Moraira.
Perth, Australia.
Bournemouth.
Puerto Banús.
The places your daughter and grandchildren lived.
The places filled with laughter, warmth, and belonging.

And he never came.
Not once. Not to visit. Not to share a meal, a beach, a moment.
Always an excuse — too hot, too far, too boring, too Benidorm.

It speaks volumes.

Because in psychology, avoidance is rarely about disinterest — it’s about control.
For someone with narcissistic or emotionally cold traits, refusing to join you in places or relationships that bring you joy isn’t coincidence — it’s strategy.

By rejecting what you love, they maintain emotional dominance.
It’s a way of saying: Your world doesn’t matter unless I choose it.

Neuroscience helps explain this pattern.
In healthy relationships, the reward system — especially the ventral striatum and dopamine pathways — activate when we see loved ones happy.
But in narcissistic or callous personalities, this system doesn’t respond to shared joy — it responds to control and validation.
Seeing you light up without them can trigger a threat response in the amygdala — a subtle signal of envy or loss of control.
So they distance themselves, or criticize the source of your happiness, to reestablish emotional superiority.

It’s not that they didn’t want to travel —
it’s that they didn’t want to travel with you, or toward your joy.

Refusing to join you in those places was never about geography.
It was about withholding presence — a quiet form of emotional punishment.
By staying away, they made you question your worth, your choices, your family ties.
It’s psychological isolation disguised as “preference.”

But here’s the truth neuroscience shows us:
the brain heals through connection, not control.
You went — you lived, you saw, you loved.
And every time you chose connection over control, your brain strengthened the neural circuits of resilience and authenticity.

So yes — he never came.
But you did.
And that speaks volumes too.