Caylee Cresta, a prominent figure with 2.7 million followers on TikTok, is known for empowering women through her content. Recently, she addressed a significant issue by shedding light on the dynamics of physical intimacy within marriages.
Directly addressing husbands worldwide, Cresta expressed her thoughts, saying, “You complain that your wife never wants to be intimate, but you slap her butt when she’s emptying the dishwasher and grope her body when she’s stressing over bills.”
Cresta posed a crucial question, wondering, “Why would aggressively touching someone out of nowhere make them want to sleep with you? Especially when they’re in the midst of taking care of everyone but themselves?”
In her perspective, “Touching her without talking to her signifies a desire for personal gratification rather than emotional connection. It’s selfish to assume that your desire for pleasure alone is enough to ignite her passion. Ultimately, such actions end up turning her off instead of turning her on.”
She continued her critique, highlighting how unwelcome physical advances can further dampen women’s mood. Cresta explained that even a simple act like slapping her on the butt can be enough to push her over the edge when she’s already overwhelmed with responsibilities and feeling frustrated about managing them all alone.
“Foreplay starts long before the act and it’s in the way you treat her, not the way you touch her,” Cresta explained.
She made a case for physical intimacy being connected to emotional intimacy, pointing out that “she’s your partner, not your bro from the 3rd grade. So asking about her day will always mean more than giving her a purple nurple when she’s trying to cook you dinner.”
According to Cresta, husbands who touch their wives without expressing emotional intimacy ‘do those things to let her know you want her, not to make her want you.’
She highlighted the inherent imbalance of power that exists within that particular situation and made it clear that “that’s the problem, because a lot of you don’t care if she wants to be with you as long as she’s willing to be with you.”
“That’s what makes it feel like a chore instead of a choice,” Cresta said. “Because you expect her to cater to the fact that you’re already in the mood without considering why she isn’t. But if you would just spend a minute trying to make her want to be with you, then maybe she actually would.”
Cresta received over 3,000 comments on her post, a majority of which came from women who saw their own realities mirrored back to them. One woman commented, “You really just made sense of the cobweb in my head wondering why I don’t desire my husband even though I love him.”
Another woman shared the disconnect that exists between her and her husband around intimacy, saying, “My husband just assumes I’m not attracted to him instead of doing the actually attractive things.”
Someone else said, “My husband would only get touchy feely when it was clear he wanted something — [it’s] gotten to the point where any touch makes me recoil now.”
Yet another woman wrote, “Wish I could send this to my husband without him getting mad, haha.” While she framed her comment with an expression of laughter, what she said isn’t really funny. It illustrates the lack of open communication between her and her partner, and the dissatisfaction she feels in her relationship.
Desire is something that ebbs and flows. Wanting to be intimate with someone requires an extreme amount of trust, a sense of safety, and feeling valued. Physical connection transcends touch. There’s so much more to sex than just sex itself, which is why Cresta’s words seem to have resonated with so many women.
This article originally appeared on YourTango