It’s been over two months since I parted ways with my partner and I left a home, without a new home.

I’ve bounced so many times between living spaces that I’ve lost count. I’ve had well-laid plans for temporary housing fall apart within the same day they were meant to begin. Multiple times — all various reasons.

I’ve received incredible generosity and care from my friends who have lovingly shared their homes while I continue my search.

I’ve needed to become increasingly nimble and adaptable in order to surf these waves with as much resiliency as possible.

In this article, I speak about my own journey of unwinding from my recent love relationship and the four key practices I draw upon to deepen a secure attachment and partnership with myself.

The power of attachment, safety and trust

I have been contemplating attachment, safety and trust.

I’ve been investigating the beauty of how it provides stability and resiliency for our nervous system. As well as how disruptive it feels when a primary attachment begins to unravel and end.  

My attachment body has needed a lot of attention and care from me as I let go of my primary partner and my home.

Given my recent experience with my former partner, I believe that secure attachment provides a sacred ground for healing, accelerating evolution and love.

Healthy attachment can become a safe haven to rest, deepen and expand into universes not yet explored inside our heart, body and mind. 

Attachment is a powerful force.

Being conscious of our personal attachment patterns is a key to the process of power reclamation and finding safety within.

As well as interrupting outdated relationship patterns responsible for pain and conflict that are driven by fear and anxiety.

The need to feel safe and secure is wired into our systems. It’s part of being human.

The need to belong and feel part of something larger than ourselves is a universal need. 

In fact, bonding and attachment are significant motivations for all mammals.  It’s a necessity, whether it manifests as pair-bonding in a romantic relationship, polyamorous relationships, or within a team (i.e sports, work, family). 

I remember years ago watching the Sopranos and realizing that all the tough guys got their attachment need for belonging met through being part of the gang - which is partially why loyalty was strong and untouchable.

We need to feel connected and known by life. 

Even hermits need God, nature, or a beloved animal by their side. 

I seek safety and joy through bonding with nature, humans, animals and myself.

And, when it comes to intimate relationships (friends, lovers, partners) I seek evolution and growth above all things. 

This means that when the path of shared evolution stalls out in a primary relationship, I am willing to tear away from the attachment bond, let go and move on. Even when my body goes through the withdrawals and pain of letting go.

I don't know how, but some aspect of me is willing to leave safety and security behind even when I know that I will traverse a period of highly fluctuating emotions, heartache and grief.

This is never easy.

The grief process of unraveling an attachment with someone can be excruciating because the attachment body has a mind of its own — cravings for the soothing chemical cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins.

Or, cravings for the stability gained through shared routines, reliable companionship, sexual intimacy, inside jokes, laughter, an adventure buddy, and the relief and freedom of settling into one’s skin around a particular person.

Whatever the attachment comforts are for each of us, it’s inevitable that when we bond, the process of letting go really hurts.

Do you know what drives you in a relationship? Or how your motivations are either serving your growth or keeping you in limiting patterns and beliefs?

Metabolizing grief and loss

I’m actively metabolizing grief and the loss of my primary attachment with my partner and my home. Both represented significant anchors in my life. Through their absence, I am returning to myself to seek refuge.

For the past two months, I’ve been contemplating what was most powerful and beautiful about my last partnership -- as well as what I wish to build on and cultivate more of in my life. 

We were on the brink of breaking through the ceiling into an embodied love that felt beyond separation in many areas of our relationship.

This began years ago, through our sexual connection.  Through this expression of our sexual love, we discovered the power of merging through attunement, touch, playfulness, non-performance and states of unification and oneness. 

While this experience of no-separation initially opened through our sexual connection it began to express through the most ordinary moments in our day. Such as catching one another’s eyes in the kitchen and melting into the space of unified love. Or hugging each other after he returned home from work each day dissolving us both into pure bliss — no mental chatter — nothing but love and peace. 

We shared countless moments of complete presence and love — no performance or distractions just our seeing and loving of one another.

This thread of oneness was also woven through how we traveled and adventured together.  We experienced incredible ease, laughter, adaptability and mutual care for each other’s needs and preferences.  We allowed our differences and honored our individual needs. 

And, there was a place in our relationship where we were unable to channel that same alchemical energy into creating a life together.  It was so painful for me to accept this part of us.

We experienced a fundamental difference in our personal desire for evolution and growth. As a result, we were unable to break through our ceiling and take the relationship to the next level. 

There were too many layers of unexamined fears on his part. He wasn’t inspired to pursue these aspects of himself as doggedly as I do with myself. 

He’s not wrong for being where he is. Unfortunately our passions, at this fundamental level, didn’t sync up.

It’s difficult to understand how we could have experienced such profound states of unity, in so many aspects of life, but without further investigation of fear-based behaviors and protective patterns we had no more road to travel together.

For him, seeking support from a coach or therapist ranked as more threatening than any other pain he could imagine. 

He preferred intense periods of physical pain over confronting any type of emotional pain.  He had tucked away so much hurt from childhood that the idea of slowing down to be with himself and his own fears was intolerable. 

I was flooded with compassion (and extreme disappointment) when I realized that for him turning inward towards the pain beneath his busyness was a threat beyond his window of tolerance.

Which, for many months, translated into me frantically inviting creative solutions for us to find a way through together. I didn’t want to give up. I fought hard — which is where I can see some of my own shadow of over-extending myself to keep us together.

At what cost was I willing to remain patient in a relationship because of the potential? How long do you wait for someone to join forces with you or to accept they are not able to do so?

I saw his potential and kept believing that if he saw it too our world could blast open. He wanted it too — and yet his layers of unexamined fears kept him from taking the action required to break free.

Towards the end, I felt exhausted and alone. Without his involvement at this deep level of investment, there was no “us” — there was no potential to expand together.

Despite being synched up in so many ways, we hit a wall that was not scalable without shared commitment and vision.  Attempting to build a life without each of us investing in understanding when fear and protective patterns are running our lives is not an evolutionary relationship. 

For me, this feels more isolating and alone than being single.

I waited until it was clear enough to let go — and sometimes that’s all we can do. We ride the waves of hope and grief until a breakthrough appears or a letting go becomes obvious.

So, we said goodbye. And, now I’m harvesting the gifts, grieving the loss and envisioning my future.

Can we have it all? What does unlimited potential really mean?

In all honesty, I’m investigating my own limiting beliefs about whether I can have everything I desire in a partnership.  On the one hand, I understand no one person will ever fulfill all of my needs – I shed that Hollywood fantasy after my divorce in 2001.

Yet, on the other hand, why isn’t it possible for those who are equally devoted to evolving and taking responsibility for our conditioned selves, to merge into a union? To establish an evolutionary partnership that is not based on our fantasies of who each other needs to be for us. Or limited patterns of rescuing one another? Or fixing one another?

Instead, a partnership that’s based on a love that comes with less conditioned expectations. Which, is only possible once we’ve done the work to expose and understand our conditioned mind and body patterns. How many of us are willing to meet ourselves in the darkest hours of self-aggression, self-inflation, self-doubt and self-criticism?

It’s one of the most courageous and bold acts a human can take.

When we have learned to befriend exiled parts of ourselves we now have the ability to extend this power and love to others.

I want to see a world where we move beyond the cultural limitations and personal blind spots that limit what we believe is possible. 

I’m deeply grateful for how this beautiful love, that we wove together with our bodies and hearts, revealed the potential for an unlimited type of union and rooting with another.

What are common drivers for primary relationship bonding?

Meanwhile, I’ve been contemplating the infrastructure of attachment bonding and how it serves a diverse set of needs and expectations for each one of us.

Not everyone seeks romantic relationships and bonding for the same reasons. In fact, there are countless driving factors for why someone invests in romance.

For example, sometimes love bonding is channeled through domesticating and raising children together. Establishing a family system and culture, that is created by the parents, becomes the shared journey of bonding and love.

For others, bonding helps them to avoid feeling alone or insecure.  If this is the fundamental ground then most likely the couple will repeatedly play out painful attachment trauma assuming that this is how relationships are. 

They live in cycles of up and down.  Blame and judgment.  Fear overriding love.  Pushing away and clinging. 

“I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“I need you to make me happy.” 

“You always go away when I need you.” 

“I need freedom and you don’t give it to me.”

Any of these sound familiar to you? 

I got married in my twenties and unbeknownst to me, I sought our relationship from a deep wound of feeling unlovable and broken.

I unconsciously sought out our partnership to save me.  I don’t know what he would say now, but in retrospect, I believe he was doing the same.  We were in love with the idea of one another.  With the fantasies of what we would save each other from — loneliness, feeling ostracized from our families, abandonment and so on.

Others seek relationships to grow and evolve.  They are invested in taking ownership for how they show up, shut down or open up within their most vulnerable and intimate relationships.

This relationship intention creates a certain ground of stability and security.  Because both people know that there is no need to withdrawl, blame or collapse when challenges arise.

Why? Because obstacles are expected.  All the forms of attachment pain I mentioned earlier will present themselves. Each rupture or hurt provides the fuel needed to examine and shed conditioned patterns of protection, grow closer to oneself and bond deeper with one another. 

In these types of relationships, differences and conflict is welcomed (not avoided) because there is growing confidence that the repair process will deepen trust. 

When both people are committed to understanding their own patterns of protection, their contribution to communication breakdowns, and unconscious acting out, then the rupture and repair process has the power to catalyze expanding frequencies of love, intimacy and acceptance.

And, of course, all of these intentions can be blended into a hybrid of motivations to bond as romantic partners, friends, colleagues or spiritual allies.  

I’m curious, do you know what you want? If so, how are you creating the conditions that will allow you to manifest this?

I know for myself I want an evolutionary partnership. And, I want to feel safe and secure inside of myself regardless of my relationship status. It’s been a long journey of experimenting and learning how to find this sweet spot. In fact, I’m still refining and learning as I go!

 

Four key steps for building a secure attachment with Self

Many of us who study ourselves, as a path of evolution, have come to understand the power of learning about our attachment system.

How do these subconscious templates drive our states of anxiety and fear in our relationships?

What strategies do we employ to manage these states in relation to connection?

Some of us will anxiously cling to another to seek safety for our vulnerable parts — you know those aspects of ourselves that fear abandonment, aloneness and helplessness.

While others of us will distance ourselves from others (physically or emotionally) when we fear that our freedom will be taken away or that we’ll be engulfed by another’s insatiable needs.

A few years ago I wrote a piece on attachment called, How Does Our Attachment Template Form? Here it is if you want to learn more, click here. It outlines how attachment templates begin as infants and evolve into adulthood.

What currently has my attention is the art of building a healthy and secure attachment partnership with ourselves despite our relationship status.

This does not mean we no longer need bonding and connection with others. We’re mammals, we will always need this. But how we approach this need can shift and evolve based on our relationship with ourselves.

I’m apprenticing to this process and will continue to write about this as I find clearer articulations.

What I can share for now is that there is a presence of love that lives within us and it has the power to hold, guide and carry us when we feel fearful, insecure, and alone.

Yet, what I notice for myself is often when I feel lost and alone I’m re-identified with old narratives and memories of trauma as a child when I was literally alone in situations that I didn’t have the skills of nervous system resilience to tolerate. So, I panic and look outside of me for soothing.

The power of slowing down and turning inward when uncertainty and fear flood our system is a hard ask of ourselves. Why? Because our subconscious holds scary and dark places from the past that arise when we feel stressed and stretched beyond our window of tolerance.

Establishing a secure attachment with Self seems to be mostly about expanding our ability to neutrally witness more of our experience. This includes learning to interrupt the habitual narratives that reinforce our past. Learning to cultivate self-compassion for all the parts of us that feel lost, separate and alone. And, lastly, there is the power of seeking nourishment to support our need for contact, connection and rest.

In summary, these are four essential elements that I’m drawing upon as I partner with myself to create a secure attachment with life.

1. Deepen my relationship with my inner witness - learn to notice what’s unfolding and where I’m identifying versus bearing witness

2. Study my habitual narratives by noticing what narrative I tell myself about the situation that further devolves my state into separation and pain?

3. Cultivate self-compassion for the parts of myself that I (or our culture) have labeled as wrong or broken - how do I lovingly accept and welcome the parts of myself that feel overwhelmed or defensive?

4. Seek nourishment by engaging with things that bring me joy, relax my nervous system and open my heart. I do this by spending time in nature, through a few deeply sacred friendships, journaling, meditation, hot springs, dance, exercise and music.
   

Healing unresolved trauma is our personal work to do

I’m imperfect.  I have attachment trauma which began early in my childhood. 

I have learned that to become free I must befriend all the ways I feel vulnerable and helpless. All the ways I both seek connection and feel threatened by it.

One way I do this is through studying and exposing the adaptive strategies that I employ to protect myself from love and belonging.

For example, the self-reliant strategies I draw upon to avoid needing anyone else since as a child it felt unsafe to need others.

Or, the social butterfly strategies I have used to ensure I don’t have to feel lonely or isolated by packing my life with busyness.

I know that I’m an evolving creature, just like everyone else.  And, I’m incredibly sensitive about my need for depth, emotional attunement, curiosity, and embodied presence. 

If it’s not present in my exchanges with others then I would rather be alone.  I don’t do superficial — unless I know there is a well of depth that bonds us underneath.

It’s essential to build our capacity to discern what nourishes us and what does not.

This is where the ability to discern is essential.

What do we gravitate towards because it’s familiar? Which limiting beliefs from the past are keeping us stuck?

Are you finding your people?

I witness, every week, multiple clients who feel alone in a busy world that often yields zero space for the depth of just being. There is so little time to simply watch the clouds float by, the butterflies skim through the warm summer breezes or the sounds of crickets in the evening air. 

So many of us long to bond with others who are devoted to a journey of peeling back the layers of conditioning and the unhealed trauma responsible for fragmenting us into patterns of defensiveness and fear.

Many of us know that if we do this within ourselves we do this for the whole of humanity, the earth and all her species who roam here.

If you want to explore more of this with others, please consider joining the Power Reclamation Collective, a free monthly gathering. You can learn more here!

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