Trusting Intuition Over Anxiety
- Karen Di Gloria
- Jan 25
- 3 min read
What Secure Connection Feels Like at a Distance
There’s a moment in healing when the nervous system tells the truth before the mind has a chance to question it.
Not through certainty.
Not through reassurance.
But through calm.
I’m living inside that moment now.
He left for Colorado for ski season, and the first week apart could have followed an old script.
Distance.
Silence.
That familiar tightening in the body that asks, Will this still hold when we’re not right there?
Instead, something else happened.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing that needed to be named or negotiated.
Just continuity.
Our last evening together was beautiful. And then he left.
I noticed the question arise quietly — Will we stay connected? — but my body didn’t brace.
And the answer revealed itself without effort.
The man who once worried about smothering — who tended to hesitate after moments of emotional openness, becoming more conservative with how much he showed — didn’t disappear.
He stayed present.
He texts.
He calls.
He reaches out without overdoing it, and without retreating.
There’s no anxiety driving it.
No performance.
Just connection moving at a pace that feels honest.
What stands out most is what isn’t happening.
There’s no need to validate the bond through longing.
No “I miss you” spoken from sadness.
No ache that needs to be soothed or managed.
Instead, there’s a quiet joy.
We’re in different time zones now. I’m working. He’s traveling. And organically, we find rhythm — pockets of texting about our day, humor woven in, short phone calls that feel intentional rather than obligatory.
At one point he said, simply and warmly,
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
No fear.
No heaviness.
Just presence.
This is where something clicked for me — and it came as a question.
Have you ever felt distance from an intimate partner you lived with, saw every day — yet after doing the deeper work, the childhood work, the trauma work — realized that closeness had never actually been about proximity at all?
That what once felt like anxiety wasn’t intuition warning you of something bad…
but old survival patterns trying to stay alive?
Patterns that weren’t there to protect you anymore —
just looping quietly in the background, draining energy, blurring clarity, tightening the body.
And then, one day, you notice they don’t grip the same way.
They rise — not to alarm you — but to leave.
Because here’s the truth I’m learning now:
You can be at opposite ends of the country and still feel calm, secure, and close.
That’s not luck.
That’s regulation.
This is how I’m learning to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition.
Anxiety narrates.
It scans.
It looks for proof and contingency plans.
Intuition doesn’t rush.
It feels steady.
Unforced.
Quietly responsive to what is, not what might go wrong.
And my body knows the difference now.
At night, the tone softens even more.
Pet names land gently before sleep — warm, familiar, unguarded.
There’s no effort to manufacture closeness.
No need to hold the moment together.
Just closeness.
Last night he sent videos of where they’re staying. Photos of where they ate. We laughed about him getting to enjoy the food I was excited to treat myself to — before work pulled me elsewhere.
Nothing symbolic needed to be extracted.
Just shared life, continuing.
And the last message before sleep was simple and new:
“Love you too, honey bunny.”
Something he’s never called me before.
I smiled — not because it meant something more,
but because it felt something real.
What’s emerging here isn’t intensity.
It’s trust.
The kind that doesn’t need to be tested.
The kind that doesn’t tighten in the presence of space.
The kind that allows two people to live their lives — and stay connected anyway.
This is new for me.
Not because love is new —
but because security is.
Trusting intuition over anxiety doesn’t mean fear never visits.
It means I don’t hand it the microphone.
I listen instead to what my body is telling me:
I feel grounded.
I feel open.
I feel connected without gripping.
That’s not coincidence.
That’s healing.
Distance used to activate vigilance.
Now it reveals something else entirely:
connection that doesn’t collapse when it isn’t constantly fed.
Affection that moves with ease.
Desire that doesn’t panic.
Love that doesn’t confuse closeness with control.
This is the work of secure attachment unfolding in real time.
Not through promises.
Not through constant contact.
But through trust — quiet, embodied, and earned.
When intuition leads and anxiety softens,
love doesn’t disappear in the space between.
It breathes there.
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