The Femme Cast
Welcome to The Femme Cast—the podcast for women who are truly ready to break free from toxic relationship cycles, choose themselves, and become a magnet for the love they deserve.
I’m Maria — Master Energy Healer, Radical Self-Love Leader, and Relationship Mentor.
I work with the women who are cycle breakers, grid shakers, and truth layers — the brave souls who came here to dismantle the inherited beliefs that told them they had to chase love, prove their worth, and beg to be chosen.
I help them break free from the karmic cycles and generational patterns that keep them stuck in toxic relationships and self-abandonment — so they can unapologetically choose themselves, reclaim their inherent worth, and become magnetic to soul-aligned love, expansive opportunities, and the liberated life they were born to lead.
Without ever shrinking, settling, or self-abandoning again.
I’ve been where you are, stuck in cycles of chasing love, begging to be chosen, and abandoning myself again and again in the name of love. But I turned my pain into purpose, and now I’m here to help you do the same.
Each week, I share personal stories, actionable insights, and a blend of spiritual and practical tools to help you heal from past wounds, reclaim your self-worth, and rewrite your love story. You’ll hear everything from vulnerable truths about my own journey to breaking toxic patterns to empowering lessons that will guide you toward creating the healthy, loving relationships you crave.
Join me as we say goodbye to self-abandonment, people-pleasing, and unhealthy dynamics, and hello to radical self-love, emotional freedom, and true empowerment.
It’s time to reclaim the version of you who never had to beg to be chosen.
You ready?
Let’s do this.
The Femme Cast
Why You Keep Chasing People Who Won’t Choose You — And How to Finally Break Free
Why do we keep chasing people who don’t choose us — even when we know better?
In this powerful, soul-baring episode of The Femme Cast, I break down the emotional addiction behind chasing emotionally unavailable partners — and why breaking free from this cycle feels so hard. Drawing from my own experience during a 7-year relationship hiatus, I share how I treated chasing like an addiction… and how this one shift changed everything.
This episode is for the woman who’s tired of begging, convincing, or shrinking herself to be chosen — and is ready to choose herself instead.
Inside, we dive into:
- The emotional voids we try to fill through unavailable partners
- The two questions that helped me stop chasing and start healing
- Why chasing others only makes them run — and what actually makes you magnetic
- The difference between codependent needs vs. healthy relationship desires
- The runner-chaser dynamic and how it’s playing out in your texts, your thoughts, and your energy
- The raw, messy truth about how I stopped outsourcing my worth to men who couldn’t meet me
We also explore what it really means to become the center of your own life — not in a selfish way, but in a self-honoring way. This is the work that helped me call back the parts of myself I had abandoned for love that wasn’t real, and finally make space for love that truly is.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in the loop of performing, proving, and overgiving — this episode is your mirror, your permission slip, and your first step out.
🎧 Listen now to reclaim your energy, shift the dynamic, and attract love that chooses you without the chase.
Ready to stop abandoning yourself for love? To finally rise from the wreckage of betrayal and become the woman you were born to be?
The Sacred Reclamation Series: Betrayal Edition starts July 21st right here on The Femme Cast.
5 soul-stirring podcast episodes + a FREE live healing + activation on July 29th @ 8PM EST
This is your sign.
This is your turning point.
Claim your seat now at the FREE live healing + activation now.
https://thefemmecast.kit.com/masterclass
Hey guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I am so excited and grateful to have you guys back. It is getting loud outside. I have been recording on a national holiday and there's like festivals happening, just like on the main road outside of where I live. So we're going to try and get through this video as best we can, or podcast as best we can. So we're going to try and get through this video as best we can or podcast as best we can, but you may hear some noise in the background and it's nothing that I can help and it just it is what it is. This is where I live. Take it or leave it. One day I will have a studio. Mark my words, I will have a fucking studio. But until then, we have to just make this work. You guys, we just have to just make this work, you guys, we just have to. Okay.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So one of you guys and I love you reached out to me recently and said you know, you listened to one of the recent episodes and you were like, actually, you know what? Hang on, let me just pull up the message rather than trying to paraphrase it, and I won't read the whole thing, obviously. I'll just read one of the questions, or the main question, which was I love when I scramble at the last minute. Oh so I've been in this constant pattern of constantly choosing or no, sorry, I've been in this constant pattern of constantly chasing men who don't choose me. I'm trying to choose myself, but it's hard and I always end up reverting back into chasing. Um, it feels very uncomfortable. How do you make the stop? And I skipped a little bit, some little bits in the beginning, but are in the middle. So, yes, it is very uncomfortable to break the cycle of chasing and convincing and begging others to choose you. It is very uncomfortable because, you know again, you have to treat it like an addiction. When you're chasing them, you're soothing something. Them, you're soothing something.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:There's something that you're that within yourself, that you're that you're getting to avoid or not look at or numb or distract yourself from right. It's like the same, it's like the same thing. You know, every time you reach for the chocolate cake, what are you avoiding or trying to fill within yourself? Every time, you, you know, you, you know, you take out your phone and you start, um, like you know, filling up all your carts on all the online shopping apps that you have. You know, what is it that you're avoiding every time that you're binge watching, like stuff on Netflix that you don't even really like, that you don't not really into, just because you need something to watch.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, you have to ask yourself, ask yourself, you know, what is it that you're trying to avoid? Right, and this can go like even you know deeper or more dangerous into, like, you know, drinking alcohol, drugs, any, any kind of addiction, any kind of addiction. There is a codependency there that either a pain that you're trying to avoid or distract yourself from, or numb or not feel or not acknowledge, or something that you're trying to feel, that you can't feel otherwise A joy, intimacy, connection, confidence, empowered. You know, whatever it is, either you're avoiding something that you are feeling or you're trying to feel something that you aren't and you've made it an external. You've made this external thing your source for either that relief or cultivating that emotion. Right, and ultimately, what we need to do is we need to become, we need to become more centered in ourselves and in our power to really experience and cultivate the emotions that we want to cultivate and experience the things that we want to experience. We have to be. You know, we have to be centrally guided and led. If we constantly outsource our power like this, you know, whether it be in relationship or sex or shopping or whatever, when we constantly outsource our power like this to make us feel something that we want to feel or avoid feeling something that we don't, we're in an addictive pattern, right?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And this is the non-psychologist person explaining this. By all means, talk to a psychologist about this and get this information verified, because I'm sure they'll be able to explain it in much better terms than I have, but that's how I kind of sum it up, right? Like, that's how I kind of sum it up, right? So, when we talk about breaking the pattern because I'll tell you, like you know, breaking the pattern of chasing and begging and convincing people to love me and just focusing on choosing myself and making myself the priority and becoming self-centered, not in the way the term is used, but instead of, like you know, making men or relationship the central focus of my life I made myself the central focus of my life. So that's what I mean when I say self-centered.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So, making myself more self-centered and choosing myself and, you know, cultivating a life that I would enjoy for me, um, and letting go of the chasing, the convincing and the begging other people to love me, to choose me, to want to be with me, to stay with me. That was a messy fucking process. That was so messy, that was a, that was like a, that was such a hot mess, like, honestly, but it was worth it. It was worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat. And you know it takes practice, yes, but it's not impossible, and the healing that I went through and that I experienced and you know doing, you know practicing and emotional energetics and doing the sacred soul reclamation, you know alchemy that we do, you know that helped me tremendously because you know, in calling back all these soul fragments of myself that I was avoiding, that I was ignoring, that you know, I, I didn't want to process or move through and I, I, I didn't know how to give them what they needed, um, all these beautiful parts of myself.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:As I started to call all these parts back, one by one, and started to move through the emotional experience that they'd been stuck in and acknowledge it and validate it from like, basically, for myself, validate it for myself and start to cultivate the energy and the experience that they would have wanted. Meaning me, you know that kind of made the process easier, right? Because now there's you know, as you heal each one of these fragments there's less and less of yourself to run away from and there's less and less reason for you to go running to somebody else who's not going to treat you well in order to cultivate a feeling inside of you because you know full well you can do it for yourself. So why settle? Why? Right? But I think you know the biggest takeaway, I think, in that experience, and I think that you know, if you're somebody who's moving through, trying to break away from chasing or settling for or convincing people to love and to choose you, who are emotionally unavailable or emotionally void and who can't give you the love that you're really looking for, the key in all of this is really and this is what really began that pivotal shift for me, and I remember the first time I started doing this was when I broke up with my last boyfriend, who he moved to Europe after we had split up and I remember for the longest time and we had remained friends because he was actually not he, I.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I put him in the douchebag diaries, but I was pretty clear, like he was not a douchebag, like there was a lot of love there, but life just took us in two very different directions. And that's not to say that direct, that that that the relationship itself wasn't toxic or had imbalances. It totally did, Um, but it was probably one of the more loving relationships I had had up until that point. And so I knew when that ended um, number one, I had raised the bar from what I was used to and from some of my other relationships. But also in raising the bar, I realized, yeah, I raised it, but there was still a monster of a gap. And to get to where I wanted to get to, um, in terms of the kinds of relationships that I wanted to call in. And so when I ended that relation or that went, yeah, sorry, hit the mic.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:When I ended that relationship, um, you know he had left, but we kind of kept in contact and then at one point I just said that's it, I'm done, I can't, I can't keep doing this anymore. Like you're there, I'm here, we're living separate lives, we just need to like, let that be. And so when I ended that relationship and it was a very codependent relationship, like I said, there was still a lot of imbalances. So we were still relying on each other to feel certain things, to believe certain things, to avoid things we were trying to avoid in ourselves. So when that ended and I can remember, even leading up to that period, ending like he was always like you need to start dating, you need to get out there, and I was saying no, I don't want to start, I don't want to start dating. This is the beginning of my like full on relationship hiatus.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:This is when I went like cold Turkey, didn't date anybody for like seven years, like not even like one date, um, for like seven years. So, um, this was like I went cold Turkey and I was like nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And then when we ended, um, I was like that's it, I'm, I don't want to date, I don't. I didn't put myself on any of the apps, I didn't get out, I didn't meet people, like I went out, but I didn't like go out to meet people. You know, it was just I needed to be on my own and every time, every time, I felt the urge to get online.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Or, you know, if I saw a guy that I thought was cute and I thought I wanted to get his attention, or if I felt lonely, or if I felt like I remember there was a few people at work at the time that I was kind of into and I would I would, you know kind of look at and want to. You know, I would almost want to go back to that whole chasing behavior, the, the, you know, trying to impress them or perform or trying, and I would always look at that, right, and I would try and stop myself. And it's actually, you know, what it's actually better to do when you're actually out there and dating. I actually think that I did this. Now that I think about it, I was actually doing it in that relationship where I had, you know, before he left, before we were together for a year before he left to go overseas, and I think, through that entire relationship, I was doing that actually. Now that I think back where, every time I felt like I needed him or every time I felt like because I said there were still toxicities and imbalances there, so every time I felt like he would pull away and I would feel like I would want to chase, I would look at that Every time we had had a fight and I felt like I needed to say more, or I was trying to come up with that long text to explain how I was feeling and, like you know, try and put the argument to rest right or get my point across.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I would stop Every time. I would keep checking my phone to see if he read my message or had he been online in the last little while since I sent the message, and why hasn't he checked it right. Every time I started to want to do all those old things. I stopped, I stopped and I took a breath. I can remember taking a breath and asking myself what is it that I need from him right now that I don't think I can give myself? What is it that he's going to make me feel that I'm needing for me right now, and what is it that I'm going to avoid feeling by doing this? Or what is it that I'm hoping to avoid if he responds the way that I want him to? Because here's the thing with those techniques, right? We send the long-winded text, thinking that we're going to get an apology, and then we get a read, but unresponded to text, and then what ends up happening? We get more triggered, right, because now they're triggered. We check our phone to see when they were online last and we see that it was after we sent the last message and then they still haven't read it. So now our text message, we know, has been ignored. We're more triggered.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:All these are energetic games and I really learned the energetics, the energetic game with him because I could feel it Like it was so obvious, like first of all, like we were so like mentally connected. It was weird, um, I could feel when he was upset and he could feel when I was upset, and so we would immediately kind of like pull back Right and I knew when I was pissing him off, pissing him off, and he knew when he was pissing me off. Um, it was crazy, it was so crazy. But all that to say, you know, I noticed that when I was overthinking the next text, writing the long-winded text, checking my phone constantly to see when he was last online, um, you know, constantly refreshing my phone to see if I have a message from him or a notification.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um, you know all those, those those little posting things online to see if I get a like or a comment or something or anything. You know all those little things that we do as we get older to get attention. You know, social media has been great for making codependent relationships. When I think about it, but all those things that we do every time I did those things, I noticed it pushed him farther away, right? So that's when the whole runner chaser dynamic became very obvious to me, because I noticed that when I was chasing him, he was running for me. And so when I stopped chasing him and I started to look inward and go inward and look at myself, that's when he would come back, that's when I would be magnetic to him.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And it's not about playing a game. This isn't about a game, because it wasn't about I'm going to focus on myself and make him come back. It's like you know what. This is not healthy. I am putting all my energy and focus. He is my, he is my, he is, um, my life is centered around him. I need to make my life centered around me now. My energy, my power, everything is with him. I need to call it back. I need to come back to myself now. And that was the game changer, right?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So every time I felt the urge to chase, to convince, to soothe, to get attention from, to beg for attention, love, affection, whatever it was. Every time I felt the urge to desperately go out and do that, I would stop myself dead in my tracks and I would come back to myself. I would take a breath, I would center back into me. So taking a deep breath, getting centered back into me. What do I want to feel? That I'm making him my source of and what am I trying to avoid that I'm making him my source of and what am I trying to avoid? That I'm making him my medicine for? And that, like if you could just do that one thing and pull your energy back from chasing them and focus on yourself, this is going to bring miraculous healing to so many of your relationships.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:That's not to say that they're all going to work out beautifully and harmoniously. Sometimes we're just in a relationship with the wrong person. It is what it is and that can't. This won't change that, but if there is a relationship that has potential, this will heal it. This is the one practice that will fucking heal it, like you won't have to worry. Focus on that.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And this work is uncomfortable. It's messy, because it forces us to look at all the feelings that we feel, codependent on them to make us feel the love, the affection, the security, the pleasure, the whatever and all the things that we're avoiding, that we're relying on that. We're relying on them to distract them from it gets messy as fuck, but it is so worth it in the end, because this is literally the energetics that relationships need to thrive. They need each individual in a relationship. Yes, we're connected and yes, we're in an intimate connection together, but both parties need to be given enough space and oxygen to flourish on their own, and when we're constantly chasing and attaching to somebody, we're not giving them that space and oxygen. That's not to say that we can never do things together. That's not to say that we shouldn't have needs in relationship. That's a whole other toxic fucking belief. Don't even get me started on that. You know you have.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Everybody has a desire for what they want their relationships to look like and as long as they're coming from a healthy place, there's nothing wrong with having needs in a relationship and wanting to have those needs met. That that is the whole point of being in a relationship. The important thing is that you don't settle to have those needs met like settle on your standards and how you get treated and how that relationship shows up for you. You don't settle for that and you also know that they're coming from a healthy place. In other words, you don't need somebody to constantly tell you that you're beautiful because deep down you're very insecure. That's an unhealthy attachment. If you're a very confident person who feels good about herself and who doesn't have to worry about things like that and can come into a relationship knowing that maybe sometimes the little ways that he looks at you, maybe you think, okay, you know that's that, that and that's not a need, that's that's a nice to have right.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:A need is, you know, I need somebody to be a good communicator. I need somebody to be able to communicate what they're thinking and what they're feeling and be able to talk these things through like a normal adult. You know like I need that. I'm not not not going to not have that. I need somebody who likes to go out and do things. I don't want to be out there doing things. I can go out there and do things all on my own. I've done it, I've traveled, I've done all sorts of things on my own. But I do want somebody who wants to go out there and do things with me but also likes to spend some time, quiet time at home, Like I don't want to have to constantly be on the go, right, like it's okay to have certain needs and you know ideals for what you want your life to look, like, that's fine.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:They just can't fill voids, right? And I think that's the difference. And I think that when you do this work, you're naturally starting to fill those voids, and that's what this is really all about. You're filling all those voids within yourself, so you break the need for a partner to do that for you. And you know, this year for me, this one year, it was so like pivotal and transformational for me. And then, when he left, I continued this pattern. So, when he left, my commitment to myself over the next seven years well, I didn't say it was going to be seven years, I just said, you know, over this next period, while I'm not dating, it turned out to be seven years of healing and self-discovery and and and you know, really unlearning.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:All those patterns of chasing, waiting for and convincing and begging people to love me, to choose me, to show me affection and attention was every time I felt like I needed it. I would go back to that. I would go back to well, what is it that? I think that having someone in my life would make me feel that I can't feel right now on my own. And what is it that I think that having someone in my life would make me avoid feeling that? I know I'm feeling beneath the surface, right, and then I would do like you know all the emotional energetics behind the scenes on that.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But even just asking those two questions, what do I think that they can make me feel that I can't feel for myself, and what is it that I think that they can make me feel that I can't feel for myself? And what is it that I think that they can make me avoid feeling that I need to be paying closer attention to? Those are the two most powerful questions you can ask yourself. And you ask them the moment you feel your energy like go, shift from you to them and wanting to chase or convince or perform or wear something to get their attention, or write that long ass text message of how you're feeling and how what they did made you feel and and all those things. And it's not so that you should never express your feelings in your relationship. You should, um, but I do believe that it should be done when you're not triggered. Okay.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So keep asking those two questions and keep asking every time you feel that urge to like, latch, like that's the best way to is latch, latch onto them, latch onto needing communication from them, needing attention from them, needing time with them, and especially, every time you start to feel them pulling away. Because if you feel them pulling away, it usually means if it's, if it's a reasonably close connection, if you start to feel them like, if it's not somebody who's like you know a situationship or an imaginationship, those are even better. You know, if it's somebody that you're genuinely in a relationship and you feel them start to to like energetically, pull away from you, it usually means because you're you're, you're, you're attaching right and you're becoming codependent. And you have to look at why. What is it that I'm avoiding within myself? Or what is it that I'm I'm relying on him for to cultivate for me that I that that I'm not doing for me? So, um, and again you know like I can't stress this enough Was this relationship perfect?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:No, that's why I ultimately left Um, and I was able to make that decision because I had done this work and now you know where I've. You know, I did end a relationship back in December of last year and then I did start getting out there and start dating again. You know you have to be pretty spectacular at this at this time in my life where I'm 51 and I've done all this work and you know, I've been on my own and I've had like the craziest experiences. I've had amazing experiences. I've had some really fucking challenging experiences and if you think that I'm in a position right now we're at 51, no matter how much I want to be with somebody that I'm going to settle for anything less than what I want, just to have like a warm body on the couch next to me, you've got to be shitting me Like no, not happening. So that that is my advice.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I hope that answered your question. If you guys have questions seriously, like, just dm me at the femcast, um, you can dm me there or you can email me at maria at the femcoachcom. I'm happy to answer all your questions. Who knows, they may explain like inspire, the next episode of the podcast. So let me know what you take away from this in the comments below, wherever you're seeing this, or reply to me in an email.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:If you're seeing it there, you can also subscribe and you can get on the list if you go to my website at thefemcastcom. You can also subscribe there so that you can get these in your inbox. I can't remember how you do that, but I'll find out and I'll tell you. Guys, I'm so bad at this and if you love this episode, please, please, please, please. I'm begging you, leave a positive rating and a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever the heck you're seeing this. It really helps the podcast get out there and grow. So and, like I said, I am going to have a home studio one day. I'm putting it in intention right here on this show. Okay, you guys, until next time. Massive love. Sorry, you got double kisses there.
