Co-authored by Galit Romanelli
Galit has been telling me she doesn’t enjoy the way I touch her for a good part of our 16 years together. I heard it. I nodded. I said, “sure, sure.” I tried to be more sensitive, but I kept touching the way I wanted to. It was easier to treat it as playful banter than as real feedback. The truth is I wasn’t ready to face what it meant.
A few weeks ago, the penny finally dropped. She said it again, but this time it landed differently. She wasn’t criticizing my love. She was telling me that the way I reach for her doesn’t feel like I’m connecting to her.
So I gave myself a challenge: For 30 days, I would touch her only the way she wanted to be touched. Not the way I wanted. The way she wanted.
It sounds simple. It was extremely difficult.
Taking vs. Giving
Betty Martin developed the Wheel of Consent, a model that maps touch along two axes: who the touch is for, and who is doing it. Giving is touch you offer for your partner’s benefit. Taking is touch you initiate for yourself, for your own comfort or pleasure. They can look identical from the outside. The difference is internal. But she feels it.
Your partner is enabling your touch, which might not be what they actually want. When you take too frequently, your partner doesn’t stay neutral. Over time, too much taking leads to resentment. Resentment becomes distance. And distance leads to your partner initiating touch less and less.
It’s not a mystery. It’s simple math.
For sixteen years, I was touching Galit the way I wanted to touch her. The type of touch I liked, in the places I wanted to reach for. I was sure she was feeling loved. She was quietly allowing it. And slowly, without either of us naming it, she was closing down.
What Childhood Touch Leaves Behind
Once I saw the pattern clearly, I had to look at it’s source.
I wasn’t touched much as a kid. Not dramatically. Just the ordinary scarcity that goes unnamed, that becomes normal before you’re old enough to question it. I remember lying next to my father watching TV, pressing my face into his belly. That was the touch I would take to feel connected. I remember asking my mom almost every night to scratch my back at bedtime. I learned that I need to initiate in order to be touched.
The hunger that scarcity creates doesn’t disappear. It goes underground and comes back as taking. I was reaching for Galit, but I was really reaching toward something I never got enough of. The nature of my touch was the nature of my lack.
I see this in the clinic constantly. Boys don’t grow up being touched much. The touch boys know is wrestling, fighting, pushing. We don’t hold hands. We don’t rub each other’s backs. So we enter adulthood confusing sensuality with sexuality, because sexuality is the only channel we were given. Sensuality is being in your body, aliveness, presence. Sexuality is one expression of that.
What a lot of men are actually craving is sensuality. But the only road they know leads straight to sex. So they take. And every time they take more than they give, the other person closes a little more.
What the 30 Days Taught Me
The first thing I noticed was myself.
The first few days I didn’t change anything. I just watched. I counted how many times I touched Galit the way I wanted versus the way she would have wanted. The ratio was not flattering.
The two questions I kept returning to every day:
Do you want to be touched right now? And if so, how?
Simple questions. Uncomfortable to ask consistently. Because asking means you might hear no.
Around day five or six, something shifted. When Galit told me what she wanted and I actually followed it, she would light up. She relaxed into my touch in ways I didn’t know were possible.
The bigger shift happened when I stopped filling all the space. When I created a void, she found her own touch. She started reaching for me because she wanted to, not because I was hovering. She would come over, hug me, squeeze me, and leave. Taking touch bursts, on her terms. It felt completely different to be touched by someone who wants to touch you. It was refreshing that she was in taking and for me to enjoy allowing.
“When I Can See Your Selfishness, I Can Trust Your Generosity.” Betty Martin
The last thing is about her no.
For this to work, she has to be able to say No. In the past, sometimes when she would say No, I would sigh, pull back, or “punish” her by being disappointed or upset. When she can’t say No freely, her Yes means nothing. Her No is what makes her Yes real. When she’s saying No to me, she’s saying Yes to herself. And that makes all the difference.
The Challenge
Thirty days are done. I am more aware, more present, and more connected to Galit than I was at the start. She’s touching me more. I’m receiving it differently. The ratio has shifted.
Here is what I would invite you to try. Ask your partner two questions today: “Do you want to be touched right now? If so, how?”
Then do exactly that. Nothing more.
If you want to go further, try it for 30 days. Every time you feel the impulse to touch the way you want, notice it. Make a different choice. See what fills the void you create.
Galit and I turned this experiment into a structured workbook for couples who want to explore this together. You can find it here.
Galit Romanelli is a certified relationship coach, Ph.D.-candidate in gender studies, and co-director of The Potential State.
