## "I Love My Husband, But I Can't Bear to Be Intimate With Him" Shubha* was a senior IT professional, married to Kamlesh* for over three years. She made every effort to keep her marriage happy — but despite genuinely loving her husband, she found herself resisting any intimacy or sex with him. This left him dissatisfied, and the tension often spilled over into fights. It was after one such fight that Shubha approached me for counselling. She sat across from me that day, fidgeting, avoiding eye contact. Her eyes moistened as she spoke. "Kamlesh has threatened to leave me. He says I don't cooperate with him in bed, and it leaves him dissatisfied. I love my husband — I don't want this marriage to break. What is wrong with me?" This pattern — **aversion to sex in marriage** despite genuine love for one's partner — is more common than most people realise, and it has a clinical name: **Sexual Aversion Disorder (SAD)**. ## Ruling Out the Physical First I asked Shubha whether she or her husband had consulted a sexologist to check for an underlying medical cause. She had already seen multiple doctors — pathologically, nothing was wrong with either of them. That's often the first clue that the root of the problem isn't physical at all, but held somewhere in the subconscious. I suggested we try **hypnotherapy for sexual problems**, explaining clearly that the process involves no drugs or medication — only guided relaxation and access to the subconscious mind. She agreed to begin. ## The First Session: Building Trust With the Subconscious In the first session, I induced hypnosis through deep breathing and breath-watching, followed by Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) to deepen the trance and help her fully relax. I also taught her to do this herself, which she picked up quickly and began using for self-relaxation between sessions. ## Uncovering the Root Cause Through Age Regression Over the next two to three sessions, I used **age regression hypnotherapy** to guide Shubha gently back to earlier moments in her life that had shaped her subconscious beliefs about her body and her worth. Two memories surfaced clearly: - In college, her then-boyfriend had slapped her in public over something trivial. When I asked how that made her feel, she said quietly: "I feel humiliated and intimidated." - At the age of eight, classmates had called her fat and made her feel ugly in front of others — an early experience of body-shaming that stayed with her for years. Both incidents had left her subconscious mind associating closeness, vulnerability, and her own body with shame and fear — a pattern that later resurfaced as an inability to be intimate with someone who loved her. ## The Turning Point: Forgiveness Therapy Under Hypnosis While Shubha remained in a hypnotic state, I introduced **forgiveness therapy hypnosis** — guiding her to forgive her ex-boyfriend for slapping her, and just as importantly, to forgive herself for having been in that relationship at all. We also worked through forgiving her Grade 3 classmates, framing it gently: children, and sometimes adults, say hurtful things without understanding their impact. She signalled her acceptance of each suggestion by raising a finger while under hypnosis — a small act that gave her a real sense of control over her own healing process. ## The Result When Shubha came out of hypnosis, she described feeling "as if a great burden has been lifted from my shoulders." Over the following weeks, her self-confidence around her body and self-image steadily returned. She no longer avoided intimacy with her husband, and their marriage began to heal. She also found herself performing better at work — a common side effect when long-held emotional weight is finally released. ## Why Hypnotherapy Works for This Genuine forgiveness is difficult to access in a fully conscious state — old hurts tend to stay guarded by the same defences that formed them. Under hypnosis, the subconscious mind becomes more receptive to new suggestions around perception and behaviour. Over a few sessions, this allows real cognitive restructuring to take place, replacing old painful associations with new, positive ones. *Names and identifying details have been changed to protect client confidentiality.*