I found myself offering a metaphor in a Couples Intensive recently that felt so clarifying I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I was sitting with two people who love each other deeply, but who also hurt each other terribly when they get activated. Both of them long for connection, tenderness, reassurance, and safety. Both of them also have a hard time actually taking those things in when they’re offered.
In Hakomi therapy, this is called a “barrier to nourishment.” Love can be right there. Care can be right there. The other person can be trying, reaching, offering, touching, reassuring, or softening, and still the system can’t receive it. It’s not because the love isn’t real. It’s because the body doesn’t know how to metabolize it.
The image that came to me was a baby who, for medical reasons, had to be fed through a tube and never learned how to eat by mouth. The food could be beautiful, delicious, nourishing, and completely available. But if the child never learned how to chew, swallow, digest, and trust the process of eating, then putting a full plate in front of them wouldn’t help. In fact, they might feel angry, resentful, hopeless, or despairing in the face of it.
This is what happens in so many relationships, especially when both people carry attachment wounds. Love is present, but the capacity to receive love is impaired. One person reaches, and the other person defends. One person softens, and the other person mistrusts it.
Then both people feel crazy. The one offering love thinks, “What else am I supposed to do? I’m trying.” The one who can’t receive it thinks, “Why doesn’t this feel safe? Why can’t I just believe them?” Both people may conclude the love isn’t enough, when the deeper problem is that the relationship is asking their bodies to receive nourishment they never learned how to take in.
Many of us were emotionally deprived as children. We may have been fed, clothed, and educated, but our deeper emotional needs were ignored, shamed, mocked, or punished. We learned not to ask. We learned not to need. We learned that wanting comfort, touch, reassurance, or softness was dangerous.
Sometimes nourishment wasn’t simply absent. Sometimes what looked like nourishment was actually poison. It came with strings attached, expectations, punishment, or later consequences. That teaches the body to be suspicious, so when love is offered now, younger parts inside may ask, “Can I trust this? What will this cost me? Will this be used against me later?”
So, later in life, when real love shows up, we don’t necessarily relax. We scan for the threat. We question everything. We brace for danger. We wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.
Some people respond to the barrier to nourishment by pursuing harder. They say, “If you loved me, you’d show me. If you cared, you’d reassure me. If I mattered, you’d know what to do.” Their longing comes out as protest, criticism, pressure, or demand, because the ache underneath feels unbearable.
Other people respond by withdrawing. They say, “I can’t do anything right. Everything I say is wrong. I’m tired of being attacked.” Their longing goes underground, and what shows up instead is distance, shutdown, defensiveness, or an exit strategy. Both strategies make sense. Neither can receive nourishment.
When someone has a barrier to nourishment, you don’t solve it by handing them the whole platter of delicious offerings. You don’t say, “Here is all my love. Here is my affection. Here is my vulnerability. Now take it in and be satisfied.” That’s too much, too fast.
We have to start with tiny bites.
A tiny bite might be five seconds of eye contact where one person says, “I’m here and I’m a soft place to land.” A tiny bite might be one hand on the other person’s shoulder, only if that touch feels welcome. A tiny bite might be saying, “I can see this is hard for you,” and then stopping there.
A tiny bite might be asking, “Can you tell me more about what that was like for you?” instead of correcting the other person’s experience. It might be saying, “I need to take a break, but I’ll be back,” instead of walking away in silence. It might be saying, “I want to do this differently with you,” even if neither of you knows exactly how yet. These are small moments, but small moments are how the body learns.
This is so important because people with attachment wounds often try to heal through intensity. They fight to connect. They interrogate, confess, plead, collapse, pursue, defend, and try to force a breakthrough. But an overwhelmed nervous system can’t digest a big breakthrough.
It needs lots of little repetitions. It needs steadiness. It needs small enough doses of safety that the body can say, “Oh. Maybe this is okay. Maybe I don’t have to spit this out immediately. Maybe I can take this in.”
If you’re the person who can’t take in love, start by noticing that without shaming yourself. You might say, “A part of me wants to trust this, and another part of me struggles to trust.” You might say, “I hear you want to talk, and I don’t feel resourced enough yet, but I’ll come back to you when I am.” You might say, “Can you say that again more slowly?”
If you’re the person offering love and it isn’t landing, try not to panic. Try not to force the other person to receive it. Try not to say, “Nothing I do is ever enough,” even though I know that may be exactly how it feels. Instead, you might say, “I know this is hard to take in. I’m going to stay steady and not demand that you feel better right away.”
There’s also a You-turn here. Instead of focusing only on whether your partner is feeding you correctly, you begin to ask, “What happens inside me when love is offered?” Do I mistrust it? Do I deflect it? Do I immediately bring up the last ten times they failed me? Do I feel embarrassed, exposed, angry, or sad?
Those reactions are clues. They point to the places where love was inconsistent, unsafe, unavailable, or paired with pain. When you notice them with compassion, you begin to build the inner capacity to receive what you’ve been longing for. The goal isn’t to shame the barrier. The goal is to understand why it had to be built.
And if you’re the one who tends to over-offer, over-function, or over-feed the relationship, there’s a You-turn for you too. You may need to ask, “Am I offering nourishment, or am I trying to make my partner feel okay so I don’t have to feel this anxiety?” That’s such a tender distinction. True nourishment is offered freely. Anxious feeding is an attempt to manage someone else’s nervous system so you don’t have to feel your own activation.
One sentence can help: “I think we’re both experiencing the barrier to nourishment right now.” That means, “Love may be here, but we’re having trouble taking it in.” It turns the problem from “you don’t love me” or “nothing I do is enough” into “our bodies are struggling to receive what we both need.”
That reframe matters. It moves couples out of blame and into compassion. It helps the offering partner stay steady, and it helps the receiving partner feel less defective. It reminds both people that the barrier was built for a reason, usually a very good reason, and it won’t come down through force. It comes down through tiny, safe, and frequent bites.
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