Photo by Gian Porsius on Unsplash
One of the signs of a healthy relationship is that we feel safe and supported most of the time and we know that our needs matter to our partner, which helps us to relax and express ourselves freely and openly without fear of being judged.
My clients often describe this level of emotional maturity as peaceful happiness. A secure attachment in a relationship, which is extremely nourishing to our feminine bodies and nervous systems, comes from a partnership between two equals.
The woman in us leads by honoring her feminine needs and expressing herself with openness and confidence that her needs matter and then the man who is her equal steps up and cherishes her needs as well.
At the same time, she is aware that her longing for presence, warmth, and loving attention is being filled by meeting her own heart with tenderness and care. She doesn´t expect her partner to parent her and respects and understands his needs as well.
He is being met by a grown-up woman who honors her needs and expresses them in a way that feels good and like he can win with her instead of a hurt little child who pouts and whines because she assumes people are withholding things from her.
In a healthy relationship, your partner matches your level of effort, commitment, and readiness.
If a woman is in tune with her body, she can discern an empowered relationship partner pretty fast by the way she feels in his presence and move away from options that don´t feel good towards those that do feel safe, consistent, and supportive.
Two most common things I see in my practice that don´t allow a woman to access this level of discernment are that she is stuck in survival and disconnected from her body due to chronic stress responses and she lacks the presence of healthy role models (she usually doesn´t know how an empowered man shows up and how his presence feels, so it feels like looking for a new destination without a roadmap).
Some of the signs that a woman is disconnected from her feminine needs are:
– feeling drained by her relationships and energetically depleted by life
– a feeling of powerless and hopelessness when it comes to having the love she desires
– settling for breadcrumbs and feeling invisible to good men
– neglecting her physical needs, feeling stuck in her head, overanalyzing
– the world feels cold and harsh to her, she feels unprotected, and she can´t access the connection with her own heart that wraps her in a feeling of safety, support, and warmth
– she is obsessively seeking this attention and presence in her romantic relationships to the point where she abandons her sense of Self and doesn´t cultivate a life that feels supportive to her
– she is most familiar with a feeling of being rushed and underlying anxiety and fear, she has a hard time slowing down and being with herself
– when receiving – she is either feeling uncomfortable and wants to instantly give back or she feels like no amount of attention or affection can feed the empty hole in her chest
– she seeks comfort in addictions – food, social media, obsessing over a man etc.
This disconnection from her feminine needs is the drive that makes a woman accept offers from men that don´t feel good and that keep her stuck in a loop of chasing love instead of resting in it.
Getting back in touch with their feminine body and needs and learning and practicing secure attachments in relationships is the process I teach women daily (in the self-study portal The Sanctuary and private sessions).
Firstly, a woman wants to learn to understand her “inner landscape” and all the cues she is receiving from her body through her emotions, sensations, and feelings. Safety and consistency are a FELT experience. The presence of an empowered man/partner is being FELT in our body.
A woman wants to gradually and safely learn to descend into her body, which we do in our session with the help of gentle somatic work, to start cultivating discernment around what type of partner she wants to allow into her life and what type of offers she is available to.
Stress responses that she hasn´t tended to and processed keep her in a cycle of analyzing herself, the relationship, or the man and she never gets the clarity she is seeking from analyzing or perfecting herself. Those are simply sneaky coping mechanisms that her mind created as a means of finding safety.
What she truly needs to restore her relationship with herself is to practice cultivating a sense of safety and home in her body. That is where true certainty and clarity come from.
A woman who has restored the relationship with herself and her heart is not going to exhaust herself by reaching out to a man who is not showing up consistently and with a solid effort in the connection right from the get-go.
She is actively going to build a life and engage in activities that feel supportive and nourishing and she will dedicate the rest of her precious time only to men who add value to her life.
She knows she is a great investment because she has found her home within. She has learned emotional self-regulation, her presence feels warm, open, and nourishing and she takes full responsibility for her life.
She is showing up as a healthy empowered relationship partner in all areas of her life. She is shining her radiant light wherever she goes by being her precious self.
The next step in the restorative process is the understanding that the woman in us thrives when she is allowed to experience the world around her through her senses and through the connection with her own heart.
Our feminine heart has a very specific intelligence that guides us to the best next step for us. In the connection with our feminine heart, we access the presence, warmth, and loving attention we are hungrily seeking in other relationships and addictions.
Men often don´t consciously know what that special something is that they are looking for in a partner, but it is the feeling of being at home within our bodies, complete self-acceptance and the ability to find pleasure in the moment that makes them want to stay in our feminine presence.
And of course, the more you can simply be yourself, the easier it is for the right partner to see you and recognize you without having to jump through hoops.
It feels like magic to them and good men feel the urge to protect the openness and the innocence of the feminine. It gives them purpose and makes them feel like their provision and effort are worthwhile.
A woman coming home to her heart shifts the dynamic in long-term relationships as well, given that she is with an empowered partner, but doesn´t know how to connect with him from her feminine essence.
I teach the whole process in my educational portal The Sanctuary of a Feminine Woman if you feel like a lower-investment self-study program is the best fit for you or in my individual programs (new clients initially sign up for 10-weeks or 3-months and I also offer ongoing support).
