Salt for Sugar: How You Learned to Settle for Less Than You Wanted
If receiving care feels more dangerous than giving it, the issue may not be that you want too much. This essay explores how caretaking, freeze, and early experiences of being unseen can train a person to confuse familiar pain with love, and why safe connection can become possible again.
When Caring for Others Becomes the Only Way to Exist
“if i knew what safety looked like / i would have spent less time falling / into arms that were not.”
Rupi Kaur, poet
February is my favorite month to talk about love. Not because it’s simple, God, it’s not simple, but because this is when the question gets unavoidable. The heart-shaped boxes show up. The couples flood your Instagram. And somewhere between the Whole Foods flower display and another friend’s engagement announcement, you find yourself wondering: Why is this so hard for me?
Maybe you already know your version of this story. Maybe you keep choosing partners who need managing, saving, or impressing, the same person with different faces, over and over. But I want to talk to you if your story looks different. If you’ve poured yourself so completely into your work, your causes, the people and systems that desperately need you, that your own romantic desires went underground somewhere along the way. If the question “What do you want in a partner?” makes your mind go blank.
Because here’s what I’ve learned from fifteen thousand hours of clinical work: Both versions are often the same story. Both can grow from the same root. For some women, that root is a childhood home. For others, it’s a romantic relationship where caretaking slowly replaced mutuality. And for many, it’s both.
You may have learned to taste love wrong. And it likely happened early, sometimes before your first relationship, and sometimes inside a relationship that reshaped your nervous system over time.
But first, we need to name what might actually be happening.
But what if you stopped falling altogether?
Let me describe someone. See if you recognize her.
She can hold space for anyone. Her friends call her when they’re falling apart. Her team knows she’ll absorb whatever chaos lands on her desk. She’s built a life of meaning, maybe she runs a nonprofit, or she’s the one who organizes, advocates, shows up. She matters to a lot of people.
And she is profoundly lonely.
Not because she doesn’t have people around her. But because somewhere along the way, she became the one who gives. Rarely the one who receives. The idea of someone taking care of her, really seeing her, really holding her, makes her chest tight. It feels dangerous in a way she can’t quite name.
When someone gets close, something happens. Her whole system goes… quiet. Blank. Still. Not rejection exactly, more like disappearing. The wanting that might have been there just… stops.
Neuroscientist Stephen Porges calls this the freeze response. In his polyvagal theory, when your nervous system perceives overwhelming threat, and yes, intimacy can register as threat, it doesn’t always fight or flee. Sometimes it shuts down entirely. The dorsal vagal system takes over, and you go still. Immobilized. The body’s oldest defense.
For some women, that freeze can become a way of life in the entire terrain of romantic intimacy, whether it began in childhood or emerged inside a relationship where closeness felt unsafe.
You can mobilize communities. You can hold everyone else’s feelings. But when someone asks what you want? When someone tries to care for you instead of being cared for by you?
Blank. Still. Gone.
This wiring often has roots. Deep ones. Let me trace some of the most common paths it takes.
Maybe your household was volatile. A parent whose mood could shift without warning, loving one moment, rageful or withdrawn the next. You learned to read the weather before you could read books. You learned that your job was to manage the emotional climate, to become the steady one, to have no needs that might add to the chaos.
Maybe you were the caretaker for a parent who couldn’t hold themselves together. You learned that love meant being needed. That your value came from being useful, indispensable, the one who held it all together while asking for nothing.
Or maybe you didn’t grow up that way, but later found yourself in a romantic relationship where volatility, emotional unpredictability, or chronic self-abandonment became normal.
Toni Morrison, in a conversation with Oprah, named something essential about what this can do to a child:
“When my children used to walk in the room when they were little, I looked at them to see if they’d buckled their trousers, or if their hair was combed, or if their socks were up. You think your affection and your deep love is on display, because you’re caring for them. It’s not. When they see you, they see the critical face. What’s wrong now?”
What’s wrong now?
If you grew up seeing that face, the one scanning for what you got wrong, or scanning for what you needed to fix in them, then your understanding of love may have gotten built on a fractured foundation.
A 2014 Princeton study analyzing data from over 14,000 U.S. children found that approximately forty percent lack secure attachment bonds with their caregivers, and those children are significantly more likely to struggle with relationships throughout their lives. That’s not a small minority. That’s nearly half of us, walking around with attachment systems that may have gotten wired for survival instead of connection.
Your nervous system may have learned something specific: Other people’s internal states are your responsibility. Their needs come first. Their moods matter most. Your survival depends on reading them accurately.
That wasn’t a choice. That was adaptation. And adaptation doesn’t only happen in childhood. Nervous systems adapt wherever survival is required.
Neuroscientist Stephen Porges describes the freeze response in polyvagal theory as an immobilization response that can occur when the nervous system perceives overwhelming threat. The essay notes that intimacy can sometimes register as that threat.
In plain terms: You may be fully capable of caring for everyone else and then go blank when someone asks what you need. That shutdown is a protective response, not proof that you are incapable of love.
Salt for Sugar: When Love Trains You Not to Want
“my mother smiled as she offered a cube of sugar in her upturned palm. greedily, i accepted. i reached inside my mouth, delicately placing one (just one) on the center of my tongue, & i clamped down. salt. that is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.”
Amanda Lovelace, poet, The Princess Saves Herself in This One
that is what abuse is:
knowing you are
going to get salt
but still hoping for sugar
for nineteen years.*
Here’s what can happen when you learn, early or later, to accept salt disguised as sugar: You can lose the ability to taste the difference.
For some women, this means volatility feels like passion. Unavailability feels like mystery. They keep choosing partners who need managing, because that’s what love tasted like in their house.
But for others, maybe for you, the confusion runs even deeper. Maybe you stopped trusting the whole category. Stopped reaching for sugar at all. Because every time you reached, you got salt. So you decided, somewhere deep in your nervous system, to stop being hungry.
You became the one who feeds others. Rarely the one who eats.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes about the soul-starved woman in Women Who Run With the Wolves, describing how a woman who is “starved for her real soul-life” may look put together on the outside but is “filled with dozens of pleading hands and empty mouths” within. That soul starvation can drive you to grab at anything that looks like love, or convince yourself you don’t need sustenance at all. Both can be responses to the same original wound.
And here’s what I want to name, because it doesn’t get talked about enough:
For women who learned to survive by caretaking, receiving care can feel more threatening than never getting it at all.
Think about it. If your entire sense of self got built around being the one who gives, the competent one, the steady one, the one who needs nothing, then what happens when someone tries to give to you?
It’s not just uncomfortable. It can be destabilizing. If you’re not the caretaker, who are you? If you have needs, are you still safe? If you let someone see your hunger, will they use it against you?
One of my clients described it this way: “I feel like I have a big hole in my psyche, or maybe it’s a wound that never quite heals. God, I’m lonely by myself.”
That’s the terrible paradox: desperately wanting connection while being unable to receive it. Aching for intimacy while your whole system freezes the moment someone gets close.
Your brain may have done something brilliant when you were young. It learned that wanting things was dangerous, because your needs got ignored, or mocked, or used against you. So it made the wanting stop. Or at least, it buried the wanting so deep you stopped being able to hear it.
That was adaptive. That kept you safe.
But it may not be serving you anymore.
The Mirroring That Never Happened (And Your Miscalibrated GPS)
Marion Woodman, the Jungian analyst, wrote extensively about what happens when the natural order of mirroring gets reversed, when the child is expected to mirror the parent, instead of the parent mirroring the child, stifling the young potential before it ever has a chance to bloom.
You were supposed to be seen. Delighted in. Reflected back to yourself so you could understand who you were, what you felt, what you wanted. That’s what healthy early attachment does, it teaches you about yourself through the loving gaze of someone who finds you fascinating.
Instead? You may have become the mirror. Your job was reading their states. Managing their moods. Keeping the peace. Disappearing when necessary.
And that same wiring, the wiring that makes you exceptional at reading others, at sensing what a room needs, at anticipating problems before they happen, may now be shaping your romantic life. Or your absence of one.
Because here’s the thing: Your relational GPS, the internal guidance system that points you toward love, likely got programmed early, or recalibrated inside a relationship that demanded survival instead of reciprocity.
If that early programming was shaped by chaos, volatility, emotional unavailability, or the demand that you have no needs, then your GPS may have learned something specific. For some women, it points toward what feels familiar, partners who need managing. For others, it says: Don’t want anything. Wanting is the problem. The safest direction is nowhere.
That’s why “chemistry” can lie. And that’s why safe, available people can feel boring, or terrifying.
Recognition isn’t the same as right. And protection isn’t the same as thriving.
Mirroring is the responsive process through which a caregiver notices, reflects, and makes room for a child’s feelings and inner experience. The essay draws on Jungian analyst Marion Woodman’s writing about what can happen when this natural order is reversed.
In plain terms: When you had to read everyone else instead of being seen yourself, your internal compass may point toward what is familiar rather than what is mutual.
What Becomes Possible Now
This can change.
Not overnight. Not through willpower or shame. But through understanding why your palate got trained the way it did, and slowly, carefully, teaching it something new.
Neuroplasticity is real. Your brain forms new neural pathways throughout life. And the research on “earned secure attachment” offers genuine hope: a growing body of studies shows that individuals who experienced insecure attachment in childhood can develop secure relationship patterns as adults through consistent, safe relationships and intentional therapeutic work. Your early wiring is not your destiny.
But you can’t change a pattern you can’t see. And you don’t need a childhood explanation for a pattern to be real. If your body learned it, it counts.
Today’s essay was about naming it, the freeze, the caretaking that became identity, the terror of receiving what you’ve spent your whole life giving, the relational GPS that may have gotten programmed for survival instead of connection.
This is for you if you recognized yourself anywhere in these paragraphs, whether your patterns formed in childhood, in a narcissistic romantic relationship, or across both.
You’re not broken. You may have learned to taste love wrong because that’s what you were given. You may have learned to stop wanting because wanting was dangerous.
Those were brilliant adaptations. They got you here.
But you may not need them anymore.
That promise kept you safe when you were small.
You may not need it anymore.
You can let someone know.
“the child backed silent against the wall trying to keep her eyes dry; haughty; in panic I will never let you know I will never let you know”
Adrienne Rich, poet, Sources
Q: Why do I keep becoming the caretaker in my relationships?
A: The essay suggests that caretaking can become a survival-based identity when a child or partner learns that others’ moods and needs must come first. It may feel like love because it once helped you adapt.
Q: Why does receiving care make me uncomfortable?
A: If your sense of safety formed around being competent and needed, being cared for can feel destabilizing. The essay names the fear beneath that discomfort: if you have needs, will you still be safe?
Q: Can a relationship make me stop knowing what I want?
A: Yes. The essay recognizes that nervous systems adapt not only in childhood but wherever survival is required. A relationship marked by volatility or chronic self-abandonment can reshape what closeness feels like.
Q: Why can a safe person feel boring or scary?
A: Your relational GPS may have learned to recognize chaos, distance, or being needed as familiar. Familiarity is not the same as health, so real availability can initially feel foreign or threatening.
Q: Can attachment patterns change in adulthood?
A: The essay points to neuroplasticity and earned secure attachment: with consistent safe relationships and intentional therapeutic work, people can develop new patterns. Early wiring is not destiny.
EMDR-trained, trauma-informed therapy for driven women healing relational and developmental trauma.
Trauma-informed coaching for driven women navigating leadership, burnout, and identity.
Annie’s signature course for relational trauma recovery. The framework, in your own time.
Annie Wright, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist · Relational Trauma Specialist · Author, W.W. Norton 2027
“Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.”
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist with 15,000+ clinical hours since 2013 and an EMDRIA Certified Therapist. She’s the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she successfully exited. She’s currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). Her expert commentary has appeared in Psychology Today, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News, and The Information.
CA LMFT95719 · CO MFT.0003236 (telehealth only) · CT 003806 · DC LMFT200001447 · FL TPMF356 (out-of-state telehealth registration) · IL 166.012270 · ME MF8600 · MD LCM1206 · NH 1030 · NJ 37FI00254800 · NY 002805 · TX 206391 · UT 14300323-3902 · VA 0717002589 · WA MFT.LF.70098096
Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · Author, W.W. Norton 2027
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is an EMDR-certified licensed psychotherapist and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, and she's been in practice since 2013. She draws on psychodynamic and somatic approaches alongside EMDR, and she is licensed in 15 U.S. jurisdictions and registered to provide telehealth in Florida (California, Colorado (telehealth only), Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Annie works with driven and ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds, and everything she writes about is field-tested across thousands of clinical sessions. She is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited, and is currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
Work With Annie