I agree wholeheartedly, Bevin. I've been doing that deep work for decades. The challenge I have has been to have to re-erect those damned walls after someone I allowed myself to be vulnerable to to rip the shit out of my heart. The hardest possible work is the inner work, and I've spent many years doing just that. If I hadn't I wouldn't want a partner to be willing to do the same because I'd have no reference point nor any idea of what such a thing even looked like or felt like. I do. Intimately. Which is why, when the last BF showed up yet again using all the right language around that very thing, I acquiesced. He knows how to sound as though he's done the inner work. I would have loved to have had him help me carry some of the load when it got heavy. I DID ask. He ran full tilt in the other direction but before he did he made sure I knew that even asking such a thing was a Major Imposition. Sigh.