The Love You Never Knew

The Love I Never Knew is more than a story of heartache-it's a guide for every person who has ever questioned what love should feel like. Have you ever loved too hard, stayed too long, or silenced your needs for the sake of peace? If love felt more like anxiety than warmth, more like walking on eggshells than walking hand in hand-you're not alone. This powerful installment in the Fawn Recovery Series explores how unresolved trauma, people-pleasing, and insecure attachment styles affect the way we give and receive love. Drawing from both neuroscience and emotional experience, the book gently unravels how our nervous system reacts to love, fear, abandonment, and safety-and how we can slowly retrain it to feel secure again. Through poetic reflections, practical insights, and compassionate guidance, you'll learn how to:- Understand how your nervous system and attachment history shape your love patterns- Recognize the difference between true connection and survival-based love- Rebuild emotional safety through co-regulation, boundaries, and honest communication- Navigate fear of intimacy or rejection with clarity and grace- Celebrate the quiet progress of your healing-one safe relationship at a time Whether you've been stuck in cycles of toxic dynamics, overgiving, or emotional abandonment, this book will help you redefine love on your own terms. It's for the gentle-hearted, the quietly strong, and the ones learning to receive the kind of love they never thought they deserved. You don't have to prove your worth to be loved. You don't have to shrink to feel safe. You only need to come home to the love you never knew-starting within. This book doesn't just explain what went wrong in your past relationships-it helps you gently rewrite your emotional blueprint. Instead of blaming yourself for being "too sensitive" or "too attached," you'll start seeing your responses as survival strategies rooted in love, fear, and unmet emotional needs. Each chapter weaves together reflection and healing practices designed to calm your nervous system and rewire your connection with yourself and others. You'll explore how emotional abandonment-especially in childhood-teaches you to perform for love, overextend for approval, and fear rejection as danger. But through awareness, body-based healing, and emotional safety, you'll begin to replace survival with connection. This is not a quick-fix relationship book. It's a companion for your inner healing. If you've ever said "I don't know how to feel safe with someone," this book will hold space for that truth. If you've ever stayed silent to avoid conflict, feared intimacy even while craving it, or felt like love was something you had to earn-this book is for you. You'll learn how to spot nervous system dysregulation in your love life, and more importantly, how to co-regulate with people who are capable of mutual respect and emotional presence. From emotional flashbacks to boundary setting, from frozen fawn responses to safe vulnerability-you'll walk each chapter with tools and insight, not shame. Because the safest love doesn't ask you to shrink. It invites you to breathe. To soften. To stay. 🛒 For readers of: Set Boundaries, Find Peace, The Body Keeps the Score, Attached, Healing the Nervous System, Stop Walking on Eggshells, and Drama Free 🎯 Ideal Reader: Women aged 25-45 who identify as "too nice," have been in emotionally unavailable or codependent relationships, struggle with anxious or avoidant attachment, or are learning to set boundaries after trauma or abandonment.