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Some women begin to notice when being needed has been mistaken for being wanted. When reliance arrives dressed as closeness. When praise comes easily, dependence settles in, and she is turned to again and again for steadiness, labour, care, staying, and calls that love because it keeps her near the centre of someone else’s need. There is a particular arrangement in this, and some women begin to see it clearly: what felt like being cherished was often the warm approval given to their usefulness. The one who absorbs, carries, reassures, remains available, keeps being returned to. Not because she is deeply known, but because she has become part of how someone else is held together. Patriarchy does not only teach women to be desirable. It teaches them to feel valuable where they are most needed. To confuse being relied on with being loved. To mistake the weight placed on them for devotion. Women can learn this with men, with women, in family, in friendship, anywhere a woman’s staying power is treated as intimacy. And because this often touches an older wound, the hope can take hold that if she is enough for someone’s need, she will finally be safe in their love. As though love lives there. As though being necessary is proof of being cherished. It can take a long time to notice what that arrangement has cost her. Need can keep a woman close without ever once loving her. This is one of the quieter powers of inner work. A woman begins to feel the difference between being needed and being held in love. Once she knows it, the old arrangement cannot keep calling itself closeness. #WomensInnerLives #DepthPsychology #FeministPsychology #SelfErasure #MythicPsychology