I used to break up with the good ones. The kind, available, clearly-into-me ones. Not because I got bored. Because it made my skin crawl. I knew it was bad for me, but I didn't fully understand why I felt that way until I learned to feel worthy, twenty years later.
This is the final episode in my series on attachment wounds and how they shape desire and relationship dynamics. Today's is the worth wound: the belief that love has to be earned. We talk about how this impacts relationships and, among other things, turns intimacy into performance instead of presence.
In this episode:
- Where the worth wound gets built in childhood, even in loving families, and why high-achieving or scarcity-driven households produce it so reliably
- How it shows up differently in the body: sexual numbness or pain in people with vulvas, erectile difficulty or hypersexuality in people with penises, both tied to performance anxiety
- Why being fully wanted by someone who's clearly into you can feel like an ick instead of a relief, and what that reaction is actually protecting you from
- The two erotic pathways this wound creates, why playing with them can be healing if you know how to ask a partner for the right stuff, and how to tell which one your fantasies are running
- How this wound plays out in long-term relationships: testing partners, over-functioning, and the black hole dynamic where nothing your partner offers ever feels like enough
- The two-part practice for healing it: soothing the inner child parts that hold the not-enoughness, then practicing being instead of doing
- The sentence most worth-wound carrying people crave from themselves and their loved ones
You are not required to perform your way into being loved. That was never the deal, even when it felt like it was. You get to just be wanted.
Topics: feeling unworthy, attachment wounds, dissociating during sex, feeling numb during sex, performance anxiety men, people pleasing
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and “Shoulds” Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide
More links:
Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
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