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My hands were shaking as anxiety gripped me.

I felt so triggered from his words in his recent voice note.

I could feel my anxious attachment wound becoming activated. I have been here in this place so many times in my life. I have so many skills and tools around this, and I am, frankly, quite tired of being pulled into the depths of the anxiety that surrounds my anxious attachment.

Recognizing all of this internal process, I reached out to the new connection I was creating with a man and named: “I am feeling triggered around something you said in your last voice note. I would love to share what has come up for me.”

His response dinged immediately.

“I would love to talk with you. I am free tomorrow in the afternoon.”

My heart began to soften.

“Are you saying to have a phone conversation?”

He replied instantly.

“Yes. I would love to have a conversation with you.”

My body sighed in relief.

What proceeded in the following day’s conversation was a gentle sharing of the wounds that had arisen within me from something he had shared. He acknowledged what I said with warmth and kindness. He offered even more of an invitation.

“Is there anything else?”

Then I shifted the conversation to him. I asked him what arose within him during our conversation and as I brought my wounds forward. He shared with me the wounds that arose within him and I met his wounds with the same gentleness as he met mine.

As the conversation unfolded, I could feel both of our bodies begin to relax. The nervous systems softened. The armor loosened. Something that had been contracted began to open.

He shared how healing the conversation had been for him.

I felt the same.

It was at that moment that I realized something profound.

For years, I had felt what I can only describe as tiny specks of gold form within me whenever I metabolized a wound by myself in my Self Pleasure Practice. Whether it was heartbreak, grief, longing, or an attachment wound, there would come a moment when the anxiety would soften and something warm would emerge in its place.

Tiny specks of gold.

What I realized in that conversation was that I was experiencing those same golden specks while being met by another.

And in that moment, my body understood something about wounds, Eros, and love that had never before been felt.

Wounds seek love. The gold appears when true love arrives.

Wounds magnetize Eros.

Because wounds attract life force and because wounds are not passive.

Wounds are a living organization within the psyche and body that is continually seeking completion. It longs to be seen, held, understood, and loved. Like a gravitational field, it pulls attention, energy, emotion, and desire toward itself.

It pulls Eros.

Eros, as I understand it, is life force itself. It is the current that animates us. It is desire, vitality, creativity, longing, sensuality, aliveness, and the impulse toward connection.

When a wound remains unmet, Eros can become entangled within it.

The life force begins circulating around the injury rather than moving freely through the body.

What we experience as obsession, anxious attachment, compulsive longing, or relentless preoccupation is often not simply desire for another person.

It is Eros circling an unhealed wound.

The wound whispers:

“See me.”

“Choose me.”

“Love me.”

“Do not leave me.”

And Eros answers by pouring itself into the wound.

This can create a powerful illusion.

We may believe we are longing for the person in front of us when, in reality, we are longing for the healing we imagine they can provide.

The more activated the wound becomes, the more life force is pulled into its orbit.

Yet there are moments when healing enters.

Sometimes another person possesses the capacity to meet us there. To remain present with what hurts.

When another human being can witness our wound without turning away, the nervous system begins to regulate. The body starts to release its grip. The clench around the wound softens.

And something alchemical happens.

The Eros that had been trapped inside the wound begins to separate from it.

This is what healing often feels like in the body.

I have been exploring this experience in my body for years. And the best analogy I can come forward to share is that the sensations of being met in heartbreak are akin to tiny specks of delicious gold appearing where there was once pain and anxiety.

In my opinion, the gold is the presence of love. The true frequency of love. Not the illusion of love that the wound “thought” it was seeking initially.

Because the wound does not know or understand what “love” is, that is why it is chasing and leaning into what it believes to be love but what is in fact the nervous system’s response to what it “thinks” love is.

The gold is the life force becoming available again.

And when another can help facilitate this process, the gold specks form almost effortlessly for both. Because often, when you are pulled toward another with your wound, you are also pulling their wound into the concoction, purposefully.

Two wounds seeking to meet each other in love.

The task becomes to free the life force that became trapped inside it.

To allow it to circulate once more through the body, through creativity, through intimacy, through purpose, through life itself.

Wounds seek love.

The gold appears when love arrives. And it is the most delicious feeling.

And what remains is Eros, free to move again.

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Read part one of this series: Meeting Your Heartbreak: On Love, Attachment & the Abandonment Wound.

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