Fear of abandonment. A lot of us have it. But a lot of us also pretend we don’t have it.
We avoid it, block it out and pretend we have our sh*t together.
Nonetheless, it’s there. The fear is there. And if we can feel it and use it, it can actually make us more beautiful.
This about this for a second.
Is there anything worse than dealing with someone who detached themselves and become completely indifferent to relationship (and life)?
I mean the people who have numbed themselves so much that they just don’t care.
(…Maybe you could call these people the typical avoidants. Ie: the people with avoidant attachment style.)
They don’t care about you, but more importantly, they’ve stopped caring about themselves.
They choose to be thick and impenetrable. They choose comfort over love. Or they choose mediocrity over infinity.
They’ve been denying what’s true of their deepest heart for so long that they seem to have become indifferent.
And having indifference to your own need for attachment (for fear that you might be needy) is like poisoning yourself.
In your attempts to seem non dramatic, non high maintenance, and non needy, you turn your back on yourself; on your truth as a woman, really.
I don’t mean your ability to logically acknowledge your need for attachment, I mean the act of surrendering to how deeply you desire healthy attachment.
To respect and understand how important that need is within yourself.
And it is a need within all feminine women! In fact, women who are feminine at their core have what my husband and I termed a “feminine bias for early attachment”.
Click to learn how to use your innate feminine bias for early attachment to create deeper attraction with men and inspire a deeper commitment from him without you looking needy and low value.
Can Fear Of Abandonment Make You More Beautiful?
So this brings us to talk about fear of abandonment. Our refusal to be vulnerable relates to fear of abandonment.
Vulnerability is beautiful. It’s real.
(Here’s an article on How to Be Vulnerable Without Being NEEDY.)
Fear of abandonment is a type of vulnerability. It is beautiful only when we make it okay to have that fear.
AND to be okay with having that fear means to be ok with all the emotions that come with it, because the fear is essentially fear of the emotions that we might have to open to feeling.
It is not just a fear of being physically abandoned and left to die.
It is the fear that we might have to feel. And that’s what is so important.
That’s where the beauty is.
The beauty is where we are okay with embodying emotions; because to block things out means to lose calibration to your relationship. (With yourself or your man).
When we truly feel that fear of abandonment and let that fear fill us and make us stronger for having felt it – we start to realise the gift it is giving us.
What gift?
Well, it’s best when you find out for yourself what that gift is. You’ll need to do that through letting yourself feel.
The key is to feel the primary emotion (the instinctive emotions, beneath and before your reactions and coping mechanisms).
And once you get to the primary emotion, you can then find a better meaning in all of this.
What might a “better meaning” be?
Well, you may discover that it’s a reminder that anything we have (and any time we have with loved ones) is only transient. It’s here now, but it won’t be here forever.
Perhaps we are blessed to be in their company.
When you think about a fear of abandonment, you think of feeling scared.
Feeling that we’re scared (like feeling other emotions) has the potential to give our life depth, meaning and passion. And when we fear abandonment, often our raw emotion is that we are scared.
Do the quiz: how commitment friendly is my man?
Greeting Moments Of Fear As If It Were Your Lover…
Fear of abandonment can guide us.
It can guide us if we give this fear the open armed embrace we would give our lover if we were totally open to them.
I’m not asking you to be open to your lover at all costs. That can be inappropriate. I’m asking you to be open to the fear itself.
Allow the fear to exist; don’t judge it or resist it.
Allow it.
Your fear of abandonment is your primary, instinctive fear. So make it ok.
It’s when you bring other emotions and stack them on top of it (like shame, fear about the fear, anger about the fear, judgement of the fear), that your actions become toxic.
That acknowledgement and feeling that you’re scared is counterintuitive for most women. However, it creates a kind of raw beauty in you, and in your life.
(A small aside: makeup isn’t what makes you beautiful. Chanel and Mac lied. Makeup is used by most women to cover things up anyway.)
We are born beautiful, but we cease to be beautiful because we become less of ourselves.
We are less of ourselves when we keep resisting. And our body is the thing that resists life, which means that this bodily closure to our emotions is obvious to the great, high value men (and people) in the world.
We miss out on the high value men because we refuse to be opened and we refuse to feel our fear and our pain. We choose people who don’t challenge us, who don’t offend us.
Don’t we remember, that people often think we’re the most beautiful when we’re surrendered?
Because when we’re not surrendered; all sorts of strange, grating, and disagreeable personality traits show up as a coping mechanism. Which usually just push people away. For more on that, read my article: Why Do I Push People Away? & 7 Signs You Push People Away.
(Why is this important? Because men and women perceive value very differently and you don’t want to be making mistakes that would cause quality men to dismiss, abandon or alienate you.)
What If We Are Indifferent To Our Fears & Emotions?
Indifference means we don’t even care to know our fears (and emotions that come with fear). But that’s irresponsible.
Irresponsibility is one thing that makes us unable to get a man’s commitment, or deepen our connection with family and friends.
I’m suggesting that there is a thing called High Value Vulnerability. We talk about it with our members in our Commitment Control 2 program.
Most (not all!) women have this fear of abandonment at certain times. Many deny it. Many don’t know when it shows up because they’re shut off to it (and to themselves).
And, some others, who are maybe a little more open, know that feeling of fear of abandonment. They may not like the feeling (I know I don’t), but they acknowledge it’s there.
Our biology wants us to fear abandonment to varying extents. This is because we have to form an attachment to ensure our survival and the survival of our babies (to carry a child and raise it).
We need help (eg: we need a man’s resources) if we can get it.
That fear is there to be felt. Fear of abandonment is there to remind us (among other things) that we’re getting into something big when we get close to a man, and to be careful; take it slow.
For example. Imagine you had a one night stand, as is quite common these days.
But imagine that instead of being indifferent to it (because some women are able to have sex with no strings attached nor emotions attached)…you found yourself experiencing regret or fear (feeling scared) the morning after.
Imagine…instead of moving forward like it wasn’t an issue; you let yourself feel whatever you felt, and you cried. In front of him.
Do you think the outcome between you and the man you slept with would be different? Have a think.
(By the way, I’ve just published my brand new program titled “Becoming His One & Only”…Click HERE to find out more details and how you can get your man to fall deeper in love with you and beg you to be his one and only)
The Discomfort That Being With A Great Man Brings…
A great man will force the ugliest parts of yourself to show up.
Now, that doesn’t mean that he would find those parts of you ugly. I’m referring to the parts of yourself that you have buried away and refuse to let be seen, for you have deemed them ‘ugly’.
Including the part of you who deeply needs attachment. (Many women try to be a cool girl these days. They act like they can be as no-strings-attached as men, even if they don’t truly feel that detached on the inside).
Many years ago, when I met my incredible husband, I knew how great he was. We fell in love so perfectly (we are made for each other) and as I loved him more and more, I was afraid I’d lose him.
How is it okay to lose him? I love him too much to lose him. But like you, we all know we can’t control everything.
I knew he was better than me. So I knew that to be capable of keeping him, and to be capable of adding value to someone like him, I also had to become better. I had to not stay closed off; gutless.
I hated him for that at times.
How dare he open me to taking responsibility for myself?
How dare he open me to a deeper knowledge, and a deeper feeling of love. I was supposed to stay small and safe!
And I can’t say that this old fear of abandonment has fully gone. I am certainly 90% less driven by that fear than I used to be.
This is because my husband and I have both been vulnerable to each other. We’ve earned each other’s trust, and because as I’ve gotten older, I have decided to take responsibility for his feelings too.
(Taking responsibility for his feelings ironically gives me a feeling of deeper confidence. It may be because I know that’s a part of what makes a woman high value to men.)
He is just as vulnerable as I am (in very different ways though, because most of the time, he has no feelings. (95% of the time he has no feelings). And that vulnerability (in his way) matters.
He might still be a man. He is a masculine soul. But as I learned, he needs me. We all need each other.
(I can talk further about how men are vulnerable to women in a later article if you wish. Just leave a comment below as a vote for it if you want it).
Do the quiz: Which of these 8 feminine archetypes am i?
Hurt & Heartbreak Is A Part Of The Journey
The other day I heard a heartbreaking story of an estranged mother and son, and suddenly in that moment I felt afraid that one day, my two sons will break my heart.
Can’t win.
Yet, deep down I know that the bond I’ve created with them is strong enough that they wouldn’t want to abandon our relationship. Even if we go long periods without seeing each other.
They won’t abandon the relationship permanently. They might abandon it in certain moments though. And that’s okay. They’re growing up.
Then, it occurred to me…my sons will break my heart, even if our relationship isn’t abandoned. And that’s okay.
Sometimes, even our lovers break our heart. I’m not just talking about cheating or infidelity. I’m talking about being heartbroken in certain moments during arguments and misunderstandings.
Just because someone stays by your side (imagine those couples who have been married for 50 plus years), doesn’t mean that it is a good thing. That doesn’t mean your fear of abandonment or abandonment issues won’t be triggered.
Just because someone stays with you for 50 years doesn’t mean you don’t resent each other. Because you’ve been stripping each other of value and abusing each other for half a century.
I think we’ve all known a couple like that. If you think about it, I’m sure you have too.
It’s not that we need someone to never leave or be away from us.
It’s more that we need to value our sadness (sadness related to the void left by a man when he’s away on his mission for example).
We need to value our sadness in order to be in love. we need to value our sadness in order to create attraction and connection with men. Because it is when we disown that sadness, disown that deep feeling, that we become less relatable and more intolerable.
Not to mention, since you’re a woman, it’s only natural to have fear of abandonment at times. That’s all a part of being feminine.
I mean, do you think that pretending you’re an emotionally independent; cool woman and avoiding being needy at all costs is a good alternative?
Sometimes it may be. But not if you want deep polarity and deep intimacy; not if you do want a man to be attached to you, too.
Related: How Do Guys Get Emotionally Attached? 6 triggers In Men You Must Know.
It is your emotion and embodiment of that emotion that inspires his attachment.
A lot of women don’t value that sadness, and instead they value shutting off and pushing it far, far away.
Fake Feminists?
Have you ever noticed that some of the feminists (who aren’t really feminists) call themselves feminists. Yet on the inside, they’re just women using the feminist label (facade) as a way of trying to justify their journey towards shutting off to men?
Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
They call it ‘patriarchy’ and ‘misogyny’, and sometimes patriarchy and misogyny really exist, but sometimes, it’s made up.
Sometimes, they’re just words for justifying our own hate towards men who didn’t do anything to necessarily deserve the hate (we really just hate a past experience with men). Here’s more on your resentment for men.
I think when you’re going down this path that I’m suggesting, there’s one important thing to remember.
That is to remember that some women really want to desensitise their bodies. They want too much freedom from all the wildly overcoming emotions they might feel if they opened to men.
(It’s much easier to just claim that all men are dogs or liars).
And it’s not uncommon today, to find women who would rather settle for having a male partner as their equal, and keep him at bay emotionally.
So she can be in control. They indeed have a relationship, but they never intertwine at that deep place where they truly are vulnerable to each other.
Do you know what the 2 most critical elements of any intimate relationship are and how they will make or break your love life? Find out the 2 critical elements here.
What Do We Lose By Resisting Men’s Absence?
What do we lose by resisting the emotions that surface during a man’s absence?
What do we lose why resisting the yearning for him and instead choosing anger, or acting like we don’t need him?
What do we lose by resisting the emotions we feel when a man is pulling away? What we lose is grander than you might think.
We lose the ability to be in love. We lose the ability to feel in love, to feel open and beautiful. The beautiful sadness, I call it.
And when we’re in love, we’re beautiful.
Here are 5 Signs A Man is Falling In Love.
Like many women, I used to resist feeling all the emotions related to fears of abandonment. I used to resist feeling the shock to my system when he goes away for any length of time.
But you know what I still held onto? Of course, I still held on to anxiousness.
Because the emptiness and the yearning for him didn’t go away.
And after a while, I realised – wait a minute, haven’t I known this grating anxiety before? Haven’t I obsessed over whether my husband might cheat on me or leave me, very long ago?
Haven’t I, early on in the relationship with him, worried over if he might get up and leave forever?
Yes I have. History repeats itself.
That obsessiveness was my resistance to opening to him. It was me drowning in resistance to the fear of abandonment. It was the obsession, the tension I held in my body to ward off natural emotional sensitivity.
Then I realised it was time to do something about this.
I couldn’t keep holding on to worry, as that makes me less.
Holding on to worry and anxiety was causing more suffering for us both. It was a way of resisting the bond that my feelings were trying to get me to make – with myself, and with him.
Always remember that a woman’s emotions are either a weapon on an inspiration. Your raw emotions can inspire a man, or you can resist your raw emotions, detach from them, and use them to punish a man.
Feeling Fear Is Different To Resisting Fear (Aka Having Anxiety Over It)
Feeling fear is very different to resisting it (pushing the fear away).
And that resistance? It takes value from me. It makes me small.
It’s the wrong kind of worry. As opposed to the worrying about my sons and their safety when they’re doing something dangerous. That worry serves a bit more.
Holding on to (resisting) fear of abandonment is bad because it makes me not present for my family. I couldn’t keep looking for things to make me fearful.
And, worrying and having anxiety is a way of avoiding fear. You may not think so at first, but it is.
Worry and constant anxiety is keeping feeling at bay. It’s a ‘go between’ thing where you just keep hanging out at the ‘what if’, without actually working through it.
You keep the fear at bay by indulging in anxiety, and avoiding feeling your fear in real time (and consequently learning what to do about the fear).
I’ve noticed that in any relationship (husband-wife, mother-child, father-child, best friends) where we have opened our heart consistently, that fear of loss will show up.
And it’s a fear that is intense when it comes to men.
Why invest ourselves, why give of ourselves, if they might just go and give themselves to someone else?
What if I love this person and then they go away, or die?
We break each other’s hearts by refusing love, moment by moment.
We hurt each other by not investing ourselves, moment by moment.
What if some other woman catches his eye and everything dies and goes away forever?
Feeling these things (and sharing them in a sensible, calibrated way) is the very thing that inspires a man to be closer and stay closer to you.
Don’t hold on to defensiveness and anger if these fears show up (unless the man is very untrustworthy).
Instead, feel through to what’s beneath the anger.
The Cost Of Not Investing Yourself In Someone
I know everyone wants to say ‘it’s not me, it’s men. I’ve invested myself!’
Usually, these women are right. Yet sometimes, they are not.
Sometimes, they didn’t really invest themselves in the way that matters. In the way that creates a deeper and deeper bond every day, every week.
And men say the same thing about women, too. “It’s not me, it’s women! They’re all sh*t!’
I know someone who has not invested herself in anyone. And she is 70 years old. She abused, used and criticized all those closest to her, and now she’s only getting worse…nobody wants to spend time with her anymore.
Family members from across the world will travel all the way here, only to not contact her, but see other people instead.
She’s unbelievable to witness. People who meet her have wondered how she got through life! It’s very rare for people to truly exist the way she has. Most people are more open than that.
She once upon a time made a decision not to invest (be vulnerable to and give to) anybody.
But that never changed the fact that she, like all of us, has a deep calling for human connection and intimacy.
So, without the willingness to acknowledge that and roll with it, what do you think she has to do to cope?
Well, instead, she strips everyone around her of value. Because she still needs things to survive. She still needs connection and attention, but in trying to get it, she is a leech.
These patterns have left her powerless in a terrible way.
Life Is A heartbreak…
Sometimes I wonder. What if she (this 70 year old woman) realised these things.
There are always little heartbreaks, along the way. Life IS a heartbreak.
Just losing all the wonderful moments of one year, and moving on to the next year, can be sad and heartbreaking for some.
And, there’s always little heartbreaks – at least with the ones you love.
You don’t have to be open to feeling these little heartbreaks with people at work or strangers on the street. Just with people who matter.
The past paves way for the future; and a beautiful moment we once had will never repeat itself.
That in itself is something worth mourning.
I had a realisation at some point that yes, like other humans in the world, I had spent too much time worrying.
Too much time anticipating being hurt or experiencing heartbreak.
Hyper vigilant, some might say.
Sure, we should be vigilant in the beginning of a dating relationship, where trust is still being built.
There is always a ‘prove your value to each other’ period when you first start dating. You don’t want to be taken advantage of, and your love and kindness shouldn’t be open for every average joe and his dog. (Here are 7 Burning Signs A Man is Being Low Value.)
But if we keep worrying beyond that time period, and anticipating betrayal, loss or heartbreak, that it is a good reminder that it’s just our old pattern.
An old pattern caused by our abandonment issues. It is not who we are, deep down in our heart and soul, where we already have all the knowledge we need.
If you want to know how to stay high value when he pulls away, join us here.
Our Job As A Woman…
And what I want to suggest to you is that maybe our job as women, when we fear abandonment, is to not close down in fear.
Because we are women, we naturally fear abandonment. We have a very real fear that our man is going to leave us.
These fears are a part of our DNA, and this is because we hold the womb. We carry the child! And as such, we are more needy of commitment than he is, usually.
But this fear bias can also be our very undoing. It can also cause us to pre-emptively push people away.
Instead, here’s the high value thing to do as a woman:
Stay as open as our body can handle. And engage with total intention to connect with him.
Sure, it sucks to feel scared when he pulls away.
It’s easy to obsess, or become needy, or make him wrong.
Yet, maybe our job is to do the very thing that causes us anxiety.
You get scared when he says he doesn’t trust you? Then stay with your relationship and your connection with him. Ask him why, tell him that how he feels matters to you.
You hate social situations because you get anxious? Then it’s a good sign that you should try to do social situations.
You’re afraid that this man will break your heart? Well then you need to care more, not less. You need to engage even more, in the right here and right now. With him. Because as you pull away love, you also pull away hope.
The person who cares less has the most power. Is it actually true?
Maybe Our Arms Should Be Open…
Maybe our arms should be open and our palms reached out to engage with our lover. Maybe it’s our job to feel the emptiness we have when we can’t be with him.
I’m not saying you have to be open all the time. That’s not realistic, it’s also not natural. But at least you could have a new equilibrium where you’re more comfortable with your own fear of abandonment.
Without that emptiness you feel when your lover is away, he would no longer be important in our life. And he will feel that we made him less important; he will know that.
It makes you deeper and stronger, but even more so, it makes you beautiful because you are no longer resisting life.
You are instead, embodying life. You’re embodying yourself. When you don’t resist, you are soft and feminine.
How naturally feminine are you actually? Take our quiz here to find out.
Maybe that fear you have that a relationship will end badly…
Maybe that fear you have that his attention is going somewhere else in this moment..
Maybe that fear that someone won’t value us as much as we’d hope, is the very calling to you, saying:
“Hey, stay open. You can hurt, you can cry, and you can hate, but stay with the resistance in this moment for as long as you can, and as often as you can.”
That level of emotional openness inspires men to be closer to you than pushing away your emotions ever will. And, if a man has no intention of being close to you, then you’ll find out the truth about that quicker.
If you want to take your knowledge to the next level, take a look at my program “Becoming His One & Only: 5 Secrets to Have your Chosen Man Fall Deeply in Love with You and BEG You to be His One & Only” here.
Disclaimer: What I described in this article is not to be done with strangers. It is not to be done with a man who hasn’t invested himself in you emotionally (Ie: there was nothing beyond sexual relations between you both).
Here’s an article I wrote on the 15 Signs You Have Abandonment Issues.
Over To You…
Do you have any blockages within yourself towards intimacy? Are you comfortable fully feeling your fear of abandonment?
Share with us below what you’ve learned about yourself.
P.S. Connect with me on social media
Our new Facebook Group is here… Join the “High Value Feminine Women” Community using this link
See Related Articles…
Why Men Pull Away when you Need them the Most
Learn How to Deal with Men Pulling Away In A High Value Way
Why Men Pull Away and How to Deal With It As A High Value Woman
How to Talk to a Man in a Way that Won’t Make him Pull Away and Go Cold
THIS is Why Men Don’t Call More Often…
Renee is the founder of The Feminine Woman & co-founder of Shen Wade Media where we teach women how to show up as a high value high status woman whom easily inspires a deep sense of emotional commitment from her chosen man. She graduated with a bachelor of Law and bachelor of Arts majoring in sociology and psychology. She has been a dating and relationship coach for women in the past 15 years and together with her husband D. Shen at Commitment Triggers blog, they have positively influenced the lives of over 20 million women through their articles and videos as well as 10’s of thousands through paid programs through the Shen Wade Media platform.
Connect deeper with her work through the social media links below.