I also lived it.

Fourteen years ago, seven years into my marriage, I came home and there was a white envelope on the kitchen counter with my first name handwritten on it. Steve called from the other room that there was a letter for me.

By then we had been struggling with intimacy for about five years. We had sex, but it was obligatory. I was not present, I did not enjoy it, and I dreaded it. Worse than the dread was managing his rejection, which turned into anger, and then resentment. We would cycle. I would fake it, hold it up as long as I could, it would blow up, and we would not speak for days.

On paper we looked great. New baby, new home, two careers, people constantly telling us what a great couple we were. I used to think, if they only knew.

And here is the part that undid me. I am a therapist. I worked with couples every single day. I had been through multiple therapists myself, personally and in clinical training. I had every tool, every framework, and every insight available to me.

And I could not figure out what was wrong with me.

We spent sixty thousand dollars on five years of couples therapy. I spent at least twice that on individual therapy. One therapist told me I was emotionally self-sufficient. Another told me this was simply my personality and I should find workarounds.

Nobody ever said: Carrie, this is not a thinking problem. You cannot think your way out of this.

I figured that out myself, over years, through hundreds of hours of research. And once I started giving my body what it needed to feel safe enough to want intimacy, I changed, and then my marriage changed.

I am coming up on twenty-two years married. The flinching is gone. The bracing is gone. At fifty-two the love is deeper than I knew was possible.

Returning to Love is that work, built into a curriculum.