The other day, randomly, I started to read a post about the “Father Wound.”

For the first time, I felt like I truly understood what it meant, in my belly—within. Energetically.

I had an absent father, so it was certain something like a father wound was ingrained in me.

In fact, nobody modelled for me the role of a healthy, mature, available, present man. I can’t say there were no great masculine figures around me and my mother as I was a little girl. That would be a lie. However, this presence was fleeting and not truly settled with us.

As a child, I never experienced what it was like for a man to be present, emotionally mature, consistent, stable, committed, loyal and loving—all of these traits at the same time. I never experienced the love of a father who was 100 percent healthy, 100 percent there.

I think that, as a consequence, I always felt something within me wasn’t good enough. Otherwise, he would have always been there with us; he would have stayed.

At a deeper level, I wondered what you have to do, to be, as a woman to attract or keep a good man.

I now feel these feelings, these sensations, were too deep within myself and my heart to actually be seen and acknowledged for what they are. As something that’s so ingrained in you that you even forget it came from the external, from the influence that the outside world and its love dynamics had on you.

Rather than seeing these feelings as something you received from the outside and molded from your own perspective, it becomes you. You stop making the distinction between the wound and yourself. You are unable to do so.

They say, “don’t accept breadcrumbs or less than you deserve from a man.” But to do this, you need to know—not intellectually but deeper, in the way that it feels—what the limit is. What’s acceptable and what isn’t.

They also say “don’t push good, healthy men away!” Similarly, this can be hard to decipher. In fact, all relationships end up causing conflicts, big or small. And this is exactly as it should be. This is when personal growth happens. But this is also when it becomes important to make the distinction between growing through the relationship, which is great, and when you are supposed to let a connection go because your partner isn’t a fit for you or doesn’t treat you right.

But where is the line?

It is hard to know where limits are between good and bad, between fear of intimacy and misalignment, between it’s not him or you should just work through this when no healthy masculine figure was modelled to you.

In fact, how do you set your own boundaries in love when you don’t know what is “normal”? When you have never experienced a 100 percent aligned and healthy presence, so you don’t know how that even feels?

Of course, intellectually you know the major themes. If you have self-worth, you only accept a man who commits to you, who is loving, consistent, and doesn’t cheat. That’s the obvious, similar to don’t date a man who physically harms you. On the opposite end, don’t release a man just because one day he didn’t call.

But relationships hold so much more complexity. The small things we don’t know how to react to. The small sensations of, “He is doing too much; that’s infatuation,” or “He isn’t doing enough; his way of loving isn’t right.” The more energetic pieces of a relationship, like when your friends say he is doing everything right and he is there, but you feel a subtle sort of divine discontent within. Like the right behaviour is present but without the full heart.

Or somebody telling you that you are asking for “too much,” but what is “too much” when nobody showed you what’s healthy or expected. When you never felt this in your body when you were young. When your energy wasn’t shaped by a healthy, masculine template.

When you never experienced what a healthy connection feels like at a young age, it’s hard to know what it feels like or to clearly identify red flags either.

When you have craved so much for attention, it’s hard to make the distinction between loving attention and attention with an agenda.

If you have a father wound, something may have to be rewired within you, like what you should be looking for in a man to live a fulfilling, harmonious, healthy relationship. And the way a healthy man should make you feel. You entered into adulthood without having this framework within, so it’s something you will need to learn as you go.

Relationships are energies. Energies are felt. They are the way people make us feel, the sensations created or broken within. And as you attempt to heal your father wound, you’ll become an expert at energetically feeling men and relationships.

In time and progressively, you’ll start to clearly feel the red flags. The green ones too. In time, and mostly through experience, you’ll get to experience the feeling of a healthy man.

Some will have this piece, some this other one. Experience will guide you. It will build your inner compass.

This is how you’ll discover the energy of healthy and safe. This is how you’ll bring it within you, and incorporate it into your life. Step by step, you’ll attract healthier forms of love. This will be because your own attraction will have changed, within yourself. As within, so without.

And one day, you’ll be with the healthy, consistent, mature, respectful, sincere, committed, “good” one.

This is what happened to me. In my own journey, I have been through many layers and types of relationships. From over-pleasing my partner to embodying a role that wasn’t my true self to be with a man, to accepting breadcrumbs, to thinking nobody would be a true match on all levels, to thinking that deep sexual connection and chemistry can only exist with men of “fire” and not men who are 100 percent committed to me, to pursuing my “Twin Flame” for years, to not being able to communicate my own needs and only lashing out after months of “keeping it quiet,” to betrayals…

To eventually understanding what I was doing wrong, how I could do the work, and how a healthy feminine can find her position in relationships between fluidity, kindness, softness, and the aspects of self-respect and self-honouring in order to attract a healthy partnership in my life.

So if you have a father wound, I’m with you. Don’t lose hope. Your experiences are gold. They are your knowledge, your tools. Life didn’t give you the right tools straightaway, but you are acquiring them yourself.

Your knowledge will make you strong.

Your inner compass will become the mature, present figure you needed in childhood.

And each experience will put you on your right track.

This October, I’m starting a high value and intimate woman mastermind for the women who want to attract the committed and healthy relationship they have been dreaming of. To read more and join, please visit my website.  

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