by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
The Wounded Inner Child Can Distort the Way that Many Men Relate to Their Own Sexual Power
There’s a pattern that shows up again and again with many of the men that I’ve coached and it’s so common in the general population that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
It usually unfolds like this:
A man feels like something is ‘missing’ inside himself – a kind of low-level emptiness, restlessness, or subtle but persistent sense that something isn’t ‘right’.
This feeling has often followed him around since childhood:
He might not have words for it but it’s definitely there because he can feel its constant presence underneath the surface of all the bravado, ambition, and distractions that he uses to compensate for it.
This is a state of disconnection from the truth about himself and life that the Void:
The Void is paired with an underlying sense of SHAME which is basically the core belief that “something about me isn’t enough” and which creates a powerful inner tension that he constantly tries to outrun (often unconsciously without even realising it).
When a man is driven by this shame he often goes out into the world and tries to fill it by any means necessary.
For a lot of men, his attempts to fill the void lead to unhealthy and unreal relationships with women and that’s exactly what this article is about.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Inner Child & Lust: What We’ll Cover In This Article
- The Wounded Inner Child Can Distort the Way that Many Men Relate to Their Own Sexual Power
- The Wound Beneath the Pattern of Shame and Lust
- Attempting to Fill the Void with the World
- Two Common Expressions of the Pattern
- Projection: Living in a Fantasy
- Lust as a Misguided Search for Wholeness
- The Turning Point: Seeing the Truth
- What Was Missing and What Was Lost
- Re-Parenting: Becoming Your Own Source
- Returning to the Body
- Integration: From Boy to Man
- The Inner Child & Lust: Practical Steps for Implementation
- The Final Word: The Inner Child & Lust
The Wound Beneath the Pattern of Shame and Lust
Let’s be clear about something from the bat:
When we talk about the “wounded inner child” or similar things, we’re not saying there’s literally a child inside you pulling strings like some kind of psychological puppet (which is what a lot of literature around the inner child can make it seem like).
All we are talking about is unfaced emotional reality.
All this means is that – at some point in childhood – something did or didn’t happen – that disrupted your connection to your natural state of wholeness.
It could have been anything but most commonly it’s things like:
- A lack of emotional validation.
- Conditional love.
- Rejection or abandonment.
- Being shamed for expressing your real self.
- Emotional neglect that was subtle but chronic (death by a thousand cuts).
The specifics don’t matter as much as the outcome which is usually as follows:
You learned, at some level, that it wasn’t safe to be fully yourself so you adapted and became split off from yourself (i.e. you became FRAGMENTED instead of WHOLE).
When this kind of thing happens a very real part of you stayed buried and holds on to the emotional residue of those experiences whereas another part of you forms an identity to survive in the world (your ego and its self-image).
This split is what creates the feeling of being a boy in a man’s body which means that, outwardly, somebody may look like a man but inwardly, there’s fragmentation – i.e. a gap between who you (really) and who you’re being (when wearing the mask of ego).
That gap is just the Void and the shame that sits on top of it is simply a signal of that disconnection from from your REALNESS.
Attempting to Fill the Void with the World
Here’s where things start to go ‘wrong’ for a lot of men:
They don’t realise that the only way out of the Void is through themselves which means through facing reality, integrating emotion, and returning to wholeness.
Instead, they look outward and attempt to find something in the world to fill what feels empty inside.
What this usually means is they find a ‘good’ thing in the world and attempt to treat it as the ULTIMATE thing (when the only real ‘ultimate’ is your relationship with life itself).
One of the most common “ultimate things” that many men with a wounded inner child turn to is female validation – not because women are the problem (far from it) but because women become the mirror onto which a man projects everything he hasn’t given himself.
For example, he starts to believe:
- “If she chooses me, I’m worthy”.
- “If she desires me, I’m enough”.
- “If she accepts me, I can finally relax”.
- Etc. etc. etc.
This never gets him anywhere in the long-run because what he doesn’t see is that he’s outsourcing something that can only ever come from within.
Two Common Expressions of the Pattern
This dynamic tends to show up in two main ways (that nearly all men have experienced at some stage in their lives):
1. Toxic and Co-Dependent Relationships
Some men latch onto relationships where there are occasional moments of emotional “reward” like brief flashes of connection, intimacy, or validation.
These moments feel powerful because they touch something deeper and momentarily soothe the Void by releasing the TENSION of living in it.
This being the case, the man stays even when the relationship is unhealthy or when his needs aren’t consistently met and it’s clearly not aligned with his purpose and who he actually wants to be in life.
The reason he stays isn’t because it’s actually REAL but because he becomes hooked on the intermittent reinforcement of unpredictable hits of “acceptance”.
In short:
It’s not love he’s addicted to – it’s relief from shame and so years can pass in cycles of hope, disappointment, and emotional dependency.
2. Addictive Sexual Behaviour and Constant Novelty
Other men go down a different path which is still rooted in the same fundamental problem (a wounded inner child leading to life in the Void and the shame of disconnection):
Instead of attaching to one woman, they chase many.
This usually shows up as becoming addicted to:
- Dating apps.
- Pornography.
- Casual encounters.
- The thrill of novelty.
- Etc. etc. etc.
Each new interaction provides a short-term spike of RELEASE from that TENSION of being unreal and provides temporary escape from the underlying discomfort of the Void.
For a moment, they feel wanted and maybe even powerful. and so – for at least a few seconds – the Void seems to disappear.
But it always comes back and so they need more and then more all over again:
More novelty, more stimulation, more validation – it becomes a loop and like all loops rooted in resistance of reality, it slowly drains their life force.
If they continue to live like this, time passes, energy is wasted, and opportunities are missed and so, eventually, a whole new layer is added in the form of REGRET:
“I should be further ahead.”
“I’ve wasted years of my life”.
“What’s wrong with me?”
This only deepens the shame and makes the need to run away from the Void even more intense.
Projection: Living in a Fantasy
At the core of all this is one key mechanism that keeps the men stuck in a kind of frozen where nothing ever really changes:
What this means is that man who hasn’t integrated his own capacity for self-acceptance will project it onto women.
For example, maybe he experiences a feeling of warmth, acceptance, and validation in their presence and assumes it’s coming from them but what’s actually happening is this::
They are ACTIVATING something within him that already exists but which has been hidden in the shadow self behind the ego.
They’re triggering a part of his own psyche that he’s disconnected from (because of his wounded inner child) but because he doesn’t recognise it as his own, he attributes it to them.
This is why it feels so real and why it’s so addictive.
He doesn’t realise he’s projecting and so he starts to think things like:
“I need her to feel this way”.
When the actual truth is that:
“That feeling is mine but I’ve just outsourced access to it”.
This is how men end up living in a kind of fantasy – not necessarily in the obvious sense of being delusional or whatever but in a subtle, psychological one where they relate not to women as they are, but to what those women represent.
The relationship is never fully real because he’s not fully there.
Lust as a Misguided Search for Wholeness
Lust, in this context, isn’t just about sex but about about the compulsive seeking of something outside yourself to complete what feels incomplete within.
It’s energy that’s become misguided and misdirected.
At its core, it’s a distorted attempt to return to wholeness but instead of going inward – where the REAL work happens – it ends up going outward into endless seeking.
Because the external can never truly resolve the internal, the cycle continues, and the man always feels the Void and a need to try and outrun it (which is impossible because he IS the void).
The Turning Point: Seeing the Truth
The way forward begins with a simple but potentially uncomfortable realisation:
The shame you feel is not proof that you’re broken but a signal that something within you hasn’t been faced.
What this means is that your shame is pointing you back to yourself – not as a punishment but as an invitation to stop projecting and become PRESENT instead.
It’s also an invitation to stop trying to escape yourself and to come back home to reality because finding your REALNESS is the only place where anything actually changes.
What Was Missing and What Was Lost
To move forward, you have to be willing to look back – not to blame or to dwell and become a victim but to understand.
You can start by sitting and asking yourself some questions that will help you to start facing your childhood as a man:
- What didn’t I receive that I needed?
- Where did I learn it wasn’t safe to be myself?
- What parts of me did I suppress to belong or survive?
This isn’t about creating a victim identity (far from it) but about the opposite which is to reclaim responsibility for your own relationship with yourself and your life because once you see what was missing, you can begin to provide it for yourself.
Re-Parenting: Becoming Your Own Source
If you lacked validation, for example, then you need to step up and become your own champion – not in a delusional, ego-driven way with empty affirmations or by pretending everything is perfect when it isn’t but in a grounded, real way.
You can do this by:
- Acknowledging your efforts.
- Recognising your growth.
- Holding yourself to a standard without tearing yourself down.
- Etc. etc. etc.
When you do this kind of thing, you stop outsourcing your worth and start generating it from reality in the form of action and alignment.
Returning to the Body
Another crucial piece is embodiment which I like to define as “accepting the truth of something at the level of the body”.
Many men stuck in this “wounded inner child leading to the void and filling it with lust” pattern live almost entirely in their heads by overthinking, fantasising, and projecting.
This is ‘bad’ news because disconnection from the body reinforces disconnection from reality and so the ‘work’ is to come back into sensation and presence.
There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to do this but it can look like:
- Strength training
- Yoga (power yoga and yin yoga have helped me loads)
- Breathwork
- Cold exposure
- Walking without distractions
- Actually feeling emotions instead of analysing them
Embodiment grounds you and starts to bring you out of the illusion of the void and into direct experience so you can actually integrate.
Integration: From Boy to Man
Having said all this, then, the goal isn’t to “get rid” of the wounded parts of yourself but to integrate them by facing what you’ve traditionally avoided about reality, feeling your feelings instead of supressing them, and bringing those fragmented parts back into the whole.
This is what transforms a boy into a man – not age, status, or how many women you’ve slept with but actual integration of the self back into the self.
At the end of the day, a man who is integrated doesn’t need to chase validation or need to try and extract something from women because he’s actually equipped to meet them in reality where he can relate and connect in an authentic way.
He doesn’t come from lack and scarcity but from fullness and abundance.
Check out my book Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World if you want to go deeper into facing the shadow and finding self-acceptance.
The Inner Child & Lust: Practical Steps for Implementation
If you recognise yourself in all of this then here are some places to start taking action:
1. Interrupt the Pattern
Become aware of when you’re seeking validation mindlessly and on autopilot.
For example:
- Scrolling dating apps mindlessly
- Fantasising about women to escape discomfort
- Staying in misaligned relationships
- Getting lost in cycles of empty sexual depletion
If you catch yourself in this loop then ask yourself:
“What am I actually feeling right now?“
Don’t bypass it but actually face it so you can leave the loop and get REAL.
2. Name the Emotion Beneath the Behaviour
Lust is often a surface emotion and so if you dig underneath it you might find:
- Loneliness
- Inadequacy
- Rejection
- Fear
- Etc.
Get specific but find out what you’re actually feeling so you can use the truth to start dissolving your distortions.
3. Give Yourself What Was Missing
If you needed validation:
- Acknowledge your own efforts daily
If you needed safety:
- Create routines that ground you
If you needed expression:
- Start speaking honestly, even in small ways
Become the source of whatever is getting activated by the women you’re projecting onto because you ARE the source – it’s already within you but you haven’t owned it yet.
4. Reduce the Noise
It goes without saying really but a good strategy is to cut down on or eliminate behaviours that reinforce the loop:
- Excessive porn
- Endless swiping
- Chasing short-term validation
- Etc. etc.
You’re not doing this as a punishment but as a way of making space so you actually face yourself and life and return to the flow.
5. Reframe How You See Women
Stop seeing women as solutions to your unresolved emotional problems and start seeing them as people (wow, what a wild concept!).
You don’t need them to complete you but you need to meet them as you are because that’s what will really determine the quality of the connection.
(Of course, you can still have a great connection if a relationship is just based around sex but if you’re trying to fill the Void and not actually showing up then you’ve fallen into the pattern we’ve been exploring).
The Final Word: The Inner Child & Lust
The truth is simple but not always easy to accept:
You can’t fill the Void by chasing something outside yourself because the Void isn’t an absence of something external – it’s a disconnection from what’s already within you in your REALNESS.
The moment you stop running and you turn and face yourself and life fully is the moment things begin to shift – not instantly or magically but actually.
When you stop chasing, you can start living as the actual man you are and not the autopilot of the child you used to be.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to start growing real and integrating your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you get in the flow.
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