Why Do Men Hurt The Women Who Love Them Most? - Chanakya Niti on Mother Wound
Riya Kumari | Sept 07, 2026, 01:28 IST
Chanakya Niti
Image credit : Ai
How does a man who just wants to be loved - who spends his entire life craving warmth, tenderness and the feeling of finally being someone’s safe place, become the very person who throws it all away? And why, when he finally finds a woman who loves him deeply, does he start doing the very things that slowly make her question her worth, her beauty, her sanity, and eventually whether she should stay at all?
Maybe because somewhere inside him, love never became synonymous with safety. It became synonymous with risk. And until he understands why, he can spend his entire life repeating the same story with different women.
When he was a child, his mother may have been emotionally unavailable for whatever reasons life had placed on her. Maybe she didn't give him enough warmth, attention or affection. Maybe his emotions irritated her. Maybe crying, vulnerability or needing comfort was punished, dismissed or made to feel like a burden. And the child doesn't understand circumstances. He only understands patterns.
So he learns something devastating:
When I show my feelings, I can get hurt.
When I need someone, they can leave.
When I love too much, I get punished.
But the tragedy is that the child doesn't stop needing love. He just becomes afraid of the thing he needs most. So he grows up craving intimacy while simultaneously running from it. And this is where the self-sabotage begins. He gets close. He feels safe. He starts receiving the warmth he has secretly wanted his entire life. And then something inside him panics. He pulls away. He becomes cold. He creates distance. He does things that damage the very relationship he desperately wanted. Not because he doesn't want love. Because some wounded part of him still believes that love eventually becomes abandonment.
Sometimes the child had to grow up far too early. Maybe the family situation forced him to take care of himself. Maybe he had to emotionally take care of his mother instead of being taken care of by her. Maybe there was no one he could simply collapse into and say, “I'm scared. Take care of me.” So childhood ended before it was supposed to. And that little boy never stopped existing. He just got buried underneath the man. This is why he may find himself intensely drawn to women with a soft, innocent, almost childlike warmth. Something about her feels nurturing. Safe. Gentle.
She carries the kind of emotional warmth he spent his childhood looking for. She makes him feel like the little boy inside him can finally rest. But there is a cruel contradiction. The same qualities that attract him to her can eventually make him angry at her. Because somewhere in his subconscious, her warmth starts touching the exact wound he has spent his life avoiding. She reminds him of what he didn't receive. And instead of knowing how to grieve that pain, he may punish the person who accidentally brings it to the surface.
When he needed someone as a child, maybe nobody came. So he learned very early that depending on people was dangerous. He became fiercely independent. He learned to handle his own pain, solve his own problems and need as little from anyone as possible. But underneath that independence, there is often a much more fragile belief: “I will be alone anyway.” So when someone finally gets close, he starts preparing for the ending before it has even happened.
He pulls away. He becomes distant. He pushes people out. He convinces himself he doesn't need them. Because if they leave first, he will be hurt. But if he leaves first, at least he gets to feel in control. And this is how his deepest fear keeps becoming reality. He pushes away the person who actually wanted to stay, until she eventually has no choice but to leave. And then something inside him says, “I knew it. Everyone leaves.” He doesn't realize that, while trying to protect himself from abandonment, he has been recreating it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The answer isn't finding the perfect woman. It isn't finding someone patient enough to tolerate every wound he refuses to face. And it isn't making another woman prove, again and again, that she won't leave. The cycle ends when he finally turns toward the little boy inside him. When he acknowledges the pain. When he understands that his parents may have failed to give him what he needed, not necessarily because he wasn't worthy of it, but because they were dealing with their own limitations, circumstances and wounds.
He has to forgive without pretending it didn't hurt. He has to grieve what he didn't receive. And most importantly, he has to teach himself something his childhood never allowed him to believe: You don't have to be alone to be safe. You can trust someone. You can need someone. You can be vulnerable. You can love someone without preparing yourself for abandonment. Because love does not have to end in rejection. Warmth does not have to be followed by punishment. And being loved does not have to mean eventually being left. Until that truth becomes something he believes not just intellectually, but somewhere deep inside him, he will keep mistaking familiar pain for safety and destroying the very love he spent his entire life looking for.
When Love Becomes Something To Fear
So he learns something devastating:
When I show my feelings, I can get hurt.
When I need someone, they can leave.
When I love too much, I get punished.
But the tragedy is that the child doesn't stop needing love. He just becomes afraid of the thing he needs most. So he grows up craving intimacy while simultaneously running from it. And this is where the self-sabotage begins. He gets close. He feels safe. He starts receiving the warmth he has secretly wanted his entire life. And then something inside him panics. He pulls away. He becomes cold. He creates distance. He does things that damage the very relationship he desperately wanted. Not because he doesn't want love. Because some wounded part of him still believes that love eventually becomes abandonment.
The Woman Who Feels Like The Childhood He Never Got
She carries the kind of emotional warmth he spent his childhood looking for. She makes him feel like the little boy inside him can finally rest. But there is a cruel contradiction. The same qualities that attract him to her can eventually make him angry at her. Because somewhere in his subconscious, her warmth starts touching the exact wound he has spent his life avoiding. She reminds him of what he didn't receive. And instead of knowing how to grieve that pain, he may punish the person who accidentally brings it to the surface.
When No One Came To Save Him, He Learned To Leave First
He pulls away. He becomes distant. He pushes people out. He convinces himself he doesn't need them. Because if they leave first, he will be hurt. But if he leaves first, at least he gets to feel in control. And this is how his deepest fear keeps becoming reality. He pushes away the person who actually wanted to stay, until she eventually has no choice but to leave. And then something inside him says, “I knew it. Everyone leaves.” He doesn't realize that, while trying to protect himself from abandonment, he has been recreating it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The Cycle Ends When He Learns That Love Does Not Abandon Him
He has to forgive without pretending it didn't hurt. He has to grieve what he didn't receive. And most importantly, he has to teach himself something his childhood never allowed him to believe: You don't have to be alone to be safe. You can trust someone. You can need someone. You can be vulnerable. You can love someone without preparing yourself for abandonment. Because love does not have to end in rejection. Warmth does not have to be followed by punishment. And being loved does not have to mean eventually being left. Until that truth becomes something he believes not just intellectually, but somewhere deep inside him, he will keep mistaking familiar pain for safety and destroying the very love he spent his entire life looking for.