Attached to Pain Disguised as Hope

An overseas client said to me recently, “I just want a man to protect my heart instead of crush it.”

She didn’t mean it in a fairytale way, and equally she wasn’t asking for perfection. What she was really voicing was a grief most women carry quietly - the experience of handing their heart to someone and watching it get ignored or often shattered not because they were too fragile, but because no one had ever taught them how to have emotionally protection.

This client had always attracted emotionally avoidant men. Her father wasn’t available growing up and she inherited the energy of that loss as “not being worthy” of a man sticking around for long. So this played out by men she attracted being at first thoughtful, then within the first few weeks growing distant. This happened as soon as deeper intimacy stirred. Men naturally pull back as part of their biological circuitry, for reasons I don’t have enough space to get into in an insta post, but the type she attracted were clearly emotionally unavailable for wide ranging reasons.

As we talked, it became clear that the version of love she was drawn to was wired through a kind of emotional muscle memory built from inconsistency, emotional labour, and the light light of hope that maybe this time, if she could just get it right, someone would stay. Even though her core belief playing out is know this type of man never would.

Her nervous system had come to equate love with self-sacrifice and longing. So when she met anyone stable, kind, and emotionally available, it didn’t feel like chemistry , it felt unfamiliar and boring.

But what she was really saying in that one sentence was:

“I’m tired of doing all the work and pretending I don’t need what I deeply need.”

This wasn’t just about romance but rather protection in the deepest sense. The turning point for a woman is when she stops chasing someone to protect her heart. To stand in her beautiful power, tending to her own heart and trusting God and the universe that it/he/etc has her back - no matter what that may turn out to look like. Absolute faith. Trust in the glory of yourself, your light, your power. And you will always only attract that which matches you.