oppressive. His silhouette was tense, and I felt my own body contract in anticipation of something important and painful, something that could not be ignored.

"What happened?" I asked, and my voice sounded too loud, too sharp in that viscous silence, shattering its fragile balance.

He took a long time to choose his words, his gaze directed into nowhere, as though he were searching for answers in the void. Then quietly, almost in a whisper, each word coming with great difficulty, he said: "Are you still choosing me? Do you feel anything at all?" His voice broke on the last word, and I saw his shoulders drop almost imperceptibly, as if an invisible weight had fallen from them, or, conversely, as if he had finally surrendered under its crushing force. This man, whom I had known for years, almost never cried, never showed his weakness. For years he had borne the weight of waiting, enduring my emotional withdrawal, my silent walls that I had built between us without understanding how to tear them down. His question was not a reproach, not an accusation, but a cry of despair, a final, most heartfelt attempt to reach me, to break through my armor. At that moment, for the first time, I truly realized how deeply he had been suffering.

My chest grew unbearably tight, as though an invisible vise were squeezing my ribs. This was no metaphor, but a sharp, physical sensation: my heart clenched into a tight knot, and my lungs seemed to have forgotten how to fill completely with air. Every inhale took an effort; every exhale was shallow and ragged. And this physical pain was merely an echo of an internal struggle, because yes, I wanted him. I wanted to feel the warmth of his palm; I wanted our fingers to interlace effortlessly, naturally, as though they were made for each other. I wanted to be that woman who reaches for a hand first, who seeks his touch without fearing rejection or seeming needy. I wanted softness instead of this constant numbness that bound my body, turning it into an unbending statue. I wanted hugs to bring peace and relaxation, not another surge of tension, not another test of endurance after which I felt even more hollowed out. My heart reached toward him, fluttering frantically in my chest like a trapped bird, but my body remained locked away, as if in an invisible cage whose bars were made of fear and incomprehension.

Yet the road back was lost in a dense fog that enveloped not only the path, but my consciousness itself. The very direction seemed erased, and I did not know where to begin, where to go to find my way out of this labyrinth. My words sounded just as uncertain as my thoughts: "I'm trying," I whispered, and my voice was as feeble as my grasp of what was happening. "I really am trying to understand myself." He nodded, but in that motion lay such a deep, almost physical exhaustion from waiting, as if he had heard that answer many, many times before, and each time it had only added to his burden. In his eyes there was no anger, no reproach—only helplessness and sorrow, piercing me through and through. I saw him slowly, almost imperceptibly, resigning himself to the fact that I could not give him what he so desperately sought.

Sleep never came to me that night. I tossed and turned in bed, as if trying to flee from myself, from my thoughts, from that oppressive silence. I searched for an explanation for everything that was happening, running through hundreds of scenarios and questions in my head. In desperation, I opened my laptop and began searching for answers in articles about saving relationships, about how to bring back the spark, how to restore intimacy. But they left me with nothing but a sense of my own inadequacy, as though my efforts were always falling short, as though I were doing something wrong simply because I couldn't just "fix" our intimacy like a broken mechanism. This advice felt superficial; it never touched the underlying problem that held me captive, turning me into something foreign and incomprehensible even to myself. They spoke of techniques, words, gestures, but never of that invisible barrier standing between us, nor of that inner numbness that would not let me breathe.

Instead, I typed something different into the search bar, something that intuitively felt closer to the truth, to the very heart of my condition: "Why my body constantly feels under threat." That question became a turning point, the pivot on which everything turned. It flipped my understanding of the problem completely on its head, as if someone had suddenly switched on a light in a dark room, allowing me to see not only the mess, but what had caused it.

I came across material on a woman's wholeness, on how the body reacts to chronic stress, on how it essentially lives in a state of constant battle readiness. I learned that persistent tension does not dwell in thoughts alone, not just in anxious rumination, but deep within the muscles, in shallow breathing, in a racing heartbeat, and even in the skin, which becomes less sensitive. When the body exists too long in "fight-or-flight" mode, it begins shutting down everything it considers "secondary" to survival. Sleep becomes broken and light, offering no true rest. Digestion falters, causing discomfort. Immunity weakens, leaving us vulnerable. And, most astonishing to me, the ability to feel closeness and enjoy it shuts down, because for the body, intimacy is no priority in the presence of perceived danger.

The essence of it lay in physiology, in the reactions of my nervous system, not in an absence of love or desire. My nervous system had become exhausted, overloaded, and it had chosen self-protection through withdrawal, through pulling away, as the only possible way to survive under chronic tension. Intimacy, as I came to understand, requires an inner anchor and a profound sense of safety, and I had neither. My body was in constant battle readiness, as if anticipating an attack, and in that state it simply could not relax and open up, even to the person closest to me. It perceived every move toward closeness as an additional demand, as a potential threat from which it needed to defend itself.

At some point I came across a blog that described the exact same states torturing me: the chronic fatigue, the guilt over my own emotional distance, the confusion of loving someone who stands right beside you and yet feels so far away. The author wrote that emotional openness is born of inner calm, of the body's ability to feel safe even when there is no visible threat around. And above all—that the body can be taught to come out of survival mode; that perhaps the point is not to suffer and survive, losing yourself in an endless struggle, but to learn the opposite: to reclaim your wholeness and peace, restoring that inner anchor step by step. It was a revelation, and it gave me hope.

I took an online test at three in the morning, sitting in the kitchen in the half-light, trying to stay quiet so as not to wake anyone. In that nighttime stillness, by the soft glow of my phone screen, the results gathered all my scattered sensations into a clear, frighteningly precise picture. It laid bare how my condition was affecting everything: how the body grows accustomed to living in constant anxiety, how even the slightest hint of closeness turns into an overwhelming burden against the backdrop of chronic stress. And most importantly—a way back did exist. Not through fighting myself, not through forcing my feelings, but through gentle actions, through gradually returning a sense of grounding and safety to my body, allowing it once again to trust the world and itself.

The books I found on that resource offered a completely different perspective on familiar problems. They spoke of brief yet remarkably effective interventions capable of interrupting the stress loop before it could take over entirely. Doubts remained, of course. After so many years of grueling torment, when every day had been a fight and every attempt to draw closer to myself or to another had ended in pain and disappointment, the idea of "simple" solutions felt almost naive. My mind, used to complexity and suffering as the norm, resisted. But desperation—deep and all-consuming—proved stronger than any rational argument. I was ready to try anything, even what seemed too simple, just to escape this trap, this endless cycle of survival.

The second week brought the first, barely perceptible, yet all the more astonishing changes. I felt my body beginning to thaw. It was like the earth slowly freeing itself from ice after a long winter. My jaw, which had been clenched for months in mute tension—as if holding in all the unsaid words and unlived emotions—finally relaxed. My muscles seemed to remember what peace felt like, that it was possible simply to be, without bracing for an impending blow. My breathing deepened, filling my lungs all the way to the bottom rather than staying shallow as before, when every breath felt like an attempt to keep my head above water. This physiological shift was the first sign: the constant inner hum of anxiety, which I had taken to be a part of myself, an inescapable backdrop to my life, began to subside. It gave way to silence—at first unfamiliar and even a little frightening, but then liberating. It was as though a loud background noise you had grown used to and stopped noticing was suddenly switched off, and you realized just how intrusive it had been, how much energy its constant presence had drained. In this new stillness, for the first time in a long time, I felt not merely like I was surviving, but that I was truly living.

The fourth week brought another, more tangible confirmation of change. One evening, while I was making dinner, his hand rested lightly, almost weightlessly, on my shoulder. In the past, such a touch often triggered an inner tension, an invisible barrier that would rise between us in an instant. My body might freeze, or I might pull away unconsciously, even if I consciously wanted closeness. But this time, something different happened. This simple, seemingly ordinary touch sparked a completely unexpected response. My body leaned toward him on its own, as if remembering a forgotten movement, instinctively and without hesitation. It was not a conscious decision, not an act of will, but a pure, unclouded bodily response—as though a long-blocked mechanism had started working again, allowing me to feel closeness without inner resistance. In that moment, I realized that the walls I had built around myself were beginning to crumble.