It often begins mid-sentence, in a conversation she’s had far too many times.

Different day. Same feeling. Different tone. Same lack of change.

I’ve witnessed this in women I sit with in therapy.

I’ve lived it in my own story.

This quiet moment, this sacred breaking point, where love stops being a shared space and becomes something she carries alone.

Detachment is not a decision.

It’s a slow erosion. It is a shift. A result of so many times when she was left alone. Not seen. Not heard.

Detachment is an erosion of trust. Of hope.

Of the belief that her words, her needs, her truth… matter.

She didn’t stop caring overnight.

She tried, she tried hard many times, sometimes for years. She tried until she had no more ways left to say what she needed.

She tried with softness. She tried with fire.

She tried in tears and silence and patience and over-explaining.

But nothing shifted.

So slowly, she stopped checking his tone.

She stopped analyzing his words.

She stopped arguing, not because she made peace, but because she gave up trying to be heard.

That silence?

It’s not coldness.

It’s self-preservation.

We don’t talk enough about what emotional labor looks like in relationships.

About the weight women carry when they’re constantly trying to make something work alone.

About how exhausting it is to feel like you’re loving for two.

So when a client tells me, “I’m tired, I can’t do this anymore, I think I want to leave,”

I don’t rush her to decide.

Instead, I help her slow down and reflect:

Is this a real decision to leave, or is it a threat to leave meant to provoke change?

And then I tell her something that often hurts to hear:

If he only starts to care once he feels he might lose you, it means he always knew what you needed.

He just didn’t care enough to do it, until his comfort, his image, his stability was at risk.

That’s not love.

That’s self-preservation on his part.

Not a response to your pain, but a reaction to his fear.

Because when someone truly cares about your happiness, your needs, your emotional safety, they don’t need to be threatened to show up.

They do it because your wellbeing matters to them.

This is a call for awareness. For couples to wake up.

To stop normalizing emotional neglect as “just how it is.”

To stop romanticizing the kind of strength that requires women to betray their own needs in the name of love.

Dear women,

If this speaks to you, I want you to know:

Your voice matters.

Your needs are not too much.

Your longing for connection, intimacy, safety, and reciprocity is valid.

You are not dramatic. You are not hard to love.

You are simply tired of begging for the basics.

And that tiredness? That’s not weakness.

That’s your power speaking.

That’s your soul saying: “This is not how I want to be loved.”

Let’s stop teaching women to stay quiet to keep the peace.

Let’s start empowering them to speak before detachment becomes the only way to survive.

Let's encourage women that they have the right to have a voice. To say No!. To ask for what they need.

And if you’re a partner reading this, if she’s still talking to you, still repeating herself, it means she hasn’t given up yet.

Listen.

Hear her.

Before silence is the only thing left between you.

With care and presence, 🤍

Aniela

photo: Pinterest