Mohamed Rima

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Australia
Liverpool, NSW
Mohamed Rima

Relationship Education I don't provide counselling via messages. No social media posts should be considered personalised professional advice.

Social Media Disclaimer: This page and posts are not therapy or a replacement for a professional counselling relationship or mental health care. This is not a crisis service. If you're in a crisis call Lifeline on 131114 or 000 for emergencies.

06/06/2026

Daily choosing...

Choosing each other daily looks like the small things... the tone you soften, the apology you offer first, the patience you practice when you’re tired, the message you send to stay connected, the quality time while holding hands and saying nothing, the effort you make even when no one is watching. It’s the quiet decisions that protect the bond, not the big moments that get remembered.

This is what commitment actually looks like.

02/06/2026

There are moments in a marriage where the attachment between two people gets shaken. When attachment gets threatened, insecurity shows up. This happens when the bond stops feeling safe.

One of the most common ways this happens is through breakup threats every time there's conflict.
“Maybe we should break up.”
“I don’t know if this is working.”
Often said in a moment of overwhelm, shame, or feeling like a failure. Even if it's not meant literally, it still hits the nervous system like abandonment. It teaches the other person that love can be withdrawn when things get hard. That’s an attachment injury.

Another way is threatening divorce.
"If you do this or don't do that, I will divorce you."
This isn’t communication. It’s fear‑based control. It activates survival mode. It creates compliance, not closeness. It’s a form of coercive control because it uses fear of loss to get behaviour, instead of using vulnerability to build connection.

Another way is when a partner compares you to someone else.
An ex. A friend. A friend's partner. A stranger. A fictional standard. Comparison is a quiet form of rejection. It tells your attachment system, “You’re not enough as you are.” It creates insecurity where safety should be.

There are quieter ways attachment gets shaken too.

Withdrawing affection as a way to express anger or punishment.
Not communicating the hurt, just pulling away. The distance becomes the message. The partner starts chasing, over‑functioning, trying to earn their way back into closeness. It turns love into something conditional.

Emotional unpredictability.
Warm, then cold. Present, then shut down. Engaged, then unreachable. The inconsistency keeps the nervous system on alert. You start scanning for cues, trying to prevent the next emotional drop. This is how attachment anxiety gets reinforced without a single word being spoken.

All of these behaviours that threaten attachment have consequences.
They erode trust.
They create hypervigilance.
They make you question your worth.
They turn the relationship into a place of performance instead of rest.

Attachment doesn’t break in one moment, it breaks in patterns. And the harm isn’t just emotional. It becomes physical: tension in your body, anxiety, shutdown, overthinking, exhaustion, weakened immune system, illnesses. The body keeps score of every moment love felt unsafe.

Healthy relationships don’t use fear to get closeness. They don’t weaponise separation. They don’t make you earn your place.

They repair.
They communicate.
They take responsibility for the impact of their behaviour.

Attachment grows where safety lives. And safety grows where love isn’t threatened.

The injured partner can't just simply “get over it.” Attachment injuries require more than time or positive thinking. They need repair. They need consistency. They need the nervous system to experience safety again in the same place it was once shaken. An attachment injury is a break in the bond, not a misunderstanding. It changes how the body reads the relationship. It changes how the mind anticipates closeness. It changes what love feels like.

You can’t heal that by pretending it didn’t happen. You can’t heal it by minimising it. You can’t heal it by rushing forgiveness. The injured partner needs the relationship to become a place where their system can settle again. That means accountability, attunement, and a partner who understands the impact of their behaviour, not someone who expects the injury to disappear because they’ve moved on.

Attachment injuries heal through repair and consistency, not pressure or dismissal. They heal when the person who caused the harm becomes safe enough to trust again. They heal when the relationship stops repeating the pattern that created the wound in the first place.

31/05/2026

Because the bars and invisible chains are psychological, not physical. It’s the slow erosion of basic freedom through fear, monitoring, guilt, and consequences that train you to stay small. When the control is invisible, the impact is not.

29/05/2026

Dates are officially locked in.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work workshop will be held on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th of July, 10am–4pm.

This is a full two‑day experience for couples who want to reconnect, understand each other more deeply, and learn the skills that make relationships stronger and safer. Also suitable for engaged couples.

Spots are very limited. If you want to join me in July, see the link in the comments.

26/05/2026

You can't build a relationship when one partner is constantly destroying it while the other is constantly trying to survive it.

23/05/2026

A sadistic person can never be a good partner. Marriage is built on two people caring for each other, not one person taking pleasure in your suffering.

When someone enjoys your pain, even subtly, the foundation of safety is already gone. And without safety, there is no love, no mercy, no partnership, only power and abuse.

Choose the person who softens when you hurt, not the one who smirks.

**sm

20/05/2026

When an abuser realises they can’t control you anymore, the control doesn’t stop, it simply changes direction. Instead of controlling you, they begin controlling what other people think of you. This shift is predictable in narcissistic systems. The moment you stop being emotionally available, compliant, or afraid, they move to the next layer of power: your community, your family, your friends, your reputation.

During the relationship, this often starts quietly. They curate a version of themselves that looks patient, pious, supportive, long‑suffering. They plant small seeds about you in the minds of the people closest to you. Nothing dramatic... just subtle comments that create doubt. “She’s sensitive.” “He’s difficult.” “We’re having issues because they’re not themselves lately.” These are early forms of image management, designed to make sure that if you ever speak up, people already have a pre‑loaded narrative about you.

This is psychological positioning. They’re building a safety net for themselves long before you even realise you’ll need one.

After separation or divorce, the behaviour escalates. The curated image becomes a full‑blown smear campaign. They rewrite the story so they’re the victim and you’re the unstable one, the cruel one, the ungrateful one. They tell half‑truths, exaggerations, or outright lies, whatever protects their ego and keeps them in the role of the wronged party.

The psychology behind this is that narcissistic personalities can't tolerate losing control, losing admiration, or losing the narrative. When you leave, you take away their supply. When you heal, you take away their power. When you tell the truth, you expose the gap between their public persona and their private behaviour. So they rush to fill that gap with their version of events before you can speak.

It’s not about you. It’s about protecting their identity. Their ego depends on being seen as good, innocent, admirable, or morally superior. If they sense that image cracking, they panic. And that panic turns into character assassination.

Setting boundaries in this phase isn’t about convincing people of the truth. It’s about protecting your nervous system. You don’t need to defend yourself to every person they recruit. You don’t need to correct every lie. You don’t need to chase down every rumour. Boundaries here look like emotional detachment, selective communication, and refusing to participate in the drama they’re trying to pull you into.

A boundary can be as simple as:
“I’m not discussing this.”
“I won’t defend myself against stories.”
“People who need the truth will see it in time.”
“I’m focusing on rebuilding my life.”

The people who matter will notice the difference between performance and character. The people who want the truth will find it. And the people who believe the smear campaign were never safe people to begin with.

When an abuser can’t control you, they control the narrative. They control what other people think of you. When you stop feeding the narrative, it collapses.

Does this resonate with you - losing family and friends when you left the abuser?

18/05/2026

Do you only use s*x to calm yourself down?
Do you only reach for s*x when you’re stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, or disconnected?
Do you completely shut down, become dysregulated, punish with silence, and feel highly irritated or rejected when your partner isn’t available, not because you want closeness, but because you need the release to feel regulated again?

A lot of men in our culture were never taught emotional regulation. They were taught to perform, to push through, to avoid, to "man up." So ej*******ng becomes the fastest way to shut off discomfort. Not intimacy. Not connection. Regulation.

S*x becomes the place where stress gets numbed, shame gets silenced, low self-worth gets validation, and uncomfortable emotions get pushed away. It becomes a coping mechanism. A way to manage your internal world through someone else’s body.

When s*x is used this way by avoidant men, the partner stops being a person and becomes a tool. A soothing object. A way to escape feelings you don’t know how to sit with. This is a form of maladaptive coping, it works in the moment, but it damages the relationship over time.

Your partner can feel it. They can feel when s*x is connection… and when s*x is a one-sided escape. They can feel when they’re being met… and when they’re being used. The partner ends up not having s*x, only taking s*x.

The pattern often escalates. When s*x becomes the only way you know how to regulate yourself, you start seeking it anywhere you can get it. This is where cheating, p**n addiction, and paying for s*x enter the picture. Not because the man is seeking intimacy, but because he’s seeking relief. He’s seeking a nervous‑system off‑switch.

Cheating in this context isn’t about desire or high libido. It’s about dysregulation. It’s about escape. It’s about avoiding feelings you don’t know how to process.

Paying for s*x and p**n become appealing because it removes emotional responsibility. There’s no vulnerability, no intimacy, no need to show up as a partner. It’s pure one-sided regulation. A transaction that temporarily numbs whatever is happening inside.

But the relief never lasts because the underlying feelings never get processed. They get outsourced.

And the partner at home ends up carrying the emotional weight. They feel pressured, drained, objectified, or responsible for your emotional stability. Over time, this kills intimacy because the s*xual connection stops being mutual. It becomes a nervous‑system transaction.

When s*x is used to escape feelings, it cannot create closeness. It cannot build trust. It cannot deepen connection. It cannot replace emotional presence.

It becomes a cycle:
uncomfortable feelings → s*x → temporary relief → feelings return → s*x again → eventually cheating or paying for s*x when the partner can’t meet the demand.

This isn’t intimacy. This isn't high s*x drive. This is avoidance.

And avoidance always grows into resentment, loneliness, and emotional distance, both inside the man and inside the relationship.

If this pattern feels familiar, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you were never taught emotional regulation. You were never taught how to feel your feelings without outsourcing them. You were never taught how to soothe your own nervous system without reaching for someone else’s body.

Awareness is the first step. Learning to regulate yourself is the work. And shifting s*x from escape to connection is what transforms the relationship.

*xeducati̇on

16/05/2026

Expressions of Interest Open - Limited Spots

I’ll be running The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work workshop again soon, and I’m opening expressions of interest aiming for July/August.

This will be a 2‑day, in‑person weekend workshop designed for engaged or married couples who want to strengthen their connection, understand each other more deeply, and build a marriage that feels safe, respectful, and genuinely enjoyable to be in.

Every time I teach this material, I’m reminded how much relief people feel when they finally have a framework that makes sense, something practical, research‑backed, and grounded in real human behaviour and my own professional experience, not clichés or unrealistic expectations.

Across the two days, we’ll work through:

- How to build and deepen friendship and emotional intimacy
- How to communicate without escalating into conflict
- How to repair after misunderstandings
- How to create shared meaning and a sense of “us”
- How to protect the marriage from the small habits that quietly erode connection

It’s not therapy. It’s education, tools, and guided practical exercises that couples can take home and keep using long after the workshop ends.

Looking forward to supporting the next group of couples who are ready to invest in their marriage and in each other.

Read if it's suitable for you before applying. Or ask me questions here.
Limited spots.
Link to express interest or read more in the comments.

Address

Liverpool, NSW

Website

https://mrcounselling.com.au/

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