u/Calm_Acanthaceae8851

A woman who understands why I notice every shift in energy. Why I ask “are you okay?” even when you say nothing’s wrong. Why I go quiet when I feel distance instead of angry. A woman who doesn’t mistake tenderness for weakness because she had to survive too.

I’m not looking to fix you. I’ve loved like that before and it almost killed me. I know what happens when two people start bleeding into each other trying to become bandages instead of partners.
But I still want depth. I still want obsession in a soft form. I still want to be looked at by someone who understands me emotionally without me having to explain every scar scientifically.

I want us to be honest about the fact we both learned love through instability. That sometimes reassurance matters more to us than pride. That silence can make our minds spiral. That some nights one of us will need to hear “I’m not leaving” in ten different ways because old parts of us still expect abandonment even in safe rooms.

And I want us to build something gentler than what built us.

I want to touch you without either of us feeling like touch is transactional. I want you asleep on my chest without both of us subconsciously waiting for the mood to change. I want us to stop apologizing for having emotions. I want us to learn each other slowly enough that our nervous systems stop treating love like danger.

I think people hear words like “trauma bond” and imagine only toxicity.

But nobody talks about how sometimes it starts because two people finally feel emotionally recognized for the first time in their lives.
That’s what I miss.

Being understood without performing.
And honestly, I still want that with someone.
I want a woman who’s self-aware enough to know her wounds but soft enough to still love deeply anyway. A woman who can admit she gets scared. Who reaches for me instead of pretending she never needs anyone. Someone who understands that intimacy isn’t weakness it’s trust.
Because I’m tired of pretending I don’t crave closeness. I do.

I want the long conversations in dim lighting. I want the accidental hand touches in the kitchen. I want to learn the look on your face before you cry. I want you learning mine too. I want us to tell each other the truth instead of acting detached to seem emotionally evolved.
I don’t need us to be perfectly healed.
I just need us to be honest and feel safe.
And be gentle with each other.

A woman who understands why I notice every shift in energy. Why I ask “are you okay?” even when you say nothing’s wrong. Why I go quiet when I feel distance instead of angry. A woman who doesn’t mistake tenderness for weakness because she had to survive too.

I’m not looking to fix you. I’ve loved like that before and it almost killed me. I know what happens when two people start bleeding into each other trying to become bandages instead of partners.
But I still want depth. I still want obsession in a soft form. I still want to be looked at by someone who understands me emotionally without me having to explain every scar scientifically.

I want us to be honest about the fact we both learned love through instability. That sometimes reassurance matters more to us than pride. That silence can make our minds spiral. That some nights one of us will need to hear “I’m not leaving” in ten different ways because old parts of us still expect abandonment even in safe rooms.

And I want us to build something gentler than what built us.

I want to touch you without either of us feeling like touch is transactional. I want you asleep on my chest without both of us subconsciously waiting for the mood to change. I want us to stop apologizing for having emotions. I want us to learn each other slowly enough that our nervous systems stop treating love like danger.

I think people hear words like “trauma bond” and imagine only toxicity.

But nobody talks about how sometimes it starts because two people finally feel emotionally recognized for the first time in their lives.
That’s what I miss.

Being understood without performing.
And honestly, I still want that with someone.
I want a woman who’s self-aware enough to know her wounds but soft enough to still love deeply anyway. A woman who can admit she gets scared. Who reaches for me instead of pretending she never needs anyone. Someone who understands that intimacy isn’t weakness it’s trust.
Because I’m tired of pretending I don’t crave closeness. I do.

I want the long conversations in dim lighting. I want the accidental hand touches in the kitchen. I want to learn the look on your face before you cry. I want you learning mine too. I want us to tell each other the truth instead of acting detached to seem emotionally evolved.
I don’t need us to be healed.
I just need us to be honest.
And careful with each other.

I spend my days discussing novels, human contradictions, and why people keep falling in love with the wrong ideas about themselves.

Outside of work, I’m drawn naturally into vulnerability, where curiosity matters more than performance, and where two people can talk about psychology, desire, childhood memories, power dynamics, or the oddly intimate feeling of being truly understood.

I appreciate emotional intelligence a lot. Tenderness too. I like people who can be playful without being careless, self-aware without becoming cynical.

I’m fairly grounded in real life good friends, stable career, read too late into the night, cook reasonably well, occasionally disappear into philosophy essays and long walks with music on.

You don’t need to impress me. I’m much more interested in sincerity, nuance, warmth, and people who know how to ask good questions.

Please DM me with maximum expreessions and your story. No pressure, no expectations just seeing where a conversation goes.

I think one of the deepest wounds from growing up with a narcissistic mother is becoming touch-starved before you even understand what love is supposed to feel like.

My mom never picked me up when I cried.
Never hugged me for no reason.
Never kissed my forehead or held me close when I was scared.

Affection always felt withheld, distant, conditional, or absent entirely. I grew up learning not to reach for comfort because reaching usually ended in rejection, annoyance, or coldness.

People talk about abuse like it only counts if someone screams at you or hits you. But I honestly think repeated emotional neglect and micro-rejection rewires your nervous system in ways people who experienced warmth growing up can’t fully understand.

You stop initiating.Then you stop expecting comfort.
Then eventually your body itself starts associating vulnerability with humiliation.I carried that straight into adulthood without realizing it.

My (34m) ex (33f) was almost identical to my mother in the way affection slowly disappeared while insisting everything was “fine.” At first it was subtle. Less reaching for me. Hugs that felt stiff and obligatory. Kisses where I could physically feel the moment she wanted away from me.

Eventually I became hyperaware of every tiny rejection. Every shift away in bed. Every sigh. Every time affection felt tolerated instead of freely given.
The cruelest part about being touch-starved isn’t even sex. It’s lying next to someone you love while feeling emotionally invisible.

I spent years feeling ashamed for needing warmth at all. Like wanting to be held too long somehow made me needy or broken. Meanwhile my nervous system was starving.

And the worst part is how familiar it felt.
Because when you grow up with a mother who never held you, neglect feels normal. You don’t recognize deprivation as abuse because it’s the emotional climate you were raised in. You accept crumbs because your body was trained to survive on crumbs.

A few months ago an older female friend hugged me goodbye after coffee. She held me tightly for a few seconds, kissed my cheek, and told me she was proud of me.

I barely made it to my car before completely breaking down. Not because it was romantic.
Because my body realized how deprived I had been for most of my life.

That’s the part I think people don’t understand about touch starvation. It doesn’t just hurt emotionally. It changes you physically. Your entire nervous system becomes stuck between craving closeness and being terrified of needing it.

And I honestly think prolonged affection deprivation from the people who are supposed to love you most leaves scars that show up in every relationship afterward.

Does anyone else feel like being touch-starved became one of the deepest lasting traumas from having narcissistic parents?

About a month ago I (34m) moved out of a 6-year relationship with ex gf (33f) that had been emotionally over long before it officially ended.

There was no cheating. No screaming fights. No dramatic betrayal anyone could point to and say “there, that’s the moment it broke.” Honestly, I almost wish there had been, because this was quieter and somehow harder to explain.
What slowly destroyed me was the absence of warmth.

Physical affection mattered a lot to me, and over the years it started to feel like my ex’s body itself became a wall I wasn’t allowed through anymore. If I hugged her too long, she’d stiffen or gently pull away after a second. Kisses became quick and empty, like checking a box before leaving for work. Sex slowly disappeared almost entirely, but somehow that wasn’t even the worst part.

It was the loss of all the tiny human things around it.
No hand on my arm while talking. No leaning against me on the couch. No reaching for me in bed. No casual affection that makes you feel chosen without words. Eventually I stopped trying because the repeated tiny rejections started to feel humiliating. There’s only so many times you can reach for someone and feel them subtly recoil before your brain starts protecting itself by shutting the desire down entirely.

And the part I’ve never admitted out loud because it genuinely messed with my self-worth: there were nights she’d touch herself lying right beside me while acting completely closed off to me physically. I cannot fully explain what that does to a person psychologically over time. It wasn’t anger I felt. It was this slow-growing feeling of being fundamentally undesirable. Like I had somehow become emotionally invisible while still sharing a bed with someone.

By the end of the relationship I felt lonelier beside her than I do now living alone.

Since moving out, I’ve realized how badly all of this affected me. I feel almost frighteningly hungry for warmth and connection now, and not even in a sexual way. Just… tenderness. Attention. Softness. Being emotionally seen. It’s intense enough that I’ve actually started isolating a bit because I don’t fully trust my own reactions right now. I feel like someone who doesn’t realize how starved they are until they finally smell food again.

A few days ago I met an older female friend I’ve known for years. She knows about the breakup, and we talked for a long time. When we said goodbye, she hugged me tightly, kissed me on the cheek, and quietly said, “I’m proud of you.”

That was it. Completely innocent.
But the second I got into my car afterward, I genuinely felt like I might cry.

Not because I’m secretly in love with her. Not because I interpreted it romantically. It was more like my nervous system suddenly remembered what kindness and warmth felt like after years of surviving without it. That tiny moment cracked something open in me that I think I’d buried just to get through the relationship.

And honestly? I feel embarrassed by how deeply it affected me. Part of me thinks, Jesus Christ, get a grip, it was just a hug.

But another part of me thinks maybe people really do become emotionally starved the same way they become physically starved so gradually they stop realizing how deprived they are until one small act of care suddenly feels overwhelming.

I don’t know. I think I just needed to say this somewhere because I genuinely can’t tell anymore if my reaction is normal or if six years of emotional distance quietly rewired me in ways I’m only now starting to understand.

About a month ago I (34m) moved out of a 6 year relationship with my ex (33f) that had become emotionally very cold long before it actually ended.

There was no cheating or explosive betrayal. What hurt more honestly was how deliberate the physical distance became over the years. She knew physical affection mattered a lot to me and slowly it started feeling like her body itself became a wall I wasn’t allowed through anymore. If I tried to hug her for too long, she’d stiffen or pull away after a second. Kissing became quick and absent, like checking a box. Sex slowly disappeared almost entirely, but what really got into my head was that even basic tenderness disappeared with it. No touching my arm, no laying against me on the couch, no reaching for me in bed. Eventually even trying started to feel humiliating because she would touch herself right beside me and i felt absolutely trash and being undesired.

After years of that, something in me changed. I stopped asking because being rejected in tiny ways over and over does something to your nervous system. And now that I’m finally out of the relationship, I feel almost alarmingly hungry for connection and warmth. Not even sexually, honestly. Just emotionally and physically seen. It’s intense enough that I’ve started isolating myself because I don’t fully trust my own reactions right now. I feel like someone who doesn’t realize how starved they are until they finally smell food again.

A few days ago I met with an older female friend I’ve known for years. She knows about the breakup and we talked for a long time about everything. At the end, she hugged me very tightly, kissed me on the cheek, and quietly said “I’m proud of you.”

That’s it. Completely innocent. But the second I got into my car afterward I genuinely felt like I was going to cry.

Not because I’m in love with her or because I took it romantically. It was more that something about being held with actual warmth and hearing someone say they were proud of me completely cracked through whatever emotional survival mode I’ve apparently been living in for years.

And now I feel deeply embarrassed by how much that tiny moment affected me.

Part of me feels ridiculous because it was just a hug and a kiss on the cheek from a friend. Another part of me feels like my reaction maybe says something really sad about how emotionally empty I’d become without realizing it.

Am I overreacting or is this what emotional starvation actually does to people?