Attracting at Our Common Level of Woundedness

I have often stated that we attract each other at our common level of woundedness or our common level of health, and people often ask “What exactly does this mean?”

Our level of woundedness is the level at which we abandon ourselves, while our level of health is the level at which we are loving ourselves. In any given relationship, the way each partner abandons him or herself may be different, but how much they each abandon themselves within the primary relationship is similar.

For example…

Jimmy and Marie meet and are attracted to each other. Jimmy abandons himself through ignoring his own feelings and pulling on others to fill him up with attention, approval, and sex. Marie abandons herself by being a caretaker – tending to others’ feelings while ignoring her own. Their common level of woundedness is the degree to which they each ignore their own feelings and avoid responsibility for them, along with the degree to which they each turn to various addictive controlling behaviors to attempt to fill the emptiness within that results from their self-abandonment.

A woman who is taking responsibility for her own feelings – who is connected with her spiritual guidance and operates as a loving adult, taking loving action on her own behalf – would not be attracted to Jimmy. She would immediately feel Jimmy’s inner emptiness and neediness, and his energy would feel to her like the repelling end of a magnet.

Likewise, a man who is operating as a loving adult with himself would not be attracted to Marie. Instead he would feel put off by her caretaking and the inner neediness from which it stems. He would feel her insecurity, her fears of rejection, and the anxiety that goes along with inner abandonment. No matter how beautiful Marie is, this man would not be attracted to her frequency, which would be much lower than his.

“Why can’t I attract an available partner?”

“Because you are not available to yourself – to taking responsibility for your own feelings. As long as you are abandoning yourself, you will attract someone who is also abandoning themselves, and this self-abandonment may show up as emotional unavailability.”

“But many of my friends are in relationships. How come I’m not?”

“Those of your friends who have really great relationships are people who are taking loving care of themselves and sharing their love with their partners. But I would guess that many of your friends are in codependent relationships – taking and caretaking – and if they are not yet having problems, they will likely have them in the future. Codependent relationships seem to work as long as each partner continues to play their assigned role, but if one of them grows and the other doesn’t, then the system falls apart. This is why 40% of first marriages end in divorce, and the rate is way higher for second and third marriages. And, of the half of first marriages that stay married, many have settled for a distant or conflicted relationship.”

“I want to be in a loving relationship. What do I need to do?”

“You need to practice Inner Bonding so that you stop abandoning yourself by ignoring your feelings, judging yourself, and turning to addictions, including the addiction of making another responsible for your worth and lovability. Once you are taking loving care of yourself – not in order to get a partner, but because being loving is your highest priority – then it is likely that you will attract a loving and available partner. By practicing Inner Bonding and learning to take loving care of yourself, you raise your frequency and will attract someone of like frequency. As the law of attraction states, ‘Like attracts like.”

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

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