I Miss Him Even Though He's Right Here

Why love so often awakens the pain we thought we'd already healed.

Intimate relationships are a direct way to land us right back in all the pains and aches we thought we had left behind. Or at least hoped we had. And were certain were altogether gone when we were in love.

How can it be that something that felt so good, that made us feel so held, loved, and seen, can suddenly turn around like that and become a magnifying glass, turning up the volume on pain, despair, and anger?

Didn't we already deal with that?

Maybe, if you ever find yourself there, you make yourself wrong. I certainly do. Like, "What's wrong with me for still feeling this? When will I get it right? Why do I keep picking the wrong guy?"

What if those very relationships not only come with the gift of deep connection, joy, love, and fun, but also have the remarkable ability to reveal the places where we were most hurt—and where we built walls around our hearts?

And if it wasn't for that stinger of a relationship, we might never even notice there is a hurt, or a wall around us. We'd simply keep moving through life, doing our best as usual, without realizing we are living inside the very walls we once created just to make it through the day.

Thank God we were able to build those walls, those coping mechanisms, those protective layers—whatever you want to call them.

The amazing thing is, we all clearly survived our childhoods. Otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this, and I wouldn't be writing it.

So, hurray to all of us.

We made it.

But what now?

How did you make it through the moments when you felt unseen, misunderstood, rejected, frightened, or alone? What did you have to become in order to survive?

Perhaps you became endlessly understanding because being upset didn't feel safe.

Perhaps you learned to anticipate everyone else's moods before you even noticed your own.

Perhaps you became fiercely independent because needing someone felt too risky.

Perhaps you became the peacemaker. Or the overachiever. Or the woman who apologized first. Or the woman who quietly accepted less than she truly longed for because losing a little felt less frightening than risking everything.

I don't think those were personality traits. I think they were acts of extraordinary survival intelligence.

You were a little girl trying to stay connected to the people you depended on most. Of course you adapted. Of course you found ways to survive.

The problem is that survival strategies don't quietly retire when childhood is over.

They keep managing the quality of your life and your relationships—the sneaky little things.

The self-abandoning. The over-explaining. Working hard for love. Shrinking and disappearing. Constantly sensing everyone else's mood for navigation purposes.

The wonderful thing about relationships bringing up all the old pain is that they show us what we have unknowingly put in the way of love.

And then, hopefully, we get to remove it.

Easier said than done.

Oddly, many of these survival strategies were handed to us long before we were born, quietly traveling through generations. There is science to back this. For now, let's just say we didn't invent this shit show—it was coming down the pike all by itself.

That is why insight, as valuable as it is, is rarely enough. We need to gently pry these patterns out of our biology. We need to reset our nervous systems so they can stop spending so much energy reading the room for danger and instead become available for connection, creativity, closeness, and love.

The body carries all this information deep in its bones, and it is quick to react. Ever found yourself annoyed because you overreacted at the drop of a hat? Afterwards wondering, "Jeez... why did I react like that?"

Imagine how much love, joy, playfulness, tenderness, creativity, and aliveness become available once we no longer spend so much energy protecting ourselves from pain.

If any of this feels familiar, I invite you to click here and download my free guide, I Miss Him Even Though He's Right Here. My hope is that it offers you a little relief, a few new perspectives, and the reassurance that perhaps there was never anything wrong with you in the first place.

And if you find yourself wanting to go beyond understanding and begin gently transforming these deeper patterns, I also created The Cherished Woman. It is a deeply personal one-to-one journey for women who long for warmer, closer, more emotionally nourishing love. Together, we work not only with relationship dynamics, but also with the nervous system and the generational patterns that quietly shape so much of how we love. If you'd like to learn more, click here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. It is a privilege to share these thoughts with you, and I hope they remind you that perhaps there was never anything "wrong" with you at all—only a very intelligent human being who learned how to survive, and who now has the opportunity to learn how to truly receive love.