Friendship

The chapters in your hand

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The Chapters in Your Hand

You did not choose the room where you were shaped,
The tone, the silence, or the door that closed.
You learned the exits, learned how love escaped,
And learned to name the shape of what you froze.
The child adapts to weather, not to blame,
It builds a coat from whatever it is shown.
If warmth was rare, it learns to guard the flame;
If love was loud, it learns to sit alone.
So do not scold the self that stayed alive
By softening its need into a hush.
The strategies that helped a child survive
Were not a flaw — they were a careful trust.
But somewhere past the harm, the years arrive,
And ask a quieter, more grown-up thing:
Do you still need the walls you built to thrive,
Or have they turned the summer into spring?
Because the wound explains, it does not excuse,
And knowing why is only half the road.
The other half is what you choose to lose —
The armor, the rehearsal, the old code.
There is a difference, small and yet immense,
Between the reason and the resting place.
One is a map that helps the past make sense,
One is a house you build inside your face.
I know the pull to keep the distance clean,
To disappear before the ache can land.
I know the ache that lives behind the screen,
The reaching palm, the never-taken hand.
I have been both — the one who leaned too near,
The one who let his want become a weight.
And I have watched a loved one held by fear
Retreat behind the drawbridge and the gate.
So I stopped pulling. Not to punish, no —
But so the room could hold a softer air.
And something strange began to shift and show:
The closer that I got by being there
Without the grip, without the silent plea,
The safer every honest thing became.
The one who fled began to sit with me,
Because I did not need her to be tame.
This is the quiet revolution now:
Not fixing anyone, not keeping score,
But learning how to stay, and learning how
To love without demanding any more.
The pen is in your hand. The past is ink.
The chapters that were written were not yours.
But what comes next is closer than you think —

It waits behind the unlocked, easy doors.

RSP

…

DCG

Regardless of how you were raised, it’s your job to grow up. There comes a point in your life when you have to stop saying, well, this is just how I am because of how I was raised. No. That might be why you became this way, but it doesn’t have to be who you stay. If nobody taught you how to communicate, then learn. If nobody showed you healthy love, then learn. If your family avoided hard conversations, have them. If anger was the only emotion you ever saw, learn another way. If you were taught to keep everyone happy while abandoning yourself, stop doing that. Because growing older happens automatically. Growing up doesn’t, though. Growing up is looking at the parts of yourself that were created in survival and asking, do I still need to live this way? To realizing that some of the things that you call your personality are actually patterns you learn to survive in your environment. And once you recognize that pattern, you have a responsibility to decide whether it ends with you.

You can spend your entire life blaming people who handed you the wounds, or you can become the person who finally heals them, because eventually, the question isn’t who hurt to? The question is, how much longer are you going to let what they did decide who you become? Your childhood wrote the first few chapters, but the pen is in your hands now. This right here is one of the most important distinctions we can make in all relationships. There’s a huge difference between understanding why you are the way you are and using it as an excuse to stay that way. Maybe nobody modeled healthy conflict for you. Maybe vulnerability wasn’t safe in your family. Maybe you learn to shut down people, please, explode, avoid, control, or protect yourself. Understanding where those patterns came from can give you a lot of compassion for yourself. But eventually, awareness has to turn into accountability, because your spouse didn’t create those survival strategies, but they may be living with the consequences of them. And I think one of the most loving things we can say in a marriage, this may not be my fault, but it is my responsibility. You can learn to communicate. You can learn to regulate yourself. You can learn to stay in hard conversations. You can learn a healthier way to love. Your childhood may have written the 1st few chapters, but you gets to decide what is written into your happily ever after love story, and maybe even more importantly, what gets passed down to the next generation.

— attribution, possibly Jimmy Knight 

Between what was said 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Between the words we chose to keep
and those we buried deep in doubt,
lies half of love we let go cheap —
the half we never spoke about.
Gibran once wrote that love goes missing
not in silence, but in sound —
in every word we kept from saying,
and everything we never found.
I built a quiet page of thought,
a small blog no one thought to find,
and pressed there every love I sought
in ink too honest to unwind.
You kept your distance like a shore
that watches waves but never wades,
and I kept reaching, wanting more,
while you retreated into shades.
Not every heart that turns away
is cold or careless in its flight —
some fear the nearness of the day,
and choose the safety of the night.
I chased what pulled itself apart,
mistaking longing for a sign,
and gave the whole of my own heart
for just a half of what was mine.
I’ve learned that love is not the ache
of chasing what will never stay,
but knowing when it’s time to break
the silence, or to walk away.
So here’s the truth I never sent,
a folded letter, left unread —
a thousand words I could have meant
now settle where the quiet’s spread.
Between the meant and never said,
between the said and never true,
is where most love is quietly bled —
I lost my share of it to you.
And yet I don’t regret the silence,
nor curse the quiet we became —
some loves are built to test our patience,
and teach us how to hold our name.
So let this be the closing line,
the space where all the silence ends —
what wasn’t said is still love’s sign,

and in that hush, my heart still mends.

RSP

…

DCG

Written for the Hungarian gypsy 

Khalil Gibran once said, ‘Between what is said and what is not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.’
Love doesn’t always leave because the feelings fade. Sometimes it leaves between the words we never meant and the ones we never found the courage to say.”

I need you in my life 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Need You in My Life
Distance never stops the ones who care,
it only proves how deep the roots can grow.
Busy days can’t dim what we still share,
effort finds a way when hearts still glow.
Pride may raise its quiet walls of stone,
but real devotion climbs past every ledge.
I choose to meet you where you stand alone,
not to push you, just to hold the edge.
Excuses live where exits feel like peace,
but effort stays when reasons beg to run.
I’m not here searching for a quick release,
I’m here because this bond has just begun.
Two guarded hearts once learned to lock their gate,
one built a wall, the other learned to chase.
We didn’t pick the timing or the fate,
but still we chose to stay and hold this space.
I know the shadows hiding in your past,
I know the silence that can feel so loud.
I won’t demand a bond that has to last,
I’ll simply stand here, steady, calm, and proud.
Remember Catalina, dim and warm,
two glasses clinking soft beneath low light,
we talked of ink that marks a lasting form,
a promise pressed in skin to hold us tight.
That night we laughed about the marks we’d wear,
small proof that this connection found its place,
not tattoos born from moments light and rare,
but from a bond too real to ever erase.
I see the armor built from old alarms,
and understand why reaching brings you fear.
I’m not asking you to fall in my arms,
just asking you to know that I am here.
We are not perfect, we are not the same,
two different rhythms learning how to blend.
But side by side we learn to write our name,
across a story neither wants to end.
Your quiet distance is not my defeat,
it’s just a rhythm I have learned to trust.
I’ll meet you halfway, steady on my feet,
because two weathered souls can rise from dust.
So here’s my truth, spoken plain and clear,
despite the odds, despite the storms we’ve crossed,
I choose this bond, I choose to keep you near,
because I need you in my life, whatever the cost.

RSP

…

DCG

Distance never stops someone who truly cares. Busy days never stop genuine effort. Pride never stops real love. When someone wants you in their life, they’ll find a way to stay connected. Excuses belong to people looking for a reason to leave. Effort belongs to people looking for a reason to stay.

“The strongest, kind of love“

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Poem: “The Strongest Kind of Love”


How do you walk away while your heart still stays?
I ask it softly, on my knees, in ordinary days.
You still love them, but you know you can’t remain.
Your chest is full of oceans, your mind is split with pain.
They say “move on” like feelings have a switch.
You search your skin for buttons, but there’s only an old itch.
This isn’t about pretending that you’re done.
It’s choosing your own pulse while you still miss someone.
You, the anxious soul who waits for every sign,
Count the minutes, read the silence, call it “love” and call it “mine.”
You think if you can just hold tighter, they won’t flee.
But their avoidant bones are built for running free.
You don’t have to wait until your heart is clean.
You can walk out of the fire while your love is still unseen.
You don’t have to hate them just to leave.
You can carry what was holy and still let yourself grieve.
Love doesn’t vanish simply because you’re done.
It lingers like faint daylight after the setting sun.
Sometimes you leave while the love is still alive.
That isn’t failure; it’s the way your truth survives.
You can adore them and still see you’re misaligned.
Emotion in your chest, but broken structure in your mind.
Anxious hearts beg, “Tell me I am enough.”
Avoidant hearts flinch, “You are close, this is too much.”
Love is the burning, compatibility is the frame.
If trust and steady effort crack, the house won’t stay the same.
Missing them doesn’t prove you chose it wrong.
It proves you’re human, and your feelings still are strong.
Your mind replays the highlight reel at night.
Soft hands, warm laughter, bodies framed in golden light.
Healing asks you not to edit out the grey.
Remember the stone-cold mornings when they pulled themselves away.
Remember the unanswered messages on your phone.
The way you twisted loneliness into “this is being grown.”
Missing someone should not bleach the facts you know.
You left because your nervous system couldn’t take the blow.
Closure, you thought, would come wrapped in a perfect speech.
One last talk, one clean reason you could finally reach.
But avoidant hearts slip out the backdoor in the dark.
They fear the very flame that lit your anxious spark.
Real closure isn’t something they can send.
It’s the moment you decide that this is truly the end.
Grieve as if your whole sky split in two.
Cry in your parked car, write what they once meant to you.
Talk it through with someone who can hear.
Feel the full weight of the love and of the fear.
But don’t set up your furniture inside the pain.
Grief is a passing storm, not your lifelong name.
You are not the breakup, not the night you bled.
You are the person standing, still alive, still being led.
So cut the secret strings that keep you near.
No more scrolling their feed when you drown in fear.
No more old messages like scripture on your phone.
No more songs that resurrect what should be left alone.
Distance isn’t punishment for what they didn’t give.
It’s the fence you build so your own heart can live.
Rebuild your mornings without their face.
New coffee cups, new routes, a quieter kind of grace.
Create small rituals that don’t depend on “us.”
New pages, long walks, a life that doesn’t rust.
Your anxious system learns a different sound.
Not panic, not pursuit, but steady, sacred ground.
Then forgive yourself for staying long in that storm.
For believing love could change what was never fully warm.
You held on because you hoped they’d meet you there.
Because you saw their potential through the fog of your despair.
That doesn’t mean that you were naive or small.
It means you cared enough to give your heart in full.
Release the shame that says you should have known.
You did the best you could with the tools you were shown.
Here is the truth that hits the deepest bone:
Moving on isn’t betrayal of the love you’d grown.
You are not turning on the past with cold disdain.
You are blessing what it taught you and stepping out of pain.
One day this impossible love will lose its knife.
It will soften into story instead of running your whole life.
It will be a chapter, not the book you clutch at night.
You will sleep without their shadow blocking out your light.
You can love someone and still choose your peace.
You can miss someone and still let the chase decrease.
You can cry over someone and still move on.
Because the strongest kind of love is knowing when it’s gone.
And gently, in a voice that finally sounds like you,
You say, “I release you, and I stay with what is true.”

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

How to move on when you still love someone? If you still love them, but you know you can’t stay, this is the part nobody prepares you for. Because moving on isn’t about turning your feelings off. It’s about choosing yourself while your heart is still attached.
Number one, stop waiting to not feel it anymore. You don’t have to hate them to leave. You don’t have to be over them to move forward. Love doesn’t disappear on command. Sometimes you move on while still loving them, and that doesn’t make you weak. It makes you emotionally honest.
Number two, separate love from compatibility. You can love someone deeply and still not be aligned. Love is emotion, compatibility is structure. If the structure is broken—trust, effort, timing, maturity—love alone cannot hold it together. Missing them doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice. It means you’re human.
Number three, stop romanticizing the highlights. Your mind will replay the best moments, the laughter, the intimacy, the comfort. But healing requires balance. Remember the confusion, too. The nights you felt anxious, the times you felt unheard. Missing someone should not erase the reasons you had to let go.
Number four, accept that closure is often internal. You may never get the perfect apology, the perfect explanation, the perfect goodbye. Waiting for closure from someone else keeps you emotionally tied. Real closure happens when you decide that what you experienced was enough information.
Number five, grieve fully, but don’t unpack permanently. Cry, journal, talk it out, feel it, but don’t build a home inside the pain. Grief is a season, not an identity. You are not the breakup, you are the person surviving it.
Number six, remove silent access. Stop checking their page, stop rereading old messages, stop playing songs that reopen the wound. Healing cannot happen while you’re secretly feeding the attachment. Distance is not about punishment, it’s about protection.
Number seven, rebuild your routine without them. Love weaves people into your daily life: good morning texts, shared habits, weekend rituals. When it ends, the emptiness feels loud. So create new rhythms, new habits, new small joys. Your nervous system needs fresh stability.
Number eight, forgive yourself for staying as long as you did. Sometimes we hold on because we hoped it would change, because we saw potential, because we believed in love. That doesn’t make you foolish, it means you cared. Release the shame. You did the best you could with the version of yourself you were.
And here’s what hits the deepest. Moving on isn’t betrayal. You’re not betraying the memories, you’re not betraying the love you felt, you’re not betraying the version of you that wanted it to work. You’re honoring your future. And one day, the love that feels impossible to release right now will soften. It won’t sting the same. It won’t control your thoughts. It will become a chapter, not the whole story. You can love someone and still choose peace. You can miss someone and still choose growth. You can cry over someone and still walk forward. Because sometimes the strongest kind of love is the one where you let go gently.

— Jordan Peterson 

A recovery from the cycle of trauma 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

What I have learned

From my time spent with you

My strategy going forward

I present for your review

I have come to the precipice of truth 

The strength of your faith and the error of your convictions will entangle

You are the medicine for my soul

Yet over this cliff I dangle 

I forge through the pain

I stumble, but still, I fight

To resolve and reach a triumph

I now learn what I know is right

I stop and pause

I identify my state

I convey and communicate

I seek to co-regulate

See it, own it, solve it, do it

This is the mantra I make 

Learn it, master it, embrace it, teach it

This is now the path that I take 

Overtime with discipline

Laughter  and positive energy divides the drama

To allow the gateway for a healing

A recovery from the cycle of trauma

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

Stop and pause if you have a conversation like this…

Unknown Speaker A] It’s not my responsibility to teach you how to be in a relationship with me.
[Unknown Speaker B] What? Your emotions are none of my responsibility. Go see a therapist.
[Unknown Speaker A] I’m not your parent.
[Unknown Speaker B] I don’t have time for any of this.
[Unknown Speaker A] It’s not my job to teach you how to communicate.
[Unknown Speaker B] Be an adult.
[Unknown Speaker A] It’s not on me to help you heal in our relationship. That’s on you.
[Unknown Speaker B] Not a mind reader. I shouldn’t have to deal with this. Like I’m not here to raise you. Be whole or be gone.
[Unknown Speaker A] I have zero tolerance for this.
[Unknown Speaker B] This is a hard no.
[Unknown Speaker A] You know what? I’m just going to leave.
[Unknown Speaker B] Good. Do it.
[Unknown Speaker A] Me too.

Retrain your communication to sound more like this…

[Unknown Speaker B] what can I do to help you?
[Unknown Speaker A] What do you need right now?
[Unknown Speaker B] How can I help you feel loved?
[Unknown Speaker A] What does this mean to you?
[Unknown Speaker B] What are you struggling with that I’m not seeing?
[Unknown Speaker A] What triggers are coming up for you that I can help understand and be there for you?
[Unknown Speaker B] How can I help you feel safe right now?
[Unknown Speaker A] How can I help you feel loved right now?
[Unknown Speaker B] I’m at my capacity, but I love you. I’m going to take a break, but I’d love to talk about this once I regulate my nervous system.
[Unknown Speaker A] I love you. I don’t love this behavior, but I do love you and I do believe we can work through this.
[Unknown Speaker B] I love you, but this behavior has this effect on me and unfortunately it hurts our relationship, but I want to work it out because I want to stay close to you.
[Unknown Speaker A] Are you willing to work on this?
[Unknown Speaker B] Are you willing to work on this?
[Unknown Speaker A] I am willing to work on this.
[Unknown Speaker B] I am willing to work on this.
[Unknown Speaker A] I am so sorry for hurting you and I’m going to do better in the future.
[Unknown Speaker B] I’m sorry that my trauma is getting in the way of our healthy relationship. I want to heal this.
[Unknown Speaker A] I love you.
[Unknown Speaker B] I love you.
[Unknown Speaker A] I choose this relationship.
[Unknown Speaker B] I choose this relationship.
[Unknown Speaker A] I choose you.
[Unknown Speaker B] I choose you.
[Unknown Speaker A] We can do this.
[Unknown Speaker B] We can do this

if there is the thought that you are never going to have hard times in a relationship, no one would ever stay in any long-term relationship if you had to be perfect and you could never have a mistake or do anything hurtful. That is an impossible expectation.[Attachment]
[Unknown Speaker B] We have both hurt each other so much out of unawareness, ignorance, toxic patterns.


[Unknown Speaker A] So many chapters of life that bring out the worst in you, stress. There’s so many unforeseen things that can happen in a lifetime with someone that you have to be willing to go through the highs and lows. But I’ll tell you what, the highs have been epic, of course. But then of course there are the low times too. The healthiest relationships are not relations that have not been through challenges. It’s that they’ve been through challenges and they learn how to show up for each other, forgive, have compassion and love each other through those challenges. That’s what makes the strongest relationships.

Intermittent light

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

keep asking how I could be the one who will not stay inside
When every cell in me is begging you, please don’t run, please don’t hide.
I say I want a gentle love that meets me where I stand
But I only start to feel alive when you slip out of my hand.
I swear I’m hunting tenderness, a heart that shows me through
Yet my body lights up like a storm when I am chasing after you.
The steady ones feel colorless, like rooms without a sound
I crave the door that slams on me, then creaks and swings back round.
I learned this dance in childhood, where comfort came then froze
Where warmth would turn to distance, like a door that never chose.
Sometimes my needs were tended to, then suddenly withdrawn
That rhythm carved my nervous system, dusk tied tight to dawn.
Now intermittent kindness is the only song I know
I wait for love, then brace for loss, then beg you not to go.
In conflict I start shrinking first, I drop my fragile claim
I fold my truth into an apology, take all the blame.
I tell you, “You are right, not me, I should not feel this way”
Because the thought of losing you still terrifies me more than what I say.
I offer you my open throat and call it being kind
While quietly I walk away from pieces of my mind.
My boundaries blur to watercolor, soaking in your mood
I call it love while swallowing my own unspoken food.
I’ve been a lifelong strategist at not becoming left
I trade my needs for borrowed peace, a quiet kind of theft.
The spark I feel when I’m not enough is chemically precise
It tastes like terror mixed with hope, the sweetest poison ice.
My shadow loves this hunger, it mistakes it all for fate
It thinks that burning in your orbit is the highest state.
But every time I disappear to keep you from the door
I’m teaching my abandoned self that she is less and less and more.
More desperate and more silent, more hollow and more small
Less worthy of a steady hand that doesn’t make her crawl.
To heal, I must betray the script that kept me safe but tight
I have to risk you walking out to stand inside my light.
I have to name the pattern clear, the hook, the chase, the fear
And treat my shaking honesty as something you must hear.
Recovery is not romantic, it’s the slow unlearning of the chase
It’s sitting with my lonely self, and letting stillness touch my face.
It’s choosing those who show up close, not only when I bleed
It’s reaching out with steady hands, not weapons of my need.
My testimony isn’t clean; it’s ink and ash and bone
But if you recognize this war, you don’t have to fight alone.
We were not born to orbit hurt, or beg and call that care
We’re meant to turn and face ourselves, and find someone still there.

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

Anxious preoccupied is actually very emotionally unavailable. According to Dr. Sarah Hensley-

Since I am an AP, I can testify to these statements when examining my behavior.

“I know the APs out there, you sweet, precious, warm, empathetic, loving APs, you’re like, how could I be emotionally unavailable? All I want from my avoidant partner is emotional vulnerability.
No, you don’t. You think you do, but you are fundamentally not attracted to people who are emotionally available. In fact, they give you the ick. You’re not attracted to that. You are only attracted to people who give you the intermittent reinforcement, which is sometimes your emotional needs are met, then it pulls away, then sometimes they’re met, then it pulls away. That intermittent reinforcement is what you got in childhood. It is what creates your attachment anxiety and it is what keeps it flowing, okay? And you don’t know anything different than that.
If they don’t give you a push–pull or if you don’t have to chase them and convince them that you are worthy of not abandoning, then you are not attracted to them. And then inside of conflict, sweet AP, you tend to fawn. You tend to give up on your own needs, abandon them, become boundaryless, become doormats, and hang on to whatever breadcrumbs you’re getting, okay? In conflict, you just go, you know, I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m sorry. Totally, you’re right. I shouldn’t have never brought that up. I shouldn’t have ever brought that up. You’re right, I’m wrong. Please don’t be mad at me because if conflict starts going sideways, that fear of abandonment pops up and it’s easier to just apologize and make it go away than actually stand strong in your own needs.
It’s hard for you to speak up when things hurt you because, again, you are afraid of conflict because conflict could lead to abandonment. If you’re not being made to feel not good enough and working harder to be good enough in the relationship, you don’t feel that chemistry, you don’t feel that spark. And so, you’ve never really been attracted to people that could give you true emotional availability consistently inside relationships, and that has to do with your own deep fear of vulnerability yourself. But your superpower is your warmth and your kindness.
Sometimes you can be a people pleaser—let’s face it, a lot of the time. You can be a people pleaser and whenever you’re people pleasing and you’re codependent and you’re boundaryless, you’re abandoning yourself. And I know that it’s hard to understand that what you’ve been doing most of your life is self‑abandonment, but it is. And earning your attachment security means that you get to finally stop abandoning yourself and finally give and receive true emotional vulnerability and emotional nurturing and co‑regulation inside of a relationship.
You may be able to give some of it, but only to the person that makes you chase them to give it.”

Meet Jane Doe 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

You didn’t choose this emptiness; you chose to stay alive.
You built a quiet fortress just to help your heart survive.
You learned that tears meant trouble or no one came at all.
So numbness made more sense than letting your defenses fall.
You say your childhood “was fine,” but the story’s cut short.
No one wrote the scenes where comfort showed up as support.
What never came can’t haunt you in the way a blow would bruise.
You only feel the echo of a language you never used.
From far away, it looks simple: just someone who won’t stay.
Up close, it’s misfired sirens driving you away.
You shut down mid-argument, call them “too intense.”
But “too much” hides a flood you never learned to sense.
You disappear in duties, in screens, in one more task.
Your heart pounds in the hallway, but it doesn’t dare ask.
You don’t hate love; you fear it like an unlocked door.
You remember open rooms as hurt you couldn’t store.
It’s tragic and it’s simple, nothing epic or wild.
Just a grown body moving with the reflex of a child.
The world calls you “distant,” and sometimes you agree.
But you’re flooded, not empty; it’s a storm no one can see.
Partners love you harder, hoping walls might melt.
But love can’t pry the hinges on the armor you were dealt.
The lock is always inward, where your younger self resides.
The key is in the hand that’s stayed hidden in your sides.
To heal, you must step backward from the heat of fear.
You have to see the pattern like a map drawn clear.
From far enough away, the pieces start to show.
The child, the silent promise, and the cost of “never know.”
You question quiet laws like “needing someone is weak.”
You let the words “I’m scared” rise trembling to your cheek.
You sit inside your feelings, even when they feel wrong.
You hear that numbness humming a very old, soft song.
Mercy here is honest: you did what children do.
You hid what hurt so deeply it split your heart in two.
But mercy isn’t a blanket; it’s a lantern in your hand.
It lights the path where you stand up and finally understand.
You will not heal by waiting for another soul to start.
Responsibility is welded to the edges of your heart.
So you speak in rough sentences that shake but stay.
You name the fear inside you and you don’t run away.
You watch defenses rising like familiar walls.
And gently, without hatred, you hear their ancient calls.
You tell them, “You kept me safe, but now you keep me torn.”
You honor the old shelter and still step out, worn.
This isn’t clean redemption; it’s one breath at a time.
It’s learning how to feel as if the summit you can climb.
Irony cuts quietly, but it’s strangely kind.
You escaped your pain by splitting from your mind.
To heal what you’ve been dodging, you walk through your own flame.
You take ownership of the pattern and dare to give it a name.
And when you finally see yourself, not from hiding but from grace,
Intimacy stops being a threat and becomes a lived place.
You, once the constant runner, become the one who stays—
Not by killing off your fear, but by walking through its maze.

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

An avoidant can heal. They can learn to love deeply, stay when things get hard, and finally let someone in without running away. But before any of that happens, there’s one step they cannot skip, and it’s the one thing almost nobody ever tells them. So here’s what actually heals an avoidant and why so many never make it there.[Attachment]
First, you have to understand what avoidant attachment really is. It’s not someone who doesn’t want love. It’s someone who learned very early that shutting down their emotions was the safest way to survive. As a child, their feelings weren’t welcomed. Maybe they were ignored for crying, maybe they were shamed for being vulnerable. Maybe every time they reached out, no one came. So their brain made a silent promise: ‘If emotions only lead to pain, I’ll stop feeling them altogether.’[Attachment]
That strategy worked. It protected them. But it came with a hidden price they carried into every relationship afterward, because the emotions they buried never disappeared. They simply went underground. And buried emotions don’t stay quiet forever. They become emptiness, restlessness, emotional numbness, a constant feeling that something is missing, even when life looks fine from the outside.[Attachment]
And because they’ve disconnected from their own emotional world, they struggle to truly connect with someone else’s. They can’t fully meet another person because they’ve never fully met themselves.[Attachment]
Here’s what most people completely misunderstand. When an avoidant shuts down during conflict, goes cold, calls you too emotional, or disappears into work and distractions, it’s not because they feel nothing. It’s because they feel too much and were never taught how to handle it. Their distance isn’t the absence of emotion. It’s a shield protecting emotions they were trained to fear.[Attachment]
And here’s the heartbreaking part. Most avoidants don’t even remember why they became this way. Many will say they had a great childhood, not because it was perfect, but because emotional neglect is defined by what never happened. You can’t remember comfort you never received. You can’t miss a language nobody ever taught you to speak.[Attachment]
And here’s the truth every anxious partner needs to hear. You cannot heal an avoidant by loving them harder. You cannot reassure them into feeling safe. You cannot prove your way through walls they built long before you arrived. Their healing has almost nothing to do with you. It’s work only they can choose to do.[Attachment]
And that healing follows a path. It begins with awareness. An avoidant has to recognize that their attachment style is costing them real intimacy, real connection, and real love. They also have to realize it isn’t permanent. They weren’t born this way and they don’t have to stay this way. Without that realization, nothing changes, because people don’t fix what they don’t believe is broken.[Attachment]
Then comes the hardest part. They have to challenge the beliefs that shape their entire identity. Beliefs like, ‘I only have value if I’m independent. Needing people makes me weak. If I let someone too close, I’ll lose myself. Love means never asking for too much.’ Those beliefs protected them as children. As adults, they become the bars of an invisible cage.[Attachment]
Then comes the work they’ve spent their entire life avoiding. They have to feel. They have to slow down, check in with themselves, and allow buried emotions to rise instead of pushing them back down. Even when it’s uncomfortable, even when their first response is, ‘I don’t know what I’m feeling,’ because often, they genuinely don’t.[Attachment]
This process is slow, it’s messy, it’s uncomfortable. And it’s the part most people never have the courage to begin. Only after learning to face their own emotions can they finally face someone else’s. They learn to hear the fear beneath anger. They learn to express what they feel instead of shutting down. They learn that closeness isn’t a threat. It’s what they’ve quietly wanted all along.[Attachment]
So if you love an avoidant, understand this. Their healing is absolutely possible, but it isn’t your responsibility and it won’t happen on your timeline. You can offer patience, you can create safety, but you cannot do the healing for them. And if they refuse to face themselves, no amount of your love will ever be enough. Not because your love wasn’t real, but because the lock was always on the inside.[Attachment]
And if you’re the avoidant hearing this, remember something important. You were never broken because you wanted closeness while fearing it at the same time. You were a child who learned that emotions weren’t safe, but what was learned can be unlearned. The walls that protected you were never your identity. The real you is the part that still longs for connection, despite everything you’ve been through.[Attachment]
The moment you stop running from your emotions and finally turn toward them is the moment you stop merely surviving love and finally allow yourself to receive it, because before an avoidant can truly meet their partner emotionally, they first have to meet themselves.”[Attachment]

I turned my needs into polite, half whispers 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I called it progress when they pulled away
and named the distance mercy for my pain.
I lowered my voice so they wouldn’t leave
and praised myself for learning to stay small.
I felt a drip of warmth and called it love
though it came once a month like broken rain.
I saw their silence, thought it meant I failed
and offered my heart as proof I could improve.
I turned my needs into polite half‑whispers
and said, “This is what grown‑up love must be.”
I swallowed every warning from my gut
and dressed my fear in words like empathy.
They ran from touch with a practiced casual shrug
and I chased the shrug like it was oxygen.
Their calm looked holy next to my shaking hands
so I wore my shaking as hidden sin.
I told myself, “They’re deep, they just need space,”
then waited at the border of their skin.
I fought for them like love was a war to win
but all I wanted was to feel I mattered.
I thought if I could read their every mood
I’d rewrite childhood, stitch my heart unshattered.
I called my panic “passion,” like a spell,
and their retreat “maturity” and “control.”
We danced a loop: they vanished, I became a void
trying to be the room that felt like home.
Every time they left, my chest became a courtroom
where I put myself on trial for wanting more.
I did not see they feared the weight of closeness,
I only saw a mirror of my old familiar hurt.
I kept auditioning for the role of “worthy”
before a judge who never showed up for the case.
I confused their relief with real connection,
their brief return with promises they never made.
Then one night my nervous system snapped
and asked, “Why do we call this love and stay?”
I saw my heart kneeling at a locked‑up door
with flowers made of apologies and doubt.
I heard my younger self crying, “Don’t leave me,”
and realized I’d been holding out my past.
I turned around and faced the life behind me,
a world not built on waiting for their text.
I felt the terror of walking out of orbit
and named it truth instead of fatal loss.
I stopped rehearsing speeches that might save us
and started learning how to speak to me.
I took the love I begged from their absence
and poured it in the cracks inside my ribs.
I stopped calling bare minimum a blessing
and let my standards rise like honest dawn.
I let the word “enough” sit in my mouth
until it tasted more like spine than shame.
I saw the avoidant as a human storm
not as the sculptor of my worth or fate.
Their work is theirs: to face the flood of closeness
or keep outrunning what they fear to feel.
My work is mine: to soothe the shaking child
and teach my body safety that is real.
I learned that leaving isn’t proof I’m broken
and staying isn’t proof that they are whole.
I let my nervous system unhook from their distance
and stop mistaking chasing for connection.
I built a self that doesn’t beg for rescue
from someone swimming hard away from shore.
Now if they run, I do not follow bleeding;
I walk the other way and call it love.
Because the brutal truth is simple, sharp, and clean:
I heal the part of me that still wants what won’t stay.

RSP

…

DCG

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If You Want Your Avoidant Ex Back, Heal the Part of You That Wants Them
Subtitle:

How chasing intimacy with the avoidant turns into a fight for validation—and how to reclaim yourself

You convince yourself that it’s progress.
You tolerate emotional distance and call it understanding or empathy.
You mistake relief for compatibility and then feel oddly grateful when the bare minimum finally shows up.
Somewhere in that chaos, in order to keep the connection alive, your needs get quieter, your boundaries get softer, and your intuition—that gut feeling—gets ignored. All because you’re holding on to someone who is terrified of actually being held.
So how do you get your avoidant ex back?
You don’t.
You get yourself back.
You take the energy you were pouring into understanding and analyzing their behavior, and you pour it back into yourself. You rebuild your confidence—or build it for the first time. You rebuild your self‑esteem and your sense of worth.
You take the love you kept trying to earn from them and pour it back into yourself without conditions. You take the silence you once experienced as punishment and you start to use that space to rise.
Here’s a truth most people don’t want to admit:
When you’re focused on an avoidant, you’re not really fighting for love.
You are fighting for validation.
The moment you turn your focus back to yourself—your identity, your clarity, your confidence, your intentions—the avoidant either steps up or becomes irrelevant.
I want you to hear this:
Do not chase someone who runs from intimacy.
Instead, become the person who does not tolerate running in the first place.
If you want guidance from someone who has been there—through the avoidant dynamic, through the breakup, through the chaos, the silent treatment, the hurt, the pain, and the recovery, the breakthrough—here is my best advice:
If you want your avoidant ex back,
heal the part of you that wants them.
So often people ask, “How do I get my avoidant ex back?”
Simple:
If you want them back, you stop trying.
You stop bargaining with your own worth.
You stop auditioning for the bare minimum.
You stop confusing their relief with your compatibility.
And you start doing the work of becoming someone whose nervous system no longer confuses anxiety with attraction, inconsistency with chemistry, and emotional distance with safety.
You stop chasing them,

and you start choosing you.

Brief Psychological Breakdown (Note for Substack)
This piece speaks directly to the dynamic between an anxious attachment style and an avoidant attachment style, where the anxious partner often turns the relationship into a quest for validation rather than mutual intimacy. It highlights how an avoidant partner’s distance can activate the anxious partner’s fear of abandonment, leading them to soften boundaries, mute their own needs, and over-function emotionally in order to “keep the connection alive.”
The central reframe is that focusing on “getting the avoidant ex back” keeps the anxious partner locked in a validation loop that reinforces low self‑worth and relational insecurity. The invitation is to redirect that energy into self‑reconstruction: rebuilding confidence, self‑esteem, and a secure sense of identity that no longer depends on the avoidant partner’s intermittent approval.
Psychologically, “heal the part of you that wants them” means working with the underlying patterns—early attachment wounds, learned associations between inconsistency and love, and the tendency to interpret emotional relief as compatibility. The goal is not to fix the avoidant partner, but to transform the internal landscape that finds emotional unavailability familiar and compelling, so that intimacy with emotionally available others begins to feel not only possible, but natural.

A breach of trust 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment


A breach of trust


I have been sitting with what I feel
Trying to name what is quiet and real
Not every distance is meant to divide
Sometimes it shows what we carry inside
I see the ways that we both have tried
Even in moments we turned aside
You with your silence, careful and still
Me with a heart that leans and will
I used to think I could hold it all
So nothing between us would ever fall
But love is not something one can maintain
By softening truth or absorbing pain
I say this gently, with care in my voice
Not as a demand, and not as a choice
Just as a moment we both can see
What it has felt like for you and for me
There were times I reached and felt alone
Not because you meant it, but what was unknown
And I can sense that you needed space
Not as rejection, but simply your place
So here we are in a tender pause
Not placing blame, not listing flaws
Just noticing patterns, quiet and clear
The way we move when closeness is near
I am still learning to stand in my ground
Without needing everything to be sound
To trust that care does not disappear
Even when distance is quietly here
And you may be learning, in your own way
How to let someone gently stay
There is no rush to become something new
No pressure on me, and none on you
Only a kindness we both can keep
Toward the parts of us that run deep
Like something small that once caused ache
Turning with time to something we make
Layer by layer, with patience and grace
Finding a rhythm that each can face
And whether we walk together or part
I will still carry a steady heart
Not closed, not hardened, not turned away
Just open enough to grow each day

RSP

…

DCG

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Limerence 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I write to you from inside the storm,
and from the doorway where I watch it form.
I have loved you mostly inside my head,
a theater of scenes that never get said.
You appear, then vanish, a flickering sign,
and my heart runs after what is never quite mine.
I call this love, but it burns like a fever,
a vow to a ghost and a distant believer.
I rewind small moments until they all blur,
a glance, a breath, the way you never were.
You stay perfected, framed in my mind,
and I fade smaller just to keep you kind.
I have abandoned myself chasing your name,
walking over glass while calling it flame.
Each silence from you becomes a loud judge,
each crumb of regard, a banquet I won’t budge.
Your armor is heavy, your doors stay closed tight,
yet I camp at the gate, praying you’ll turn toward the light.
You retreat into distance, I rush into fire,
thinking if I burn enough, you’ll feel desire.
I have studied our pattern like scripture and code,
watched it etch scars in my nervous road.
You step back whenever I try to draw near,
and I step in closer every time you disappear.
The gap between us is more than just space,
it’s all of my effort poured into your grace.
Now a new voice trembles under my skin,
asking why I keep losing myself to not win.
It tells me love is not meant as a chase,
not an endless exam I must constantly ace.
It whispers my worth is older than you,
that my pulse didn’t start when you came into view.
So I gather my pieces from altars and floors,
and start closing shrines with your name on their doors.
I turn these letters inward for the first time,
writing truth to the self I left out in the grime.
I step back, not to wound or accuse,
but to finally stop making myself the one I lose.
I still ache, I still want, I still remember your face,
yet the fantasy no longer gets to set the pace.
I walk away on unsteady, unfamiliar legs,
carrying both my longing and unanswered begs.
Somewhere beyond this unfinished, jagged bend,
something real may rise—if I dare not write the end.

RSP

…

DCG

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