Love and detachment centre on the belief that you must first fill your own cup.  Detachment does not mean to remove oneself from the experience and not let it impact you. Quite the opposite, it means to let the experience penetrate you completely. If you try to avoid going all the way through the emotions of experience, you will never be detached. To become detached means to dive into the experience and the depths of the emotions so far that you drop out the other side.

With full understanding.

It is that very understanding you come out with that enables you to say “Now that I fully know, I can let go”. THAT is detachment. 

Everything Wants You When You Want Nothing

Releasing the desperate need for a specific person, timeline, or result, you let go of the fear that pushes love away, ultimately making space for the right relationship to flow into your life.

It is about falling so deeply in love with your inner state that reality naturally begins reflecting it.

Most people chase evidence:

Message = happy

Attention = confident

Silence = anxious

That is dependency, not freedom of being.

A state is your inner identity.

Who you believe yourself to be.

The version of you you return to emotionally, every day.

If you feel chosen internally, the world will reflect that.

If you feel unloved internally, no outer validation will ever feel stable.

Stop waiting for reality to change first. It can’t, it reflects you.

Become attached to the version of you that already feels:

I AM…

Loved

Secure

Important

Worthy

Peaceful

The moment your inner state becomes your home, waiting disappears, overthinking softens, and reality starts moving differently.

You do not receive your desires because you chase them.

You receive them when the version of you who already has them becomes natural.

Reality always follows identity.

And the more you detach, the more you will love.

Remember, it is easy to love someone or something that is easy to love.

But we are powerless if we can only love someone based on the condition of them behaving in a way that is easy to love.

Unconditional love is in fact the state of being completely in alignment with source perspective despite the external conditions.

To love conditionally is to say, “When I look at this part of you, I feel bad about you and when I look at this part of you, I feel good about you and so I need the parts of you that feel bad to go away so I can feel good about you all the time”.

To love unconditionally is to say, “I am in charge of what I focus upon about you. You are not responsible for how I feel. I trust myself to find a way of looking at you that feels good to me no matter what you are doing and so nothing about you needs to change. Because I not only can love regardless of the condition, I am love, regardless of the condition”.

And our lives here are a continual process of re-discovering that we are that love regardless of any condition.

Each one of us has unlimited potential to go inside and shift our outer reality.

There’s a magnetic energy beaming from your body pulling towards you the people, places, things, and situations currently occurring in your life. That magnetic pull is a match to the current vibration you hold. If you don’t like what you’ve attracted up to this point, don’t point fingers at the circumstances.

These are just results of your thinking. We should never blame things on the outside that just weakens our personal power to take responsibility for our lives. 

Everyone desires change, but to become better you have to start doing the “self-work” which is owning your life. You start by forgiving yourself and everything outside of you.

Most of us have serious relational wounds. And it’s so much easier to call him toxic/ a narcissist, label her as controlling and smothering, and wrap the whole messy thing up in a diagnosis then to sit with the uncomfortable truth…that the chaos we experienced out there was simply a reflection of the chaos inside us.

The fact that peace has become the ceiling instead of the floor says everything about where we are as a collective.

If our external world is a reflection of our internal one, then of course our closest relationships feel like the world right now.

Chaotic

Unpredictable

Exhausting

Uncertain

But the solution isn’t to stop wanting. The solution is to clean up the inner world so we can actually experience the life and the love, we’re aching for.

Amongst my girlfriends, here’s what I’ve seen…

Nearly all of my closest girlfriends are single and I also run an online group for 50+ unicorns and mermaids. We’re in our 40s, 50s and beyond. Financially secure. Traveling. Raising kids we’re proud of. Working on passion projects. And we are, by every external measure, thriving.

But once a week, over dinner, we come together and over a few glasses of wine or Mojito’s…our hearts start to speak a bit louder, a little more vulnerably.

We want more. Because something inside us is still reaching for soul-level connection.

Passionate lovemaking that allows us to touch.

For the person you get to make the cuppa for in the morning, whose presence in your kitchen makes the whole day feel different.

For being truly known by someone walking alongside you on a shared path.

Not just two humans on parallel journeys, occasionally bumping into each other having some shared experiences.

I want to push back on the idea that choosing contentment in our aloneness is the same thing as choosing wholeness. Sometimes it genuinely is, and some people’s life journeys are of finding wholeness alone.

But sometimes we’ve convinced ourselves we’re okay so we don’t have to feel the pain of not being chosen. There’s a difference, and in my opinion, it’s worth being honest about which one you’re actually in.

The longing we carry for deep partnership isn’t just programming. It’s not Disney. It’s not centuries of romantic literature pulling our strings. It’s not just sappy music.

It’s the soul remembering.

People who’ve had near-death experiences speak of one thing above almost everything else: the magnitude of love that exists beyond this physical plane. Unlimited. All-encompassing. Safe.

Our souls know this love. We came from it. And in our humanness, in these beautiful, limited, complicated bodies, we are always reaching to touch it again.

That’s what we’re really looking for in each other.

You’ve got it. I am all yours.

Whether you need to vent, talk through something completely random, or just take a breather, the clock is running. What’s on your mind?

Not just a companion. But two humans who have each found without the title something so divine in nature needs no introduction, coming together to amplify it. To create sparks of it between them.

That, to me, is the ultimate relationship. That’s what intimate communion between a man and a woman can be at its highest expression.

I’m obviously writing this as a woman, from my perspective and what is alive and true within me.

I kept coming back to one question:

Do men need us the way we need them?

I don’t think they reach for connection the same way we do. Men and women need each other equally, but the nature of that need differs. While women often require emotional security, partnership, and communication, men fundamentally need to feel useful, appreciated, and respected by their partners. Without these affirmations, men often feel a deep sense of aimlessness.

David Deida writes about this with a clarity that surprised me the first time I read it. The masculine is directional. It moves toward mission, toward penetrating the world with purpose. That is its nature and its spiritual practice.

A man without a mission isn’t just unhappy, he’s lost. And a lost man cannot show up in his full capacity for love.

That’s just how he’s built.

Alison Armstrong spent years researching how men are actually wired, and the most radical thing she found was also the simplest: men are not hairy women. (that was a major ah-ha moment for me!!) They don’t process love, connection, and need the way we do. When a man goes quiet, retreats into his work, seems unreachable…he’s not withholding. He’s in his nature.

We’ve been misreading each other for a very long time.

But what I’m starting to know from my own lived experience is that a woman in her full feminine — radiant, inbodied, open — is one of the most powerful forces a man can encounter. She doesn’t pull him toward intimacy by demanding it. She draws it out of him by being so fully herself that something in him cracks open in response.

And a man in his full masculine — purposeful, present, rooted — creates the safety a woman needs to actually soften. To surrender. To stop running the whole damn show herself.

The polarity between those two energies is where the electricity lives. That’s where something that feels like the maker moves between two people. In fast-paced environments, both men and women often spend significant time in their masculine energy to achieve goals. This can make it difficult to “switch off” and access feminine energy, sometimes resulting in feelings of overwhelm for one partner and a lack of emotional support for the other. We need to understand ourselves and each other more. When we do it, we can approach one another from a very different place — love and harmony. It will make relationships between people more beautiful, making this planet more wonderful.

Healing and controlling your polar energies not only makes your relationships fantastic or make you extremely attractive. It goes far beyond.

Because these energies are the core of who we are, we need to be familiar with them to know why we are here on this planet. If we don’t see it, we might feel unstable, lost, frustrated in life.

But when we see it clearly, we can use it to our advantage. Or we even start switching between the two to our advantage.

Sometimes a woman needs more masculine to be successful in her career. But she needs to know how to shut it down when it comes to a relationship.

A man sometimes needs to be more nurturing to his children. Again, he needs to switch back to have that attraction with his woman.

Women want to trust their men and feel protected. She will go everywhere such a man leads her, roaming the planet safe, always dancing, enjoying life, spreading beauty and love.

The man is here on this planet to live his single highest purpose. Nothing feels righter than having a radiant, loving woman beside him. She becomes his muse, his inspiration, his motivation.

The feminine energy needs a stable point to flow around, hold on to, and surrounding it. While this single point — masculine, can admire this energy and feel complete.

Together they complement each other and manifest reality. They are equal and should be in balance.

Nothing is more attractive to a woman than a man that knows his purpose.

A man needs to understand that feminine is always present, and her attention goes moment by moment. Let’s say you forgot something, and she gets mad, but then you approach her with fun and love, start dancing with her. She will calm down.

But she might not be so forgiving the second time. Lying, losing trust, making constant mistakes will destroy sexual polarity or even relationship.

A woman needs to believe in her man and support him. She needs to show that she trusts him and can open herself fully.

A woman should not doubt her man. Don’t doubt that he knows the direction or that he will fix things in the house. Always saying that he is wrong kills sexual polarity too. Understanding sexual polarity leads to understanding ourselves. It will not only improve relationship with ourselves but enhance our relationships with others.

Although there are deep traits of masculine and feminine energies, everyone has both. We can use them to our advantage.

The feminine sometimes wants to be taken by the man, and the man needs to, with love, ravish her for ultimate sexual attraction.

Most of us have never experienced that. We’ve known relationships between two half-present people, still healing, still guarded, still negotiating from old wounds.

Which is exactly why the inner work matters so much.

Not so we can finally be “ready.” But because the more we come home to ourselves, to our actual feminine nature, our bodies, our intuition, our capacity to feel everything…the more we become magnetic to the real thing.

So that’s what I’m holding out for.

I’ve spent my entire life carefully managing every aspect of my life. I’ve negotiated every relationship and only truly known a very cautious version of love.

But the kind that cracks you open, the kind that lets you touch the love of our creator, channelled through another human being…that’s it. That’s what I’m after.

Did you know forgiveness is dis-attaching your current precious energy from the past?

Every moment you have a choice to use your energy to grow your vision, rather than giving it away to others or the past; while you deplete in sorrow. 

How to change your entire life in one day

1. Write down yor negative behaviours
2. Look honestly for the underlying identity you have between these behaviours (think about how you justify your behaviours in the moment)
3. Write down real consequences this identity has and the ways it makes your life worse for you and others
4. Write down the opposite identity and come up with a behaviour that woukd strengthen it (it should make you feel nervous, but objectively right)

It’s painful to really look at yourself…Louise Hay used to say to stand in front of the mirror and say: This pattern no longer serves me! She would say do this for one month.

This pattern no longer serves me! The whole instead of “I’m quitting …. to “I have completed my…”

The fuck you identity…I had a slow burn for 3 years, then decided, reorganised my life (resigned career, sold and gave everything away, relocated to a small home and surrounded myself with only a few possessions that bring me joy) I didn’t downsize , I gained a bigger view. I have released my fear of the dark. During my first night of sleeping in pitch dark – no street lights and small bedroom completely blocked from light. I was overcome with this sense of how much in life we do not and cannot control and I “let go” and accepted that I could not wake up in the morning but I could not do anything to prevent that so why ever suffer the unknown? The change was instantaneous and lasting. I now look forward to my cosy dark space and sleep peacefully.

“People should fall in love with their eyes closed, just close your eyes. Don’t look and it’s magic.”

– Andy Warhol

Release the Demand:

Clinging to a specific outcome creates tension, anxiety, and a feeling of desperation.

Detachment does not mean you stop wanting love; it means you surrender the how and when.

Prioritize Your Peace:

Forcing and begging a relationship or fixating on a specific partner drains your energy.

Choosing peace over forcing a situation is an act of self-love.

True Love Begins Within:

Louise Hay consistently taught that external love is a mirror. When you heal, love, and approve of yourself exactly as you are, you stop attracting partners based on lack and begin attracting them based on wholeness.

“I now choose to release every negative, destructive, fearful idea and thought from my mind and my life.”

“I am willing to release the pattern within me that created this condition.”

“I let go of old, negative patterns with ease.”

The weight of yesterday can feel overwhelming, anchoring us to a place we’ve already left behind.

You keep reopening wounds that should have healed months or even years ago, and each time you do, you rob yourself of the present moment.

But here’s the hard truth about life.

You have a choice.

Every single day, you can decide whether to remain tethered to what was or to step boldly into what could be.

Learning to let go is not about forgetting what happened or pretending it didn’t hurt.

Instead, letting go is about freeing yourself to move forward with intention, peace, and hope.

Right now, somewhere inside you, that future is waiting.

The question is …

Are you ready to meet it?

Rather than looking for validation from other people, the quote encourages us to find it within ourselves to be genuine. To be more genuine, we need to let go of the past and the identities we once held but no longer represent. Better connections and a stronger sense of community can result from this.

Holding onto your old life is often the ultimate form of self-sabotage. Shedding it is simply the natural price of authentic growth.

A person with a highly feminine core will attach emotion to anything that impacts them in a significant way, especially if it causes them pain or suffering – and it makes letting go of the past more difficult for them.

Compare that to someone with a masculine core. A highly masculine person does care and feel things deeply, but masculine energy is about breaking through and letting go while feminine energy is about filling up and gathering. When there is still emotion tied to a memory, moving on from the past becomes increasingly difficult for those who are biologically predisposed to gather.

What is this all costing us? How do we loosen our grip so we can move forward in a healthier, happier way? 

I ask ….“What are the reasons that I absolutely must move beyond this?” How will my life change when I learn how to move on from the past? How will it change the trajectory of my relationships and help stay connected? And how will I feel in this new chapter of life?

This is one of the most important parts of the process because it will help you stay committed to letting go of the past. Gaining a clear sense of purpose is essential to establishing any goal. Your purpose will serve as your emotional drive when you feel like giving up. You will inevitably face setbacks and challenges, but if you have a strong enough reason and a purpose that drives you, you will stay focused and dedicated.

Identifying your emotional habits is one of the most challenging parts of letting go of the past because it requires deep introspection.

How do you live your life?

What are your limiting beliefs?

Where do you live emotionally?

We all have patterns, and whether they are positive or negative doesn’t matter, because they are comfortable.

When you grow accustomed to certain emotions, even negative ones, you don’t notice how they affect you on a daily basis. You don’t realize that you’re stuck in a negative emotional loop – you believe you’re reacting as anyone would to any given situation. But our unique emotional habits can have a profound influence on the way we look at life, the way we act and how good we are at moving on from the past.

So why settle for a life where we empower the negative emotions and disempower the positive?

Identifying your emotional habits starts the shift toward a more positive experience.

Your emotions are like a muscle: You can train yourself to feel frustrated, sad, stressed or even depressed after a challenging situation arises.

Or you can train yourself to feel passionate, joyful and strong, even when something bad happens in your life.

When you take charge of your emotions, you can learn how to let go of the past in a way that makes you feel lighter and freer instead of fearful.

When you catch yourself falling into a negative emotional habit, work to cut off the thought and switch gears immediately. The more you condition yourself, the more wired those emotions become and the more you adapt to any situation thrown your way.

Condition your mind

Tony Robbins shares The ultimate breakthroughs in life happen by learning strategies, developing an empowering story and ensuring you’re in the right state to move forward. To do this, you must condition your mind every single day. Sometimes it will feel awkward. But you must condition your mind to stop believing shitty self-belief and start embracing empowering beliefs that lift you up instead of dragging you down.

If you don’t take the time to examine and change your habits, life starts to happen to you instead of for you.

No matter how smart you are, how savvy you are or how inspired you are, if you don’t stand guard at the door of your mind, then you give it approval to what is disempowering, disenchanting and disillusioning. Instead of focusing on how to let go of the past, you’ll find yourself distracted by thoughts that keep you rooted in negative patterns.

Tell yourself empowering stories instead of limiting ones.

Feed your mind with new knowledge and positivity. Surround yourself with people who make you better and put yourself in a peak state. Work on cultivating a thriving garden instead of a dry patch of dead weeds.

Create empowering rituals

Letting go of the past isn’t easy. Empowering rituals can help you cultivate that thriving garden.

It’s the small rituals you do everyday that build momentum and lead to massive change.

How you spend your morning. How you talk to yourself. What you read. What you watch. What you listen to. What you dance to. Who you share your energy with. Who has access to you. All these little things change your life.

Realize that everything that happened to you in the past is what made you the person you are now: a strong, powerful badass who can bounce back from anything.

When you love yourself and your life, it’s easier to let go of the past for good.

You can’t take back an unhealthy relationship, but you can learn how to let go of past mistakes and if you both have grown maybe you can let go and start fresh and finish endless. Successful couples treat their reunion as the start of an entirely new relationship rather than simply pressing “play” on the old one. Mutual Alignment: Both partners get back together for healthy, relationship-driven reasons (love, shared goals, genuine compatibility) rather than fear, loneliness, or the pressure of sunk costs. Lingering resentment, trust issues, or jealousy from the previous relationship can quickly poison the reunion if they aren’t fully healed.

Couples can survive a long break and build a successful reunion, but it requires both partners to do the work required to address the root causes of their initial split. While many rekindled relationships end up breaking up again, those that succeed generally emerge stronger, more mature, and better aligned.

You can’t go back in time and fix a bad childhood, but you can realize that your past does not equal your future.

Every day is a chance to start over. From the minute you wake up, you make choices. Learning how to let go of the past means breaking the pattern and focusing on creating the life you deserve, not dwelling on the one you used to have.

 If you want more joy, more happiness, more fulfilment: Engage with your real life, not your phone screen. Stop giving in to the temptations of technology to transport you out of reality. Bring your attention to this moment right now and take stock of what is beautiful.

The biggest key to how to forget the past is to stop living there.

Think about all that you have to be grateful for in your current life. This can give you the perspective you need to finally learn how to let go of the past.

Letting go of the past is much more difficult if you are around people who constantly remind you about it. As Tony Robbins says, “The quality of a person’s life is most often a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.”

Reminder to learn to be happy alone, so when someone does come along you recognise if they are adding value or taking away your peace.

Once you’ve patched up those heartstrings, you’re all set to welcome love with open arms!

Manifesting love isn’t about attraction/the right person.

It’s about being ready for the love you are asking for. – Jay Sheety

• The healthiest, longest lasting relationships are based on peace. Pleasure may start relationships. Peace continues relationships. I saw a quote the other day that said, if your home is a place of peace, you’ve broken the cycle. 

We develop our attachment style mostly in childhood, where our parents/caretakers should be the example of unconditional love. 

But when love gets conditional, the child learns to behave a certain way to receive that love.

For avoidant people, this means they created a defense mechanism to protect themselves.

They learned that love is not safe and that they can only rely on themselves.

So when a partner shows up in their adult life, they still feel the need to protect themselves for love.

It’s their inner shadow saying, “Love will be painful, don’t let yourself get hurt”.

It’s a long and painful journey to understand those patterns in yourself, but the right partner will make you face all your fears.

When I am talking about the right partner, I don’t mean it’s some magical person who suddenly heals . ..we have that responsibility ourselves. Avoidant attachers are highly independent, so they often frown upon others’ attempts to do kind things for them. This reaction may be due to thinking they’ll be perceived as weak or that they’re risking being abandoned. Of course, within a relationship, most people like to make thoughtful gestures for their partners because they want to. After all, we tend to be especially altruistic towards the people we care about.

It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that you are a unique individual with your own important desires and wants when you’re dating someone with avoidant attachment.

Therefore, to avoid losing your sense of identity, you should also focus on independent self-care activities.

These activities could involve spending time with friends, engaging in a hobby, or developing a skill set – the critical factor is that they make you feel like the best version of you.

At its core, disorganized attachment is a split relative to the bond you have with other people.

A split between the aspect of you that is terrified of loss of connection, including abandonment and that desperately wants to feel securely bonded.

And on the other hand, the aspect of you that has learned other people are dangerous and you must protect yourself from them.

The core experience that creates this split is really about one thing: Being hurt by and therefore terrified of the very person that you are bonded to. It happens as a result of adverse childhood experiences with the person a child should be able to trust.

Bonds are how people feel safe. This is true of adults, and especially true of children.

So, a disorganized attachment happens when a child’s only source of safety – their parent/caregiver is also a source of danger, pain and/or fear.

And often our feelings of love for someone make us forget that love is not enough.

Because what we really want is not just someone to say, I love you.

We want someone who makes us feel loved, makes us feel cared for, makes us feel seen, heard, understood. And someone that we do that back to.

Love is done enough…I am here for you.

We don’t want someone who just says they love us. We want someone who lives like they do.

We want the actions. We want the behaviours. And so when I say love is done enough, it’s not because I want to be negative. It’s not because I want to put a downer on love. It’s because so many of us place love on this pedestal, and we believe that love is enough because we’ve been told that love is all we need, right?

Partly one of the challenges is that we live in a world where we only have one word for love.

But the Greeks had seven words for love. The Vader’s have five words for love. Love was far more of a detailed, complex topic, and it’s become oversimplified in our modern day.

In my opinion, we all deserve all 7 types of love, and only 1 is romantic.

We would be crazy to limit the notion of love to one generic box.

There are seemingly endless feelings that are conveyed by that one, simple word. For example:

• You can love a significant other until your cheeks turn pink and you can feel your heart swell in your chest.
• You can love a child until it physically hurts because they’re like an extension of you. Your heart walking outside of your body.
• When you’re feeling sad and your closest friends show up at your door with wine or flowers, that’s love too!
• When you take a bubble bath and slap on a face mask after a long day because you know you deserve it, you bet your butt that’s love (self-love) right there.

How can one word be used to express such a broad range of emotions?

Simple answer? It can’t.

Philosophers in ancient Greece decided that this simply could not be the case. Noting the many intricacies and nuances of love, the Greeks decided that love could be broken down into seven specific types.

1. Eros – Romantic, Passionate Love (Of the Body)

Eros is passion, lust, sexual attraction, and everything we think of when we think of the TV version of love. Unsurprisingly, this type of love was named after the Greek god of love and fertility.

2. Philia – Affectionate, Friendly Love

Philia is a friendly love and is characterized by loyalty and trust.

Philia is encouraging, kind, affectionate, and everything that makes up a true friendship. It is entirely platonic, yet both meaningful and sweet.

Essentially, you can think of Philia as the type of love where you simply want the best for another person.

3. Storge – Unconditional, Familial Love

Storge refers to the unconditional love that parents have for their children. It is a protective, kinship-based love that embodies approval, sacrifice, and acceptance.

Storge looks a lot like philia, though it is more one-sided. Think of it as the love a mother has for her child, regardless of whether the child reciprocates her emotion.

4. Agape – Selfless, Universal Love

Agape is one-of-a-kind love. It is an empathetic, selfless love for others that includes a love for God, nature, strangers, and the less fortunate.

It doesn’t depend on familiarity (as does storge), but instead, Agape has links to altruism, which is understood as an unselfish, genuine concern for the welfare of others.

A lot of people consider Agape to be a kind of spiritual love and it’s expressed through meditation, nature, intuition, and spirituality.

5. Ludus – Playful, Flirtatious Love

Ludus is easy breezy love. Playful, flirtatious, non-committal—Ludus is having a crush on someone and then acting on it. It is the infatuated phase that occurs in the early stages of romance.

When I think of Ludus, I think of a fling. A no-strings-attached sort of conquest. It is the oh-so-stereotypical butterflies in your stomach.

Ludus is all about having fun, so think of whatever that means for you — flirting, dancing, teasing, seducing, all the jazz.

This type of love results in relationships that are definitely on the casual side, though that doesn’t mean they won’t last.

As long as both parties have the same mindset, Ludus relationships can thrive for years, resulting in a lightweight, undemanding, and beautifully uncomplicated sort of love.

6. Pragma – Committed, Long-Lasting Love

I love Pragma. In the simplest of terms, it is love that looks long-term. Pragma is a love that is seen in many long-term marriages and friendships.

It is built on commitment, endurance, companionship, and sharing similar hopes for the future, which includes things like building a family and putting down roots.

A lot of people (married folks, especially) will understand Pragma as “making it work.”

This type of love is an accepting, everlasting love that matures as a couple spends year after year together.

When I think of pragma, I think of the older married couple who have been together since they were teenagers. Like my dear friends Betty & Merv.

Even after 50 years of marriage, they still hold hands and see the person they fell in love with.

I mean seriously, who doesn’t want that someday? If you are blessed to have it, hold on tightly and know how blessed you are. Pragma is beautiful as it represents the constant nurturing that goes into a long-term relationship.

It is patient, sacrificial, mature, and in all honesty, quite rare (and therefore so special).

Of all of the different kinds of love, this one is often the most challenging for people. However, it’s perhaps foundational to the other types of love.

Philautia is self-love, which the ancient Greeks saw as a healthy, necessary love of one’s self that made it possible to give and receive love from other people.

(Haven’t we all heard something or other about not being able to pour from an empty cup?)

Healthy demonstrations of Philautia go hand in hand with self-worth, confidence, and the boost of self-esteem that is necessary for a sense of one’s purpose.

Keeping in turn with the Greeks, we cannot give what we don’t have. How are we to love others if we don’t first love ourselves?

Philautia, therefore, is something like self-compassion. Much like we show affection and love to other people, it is important to show that affection to ourselves.

However, of course, there is a flip side. Philautia can become unhealthy if we are not careful.

While this is not what the Greeks intended, too much self-love breeds self-obsession and self-superiority.

When it becomes unhealthy, Philautia can morph into narcissistic behaviours, arrogance, and selfish tendencies.

It’s important to balance the love of self with the love of others.

7 Types of Love: Putting it All Together

While the ancient Greeks put together this beautiful vocabulary of love, by no means is each type of love mutually exclusive.

We are whole, complicated beings who love in complex and unique ways.

Sure, your romantic relationship might be full of Eros, but I would bet there’s a healthy dose of Ludus, Philautia, and Philia in the mix too.

All of these combined are what will help you achieve that coveted Pragma. Being able to love at our fullest capacity first comes from intimately knowing ourselves and practicing self-awareness.

Take a second to consider the relationships in your life. From friends to family to our favourite holiday spot, music, our lives are saturated with many different kinds of love.

So which of the different kinds of love, for you, are most prominent? Are there any you could improve upon?

How can you introduce a different kind of love into your life?

So love can make us forget the importance of values.

How many times have you sacrificed, negotiated with, or put aside one of your values because you thought you loved someone? Right? So you had a really important value. Maybe you had an event that was really important to you. Maybe you had a person that was really important to you, a friendship, but you put it aside because you thought you were in love with someone. How many times have you ever regretted that in the future? How many times did you feel, that was the best thing I ever did?

 If you couldn’t name your partner’s top three values and they can’t name your top three values, that’s proof to you that love is not enough.

What is it that your partner would never let you sacrifice?

What is something that you would want to sacrifice out of love but your partner would never let you sacrifice?

And in love, we want people to forget their values. We want our partner to sacrifice their values to show us they love us. But that doesn’t sound like love. It sounds like manipulation. It sounds like control.

But love can often make you think you’re doing things that are higher. You almost manipulate yourself into thinking, oh, I really love this person because I’m willing to give this up. So love makes you forget your values.

It makes you forget your partner’s values. And that’s why love can’t be enough. Because after weeks, months, years of putting aside your values and when you feel misaligned, you wonder, why did I ever do that?

Why did I give that up?

That was so important to me?

That was such a priority to me. How did I let that just go?

How did I let that just fade. How did I let that just be so?

Ask yourself, are you getting to prioritize your values?

Does your partner prioritize your values?

Do you even know what your values are?

Are you aware of how they stack?

I think a lot of us deprioritize our values because we don’t know them. And a lot of us struggle in love because we’re hoping that love will make up for the lack of knowledge we have and the lack of awareness we have. This second one is probably the most common one, but it’s the most avoidable because of love. Love makes you forget patterns of behaviour. Sometimes the wrong people will say the right things. Sometimes the right people will say the wrong things.

Trust patterns, not what people say.

By the way, sometimes people don’t know what actions and behaviours you count as love.

And they may not know which ones you count as love.

Ask them, how do you show love?

When do you show love? How do you like to be loved?

And here’s how I show love. And here’s when I show love and how I like to be loved.

This is what it looks like, that communication, to match those patterns with what the person says.

And that’s why I use the word patterns, because people are patterns. We’re all patterns, right?

There’s very few people that are not repeating patterns. We repeat communication styles.

We repeat how we deal with conflict. We repeat how we deal with stress and anger.

Those things are repeated again and again and again, love makes you forget patterns of behaviour.

It makes you focus on what that person says, what you may feel around them, but not what that person does.

It’s time to start focusing on actual effort, on actual action.

If you’re constantly justifying someone’s behaviours to make sense of them sometimes, by the way, it’s fair to do that, right? No one’s perfect. No one’s going to tick all your boxes.

But you have to ask yourself, how much are you justifying? How much are you filling in the blanks versus how much are you truly understanding the person? Being a human and having limitations, right? Sometimes we can just have godly expectations of someone, and it’s important to actually say, well, I can’t expect godly patterns, but am I just seeing a pattern that’s actually negative and repetitive?

Then I am positive and momentum based, moving in the right direction.

Love is not enough because it makes you forget emotional maturity. This is what’s fascinating about this. Love is not enough statement is that it actually acts as forgetfulness. It’s almost like you get amnesia from what really matters because you use love as the band aid, and love makes you forget someone’s level of emotional maturity. Do you believe this person knows how to engage in emotionally healthy conversations? Do you believe that this person is emotionally mature when it comes to managing their own emotions? So the behavioural clinic’s definition of emotional maturity is the ability to understand, manage, and express emotions in a way that promotes personal growth and healthy relationships.

That’s one of the things that we’re really, really looking for, right? We’re really, really looking for that.

One of the things I love that I’ve read from Roger K. Allen is he talks about the stages of emotional maturity. So he talks about how survival is fear based living, security is duty based living, success is ego based living, and serenity is love, trust, and I’d like to think peace based living. So when you’re looking at emotional maturity, you’re looking at, does your relationship work from a place of survival?

Are you just trying to survive? Is that the energy that you’re carrying in your relationship?

Because then love isn’t enough. Is it security? Is it duty and safety? Is it because, oh, I feel secure, I’d rather not be alone. Is it success? I was speaking to someone the other day and he said to me, this woman said to him, you’re a high value man. That’s why I want to be with you. Now, that language has really perpetuated itself into modern day love speak. And it’s really, really interesting to me because when I asked him, what do you think that person’s top value is?

He said, power. And that person has been making dating decisions based on power. So that is success and ego based living. Now, what does that mean? That level of emotional maturity means even if you love each other, if someone is more powerful, more success based, more ego based, that’s an easy trade, right? That’s an easy way for that person to move on. So love makes us forget that love makes us go, oh, no. But they love us like we are that person for them, rather than actually being clear and going, okay, well, wait a minute.

Does this person bring peace into my life?

I’d say peace is one of the most underrated relationship benefits. I think we think of things like chemistry, the spark. We think of pleasure. Again, I’m not saying any of those things are not good to think about, but the healthiest, longest lasting relationships are based on peace, right?

It’s peace that keeps relationships together. Pleasure may start relationships. Peace continues relationships. I saw a quote the other day that said, if your home is a place of peace, you’ve broken the cycle. That is what we need to build.

This is what we’re working on. We want our home to be a place of peace. Notice, I didn’t say, this is what we’ve done. We’ve achieved it. It’s what we’re working on. It’s what we’re building. It’s what we’re creating together. It’s what we’re founding together. So don’t let love overshadow a lack of emotional maturity.

Someone who makes you feel safe is more important than someone who makes you feel wanted.

Feeling “wanted” is about the thrill and validation of attention, feeling “safe” is the bedrock of true connection. A safe partner provides peace, emotional security, and a quiet space to be vulnerable, whereas superficial desire is often fleeting and lacks deep emotional maturity.

Here is a breakdown of why finding someone who makes you feel safe is the ultimate priority in a healthy relationship:

Feeling “Safe” vs. Feeling “Wanted”

• The “Wanted” Trap: Being wanted can sometimes be driven by ego, physical attraction, or the excitement of being chosen. It is a temporary feeling that relies on external validation and often leads to anxiety or people-pleasing.
• The “Safe” Reality: Feeling safe means having a partner who brings you peace rather than drama.
• It means they honour your boundaries, communicate openly during conflicts, and make you feel seen without fear of judgment.
• Core Traits of a Safe Partner
• Consistent Behaviour: Their actions match their words. They don’t leave you guessing your place in their life or overthinking their intentions.
• Emotional Maturity: Instead of punishing you with silence or emotional volatility, they remain a steady, calming presence.
• Supports Your Growth: A secure partner wants you to grow and evolve without demanding that you change who you fundamentally are.
• Mutual Vulnerability: True safety allows both partners to let their guard down, take off their masks, and communicate without the fear of the other person using their flaws against them.

Our deepest human need is to feel seen, heard and understood.  And yet sometimes when we experience all of those things in a relationship, it becomes incredibly terrifying.

Every single one of us wants that at a deep, intimate level. But sometimes when we can end up in relationships, where we actually are truly seen and understood, it’s too vulnerable.

It’s more than what we feel equipped to handle.

And it’s interesting, because what we as humans ultimately crave, is to feel truly seen, right?

It is that feeling truly seen, heard and understood, we want that. But when we get it, it can feel like it is too much.

And it’s this like naked raw vulnerability and exposure that we feel when someone truly sees us, flaws and all it can be overwhelming. even feel terrifying for some of us.

Especially when that other person accepts us exactly as we are without judgment. Because then we start going through all of the things like, but I’m not good enough, how can they possibly accept me this way?

We could even start to subconsciously go down the road of losing respect for the other person.

Because we don’t respect ourselves.

So we actually lose respect for them.

Because they still like us flaws and all. And we’re like, how can you like this?

Right. And it’s heart-breaking, but it’s true.

So when someone truly sees us, and we can sense it, and we start to freak out a little bit, what happens in those moments, there’s a few ways that this usually goes.

And some of these might sound a little bit too familiar for you either with someone else that you have been in a relationship with, or maybe even yourself too.

So how this usually goes is maybe picking a fight, criticizing the other person unnecessarily.

Going into a state of fight, flight or freeze, maybe even physically bolting, becoming visibly uncomfortable and starting to fidget non stop, maybe quickly changing the subject, potentially staring at you as though they have seen a ghost.

Maybe someone is pulling away emotionally and they begin to distance themselves.

Potentially allowing long periods to go by before responding to messages when responses used to be quick and attentive. Maybe ending the relationship or ghosting you even, hopefully not.

Basically, all of these things come down to a variety of forms of self sabotage. And this is definitely not the only reason why these things happen. Because for some, the vulnerability that comes with being fully seen, may actually overload the nervous system and self sabotaging behaviours as a result as a stress response. Completely overriding more rational, logical thoughts.

We think that we know what we want, until we actually experience it and then we realize it’s so foreign and unfamiliar that it can actually feel unsafe.

And we don’t even know how to receive that level of visibility and love and acceptance because we’re so used to the complete opposite or we feel so unworthy of being fully seen without judgment that we actually lose respect, right, like I said before for the other person, because we’re so busy judging the shit out of ourselves, that we can’t understand why they’re sticking around when they can clearly see all of our messy imperfections.

And it can also be terrifying that we’re allowing people far enough to feel truly understood in such a way that they are opening themselves up to the possibility of being hurt. So our defences go up.

And we might hide or numb or push away or use sarcasm or humour to block intimacy, busy ourselves on our phones or screens, any of the things can start to come up. When we put the walls up, or convince ourselves that our partner isn’t enough for one reason or another.

It’s because it then allows us to maintain control. Even though the underlying factor to all of this is that we actually feel like we’re the ones who don’t think we’re enough. And we can leave someone out in the cold, we can end a relationship or push someone away so that we can hold on to the idea that the other person won’t be able to pull the rug out from under us when we least expect it. If we keep them at an arm’s length. It’s like, Okay, if I take control the situation and I keep you pushed aside, then there’s no way that you can rip things out from under me just when I’m getting comfortable.

And it’s the ego talking and is trying to protect you. So you know, we can thank the ego for trying to protect us, but we have to recognize it for what it’s doing.

Because what cost is it coming out. And love can feel so incredibly risky and vulnerable and overwhelming.

There’s so many unknowns and variables that can’t be controlled. And that’s the scary part.

But we have to start to learn to recognize the fear is when we notice them coming up to see them for what they are, and realize that the stories you’re telling yourself are just that they’re just stories.

Feelings are not facts, right.

And depending on what you truly want in life, you are going to have to make peace and and accept that love comes with risk. Instead of looking around at all of the potential possibilities of what if it goes wrong, ask yourself what if it doesn’t?

Or you committed to being disappointed?

Or you committed to growing and expanding and new beautiful ways?

Like Which one is it? You’ve recovered from every other loss up until this point, and we don’t have unlimited time here.

So what is it that you want most out of life?

What is it that you want to have more of in your life?

What is it that you want to grow?

If all that sounds a little bit too familiar about pulling away, and not being ready to feel truly seen whether that’s for you, or whether that’s maybe the person that you are in a relationship with currently, or that you have been in a relationship with in the past?

Figure out how to be open to receiving what it is that we claim we want.

Because sometimes when we get it, it’s like whoa, this is too much.

This is more than my nervous system can handle. my nervous system wasn’t actually prepared to receive this. So then we get it and we freak out. Or maybe somebody else in your life is and and you know, we can only ever control ourselves, we can only ever control our own reactions and how we show up in the world and how we treat others.

Overly attached people tend to think lowly of themselves in the relationship aspect, and highly of their partners.

People become attached to ideas of people (that is, they idealize others) when there is an idea-shaped hole in their life.

People very desperately want to find what they are looking for. If you walk around with a fantasy of a perfect partner, friend, or father/mother figure coming into your life to make it better, then you will at some point “find” that person. I say “find” because you’re likely to shoehorn a real person into the role about which you’ve been fantasizing.

In other words, you’ll probably idealize someone.

The fantasy can be conscious or unconscious. Some people are very much aware of their fantasies.

They might be actively looking for a mentor like Dumbledore, a father like Liam Neeson in Taken, or a lover like Rip Wheeler in the Yellowstone series. Others might be guided by unconscious fantasies.

Some men look for depressed women to “cure” because their mothers were unhappy and neglectful. Some women seek out aloof men, like their uncaring fathers, to seduce and “win over” like their uncaring fathers.

The latter examples could be a kind of transference, or parataxic distortions, but they are also ideals.

They are voids in the psyche that the bearer wants to fill. Sometimes that yearning is desperate.

The more desperate the ache, the more wishful the thinking, the more fuzzy the perception.

The more you long for something, the more likely you are to squint at reality in order to perceive what you’ve been seeking.

I can put it simply. Idealization comes from illusion.

Illusion is what we want to be true. When we come across the thing that approximates what we most want, we ignore the details that don’t fit. We relax or suspend our judgement and critical thinking.

We idealize and answer our own desires. That is, until reality intrudes.

It all goes back to that Unhealed childhood trauma..

It causes you to just want someone to love you as you are . That can really be a problem when you attach yourself emotionally to different people , and they wind up leaving.

Eventually if this cycle keeps repeating itself , and someone tells you they love you…

You ask / think instead , Yes , but for how long ?

It does something to the inside of you , that if you aren’t careful , it can cause you to finally not trust anyone .

Unless you finally decide that the truth is there is nothing wrong with you , that you have no control over anyone other than yourself. Once aware you can heal and grow a beautiful, trusting relationship.

Trauma Bond By David Derosier

Intermittent Reinforcement. How The Avoidant Accidentally Became Your Drug

Let me tell you what’s really happening.

They pull away. Your world collapses a little. You can’t eat properly. Can’t concentrate. You’re checking your phone every few minutes wondering what you did wrong and how to fix it.

Then they come back. And the relief that washes over you feels almost euphoric.

That feeling? That’s not love. That’s intermittent reinforcement. And it’s one of the most powerful psychological hooks known to man.

Here’s how it works. When warmth and withdrawal come in unpredictable cycles your brain begins to crave the warmth the way an addict craves a fix. The uncertainty doesn’t dampen your feelings.. it amplifies them. Every moment of connection becomes precious because you never know when it’s going to disappear again.

So you start to confuse the intensity with depth. The anxiety with passion. The relief with love.

But love isn’t supposed to feel like survival.

And here’s the part that really stings.

When they pull away you don’t just want comfort. You want their comfort. The very person causing the pain becomes the only person who feels like they can take it away. That’s the trap at the heart of every trauma bond.

We go looking for the one who hurt us to be the one who heals us.

But that’s not where the healing lives.

The real work.. the work that actually sets you free.. is learning to sit with that discomfort without handing it to someone else to soothe.

To feel the withdrawal, the panic, the silence.. and not chase.

Not text. Not shrink.

To stay with yourself when every part of you wants to run to them.

That is where your power lives. Right there in that unbearable pause.

That is where you start to break the bond.

Much Love, David Derosier

Final random titbits:

• 1. Centre Yourself
• 2. Accept people as they are and place them where they belong
• 3. Realize every person could leave you anytime
• 4. Affirm the reality you want
• 5. Be secure with yourself

Own your time…busy is not productive

Control emotions …make it a habit to build emotional discipline…build a pause

Ask — Is this worth my energy? Wait 5 seconds and respond…conserve your energy for growth.

If we believe it, everything is temporary/changing/not forever. Always be thankful and happy in your current circumstances – this was the hard part for me to overcome. I think I was constantly fighting my mind.

You don’t need more money, you need the right person to believe in you .

“Maybe in another lifetime.”

No.

This is all you get.

So please, just fight for the things that crack light into your life, fight for the things that soften you.

Protect the people you love, leave them better than you found them.

Defend your heart, do whatever it takes to keep it open despite what it has been through.

Forgive, not just others, but yourself, as well.

Slow down – taste, and touch, and feel and care.

Create the things you want to see in this world, stay as curious as possible. Honour your joy, do not shy away from the good that is trying tb reach you-do not convince yourself that you are unworthy of it.

Be strong enough to be gentle.

Be brave enough to break.

Be all that you are.

It’s not that we have a short time to live, it’s just that we waste it…

Repeat after me… I am done chasing!

I am the prize!

I am perfect for someone!

My hand is waiting to hold your hand tight, hug, kiss passionately under the stars and make music together.

The purpose of my life is not to play small, it’s to chase my dreams, build deep relationships, and leave this place better than I found it.

I choose peace. I choose myself. I have been intentionally celibate for 3 years. Not because of a lack of options. Because I refuse to exchange my sexual energy with anyone who is not a high probability long-term partner.

I know who I am.

I know what I have built.

I know the work I have done on myself.

I know what I bring to a man’s life.

I will not settle for the version of partnership that most women accept because the silence of waiting feels worse than the noise of settling.

I have extraordinary high standards for myself. And because of that I have high standards for who I want as a partner.

I have had someone who simply did not meet my standards – he blew past them. A rebel. When you find someone that not only loves your weird quirky self, but encourages it…. well hold on tight coz they’re a keeper!!!

The key to a strong marriage, romance or relationship of any kind is finding someone who finds your crazy tendencies to be adorable and exciting, and whose own crazy tendencies make you laugh and smile. 

Once you can allow yourself the freedom of knowing that you are a crazy chick.

The truth is, women’s unique brand of crazy is quite magical. As long it doesn’t cross the line into Pathological / Dysfunctional Behaviour Patterns.

So, know and admit that you are crazy, and also be prepared to check your behaviour and apologize if you take it too far. You do not get to use your crazy as an excuse to behave badly.

You do not get to use your crazy as a way to avoid responsibility. No one else gets to do that to you either. Be aware of your triggers and be aware of any tendencies you have to take it too far; this way, you can make a concerted effort not to let your emotional shifts take yourself or those you care about to a place that will be damaging in any way.

Your best girl friend is crazy, but her craziness and yours likely match up and complement each other’s.

If you have a friend whose level or expression of crazy brings you to a place where you find yourself dreading spending time together, you don’t have to judge her as any more crazy than you are.

Just understand that you are not a match and move on.

Back to me….

I strive to treat everyone with respect. However… it takes considerably more to EARN my respect.

He earned it the first week. Not because of what he said. Because of how he shows up in the world.

Weak men are afraid of strong women. I want someone who demands a strong woman in their life.

Not from ego. from clarity. Someone who as a king. Kings do not look for queens to ‘complete them’.

Kings look for queens who are already whole, already sovereign, already building.

3 key principles a King requires from his queen 1. Peace! 2. Respect! 3. Intimacy!

Intimacy is not purely physical. It’s the act of connecting with someone so deeply, you feel like you can see into their soul.

I will be present…not perfect. I will be your comfort at the end of the day and listen fully, love and appreciate you. We’ll share our dreams, embrace our inner weirdness and set off on adventures.

Let’s make each other feel special!

When you find someone who treasures your presence over perfection, that’s when real magic begins.

Just 2 people showing up, being truly seen and soaking in trust and warmth – just relishing something real.

Somewhere out there is a man who wants this kind of relationship too…

One where we can laugh until we cry, flirt like teenagers, communicate like adults, and still challenge each other to grow without turning into a competition.

A relationship where we can take space without fear, plan adventures on a whim, dream about the future together, fight fair, repair fast, and never stop being curious about each other.

One where passion matters…but emotional safety, honesty, kindness, and effort matter just as much.

Now, am I perfect? Absolutely not. But these are the kinds of things I am striving for and I’d love someone who wants to grow together, hold each other to a higher standard, and build something real.

Basically…best friends, teammates, adventure partner’s, occasional smartasses, and each other’s peace all wrapped into one.

I love you. I see you. I am not going anywhere.

I love you , my king.

Freely and forever, because you are my truest home. xo