9 Things To Know If You’re Feeling ‘Touched Out’

The feeling of not wanting be touched when you have a child hanging from you 24 hours a day is incredibly common. It can be exacerbated for parents who are nursing, co-sleeping, and staying home with their kids during the day. And while most, if not all, parents crave some alone time in the midst of taking care of and raising children, feeling touched out takes it to another level and is a result of that buildup. Venuto estimates that at least half of the women in her mothers groups and private practice have shared this experience of feeling touched out.

A 2019 study in the Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research focused on this feeling particularly in mothers who are breastfeeding, and found that aversion and agitation while breastfeeding varies in form, severity, and duration. Common emotions included feelings of anger or agitation, a skin-crawling sensation, and an urge to remove the feeding infant. Just under 70% of the 694 mothers sampled reported experienced some form of breastfeeding aversion.

As parents, it’s easy to feel guilty about almost everything. Feeling like you just want your kid to get off of you for once does not mean you are a cold, uncaring parent. It means you’re a human being who needs and deserves personal space. “After endless days of having what feels like constant physical touch with one's children, being grabbed and pulled by little hands (sometimes even hit when dealing with tough toddler behaviors), women feel burned out,” Venuto says.

Everyone needs to breathe sometimes, and it doesn’t mean you don’t love or cherish your kid. "Humans do need physical touch, but they also need time alone,” Grubbs said. “Time where they can zone out and be with themselves absent of any intrusion. It's like resting your voice after screaming all day. It's needed and healthful."

You cannot be everything for everyone, and often, when you’re giving a lot in one area, it takes away from what you can give in another. So, when your young child is requiring a lot of your time and affection, your partner may receive less of that affection, which may make you feel stressed, frustrated, and guilty in some ways, as Venuto explains.

“The leap from being child-free to having children is a major transition for couples,” she says. “There are sizable shifts in how couples connect as well as a recalibration of priorities. When a dyad becomes a triad, it is not unusual for someone to feel left out. Mothers are often aware that their partners feel rejected or even jealous due to mom's focus on their children, and guilt and anxiety can be a result. I also have seen women feel angry that their partners are not more sympathetic to their circumstances.”

Relationships ebb and flow, and you are not a bad partner because you can’t drop everything to meet their physical needs at that moment. And if you are feeling frustrated that your partner doesn’t understand the emotional and physical toll you’re going through, try to talk it out or seek professional help.

While you can certainly feel touched out in other stages of parenting, the phenomenon often comes about for parents who are nursing, as they feel tied to their baby in a way that is unlike anything else they have ever experienced in life, as Venuto explains. “As one mother told me, breastfeeding ‘is an invisible leash,’” she says. “While this woman enjoyed nursing, she also felt intense pressure that her body was solely responsible for her infant's survival.”

And even as infants grow and approach toddlerhood, when nursing can become easier and more efficient, there are new things to navigate, such as teeth and pinching fingers. This sense of compulsory tethering to a child at steady intervals throughout the day and night can be incredibly draining. Any form of physical touch can start to feel like a heavy load.

Even as a parent responsible for their children all the time, you’re allowed to take care of yourself. In fact, you should take care of yourself. This can be especially tough, though, as young children don’t understand that they shouldn’t just simply follow you into, say, the bathroom, where you might otherwise have at least a few minutes of time alone.

“The touched out phenomenon is reflective of a mom's desperate need for a break,” Venuto explains. “I strongly encourage women to try to find childcare help, be it paid or unpaid for at least one to three blocks of time during the week. The purpose of the time is to be ‘off’ and to do things that are truly pleasurable.”

Giving yourself the space to breathe and recover will make you a better, more patient parent when you walk back out the door and into the arms of your waiting child. Even just going for a stroll around the neighborhood or a trip to the yoga studio will do your mind and body some good. "The endorphin rush from the movement helps clear the cobwebs from your mind and the sense of claustrophobia that tends to envelop you as a mom,” Grubbs says.

Although it is common for your libido to drop in the year following childbirth, that may not be the only reason you’re avoiding getting intimate with your partner. The feeling of being touched out can make sex seem like the most unpleasant thought in the world — and it can be easy for your partner to take it personally or think you’ve lost interest in them. However, being touched out has nothing to do with your attraction to your partner; it’s about the need that all humans have for bodily autonomy.

“When considered in this context, it's understandable that many women have the experience that when they are ‘off duty’ from mothering tasks, they have minimal interest in spending their free time engaging in physical activities like cuddling or having sex,” Venuto says. Since you can’t control how and when your child needs or touches you, it’s reasonable to exert control over being touched where you can — and often, that’s in the ability to tell your partner not to touch you.

However, if a lack of desire for your partner persists, it may be something you should give more thought to. “I believe that sex and intimacy are really healthy parts of relationships, and if one or more parties in a relationship go months or years without desiring physical touch, that should be explored,” Venuto says. “If you're reading this and it resonates, you might find great benefit from pursuing individual or couples therapy.”

Being physically needed all the time can be exhausting and make you feel claustrophobic, which can definitely take an emotional toll. Especially if you were someone who experienced repeated physical boundary violations as a child, the experience of feeling touched out can be triggering or bring back familiar and unpleasant feelings. Finding the space to not just physically separate, but emotionally decompress and regroup as well, is crucial.

“Moms have to provide so much emotional labor for others, and it can be hard to be constantly emotionally available for family and friends," Katie Lear, a licensed therapist who works with parents and kids, previously told Romper. "Especially for more introverted moms, time alone can be a chance to refill the cup” and prevent feeling tired — after all, “you can’t pour from an empty cup!” Mindfulness practices such as meditation can help create emotional space during times of extreme stress and anxiety.

While being a mother comes with many necessary duties and responsibilities, you do have personal choices to make along the way. In the case of feeling touched out, Venuto recommends giving thought to some of your goals related to activities requiring physical touch.

“If a woman is nursing and feeling touched out to the point that she is resenting her partner, her children, or not enjoying nursing, I strongly encourage her to reevaluate her breastfeeding goals and the purpose of breastfeeding,” Venuto says. “If it's for bonding, yet family relationships are suffering, it's important to consider whether it's really worth it.” Even when things feel out of your control during the parenting process, it is important to remember that you do have autonomy and personal choices to consider.

On the one hand, the feeling of being touched out can feel like it will never go away while you’re in it. On the other hand, those perpetually optimistic parents have a point when they say that one day you’ll miss having a kid who actually wants and needs to touch you. The reality is somewhere in between those two places.

It’s OK to feel overwhelmed and exhausted while you’re raising very small people who need you all the time. But, according to Venuto, the feeling is generally temporary. “I find it's a phase of life associated with the early caretaking years that are grueling on parents,” she says. And if you ever feel as though you need advice or help when it comes to feeling touched out, seeking out a mental health professional or therapist is always a good option.