Relationships, Trauma, and Love

Relationships can be one of the most rewarding aspects of life, but they can also be incredibly challenging. When we experience trauma in our lives, it can make it even harder to navigate our relationships. Most of this trauma starts from our childhood by our parents and those around us when we were raised. Trauma is essentially a survival mechanism, as our body and mind protects us from potential danger. However trauma is maladaptive as most of our trauma response don’t serve us in becoming the best people we can be, they instead take us away from it.

There is a lot of different traumas associated with relationships, and I will not speak on the ones that I do not possess. As searching the internet and trying to understand why I get so anxious when dealing with relationships, attachment style has comes about. The other common fears I have also seen is fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment. Growing up I have heard these terms and often dismissed them because I lacked the experience to truly understand them. Now as I have gotten older and have had more experience, I can say that these two fears have definitely influenced the way I have went about both platonic and romantic relationships in my life so far.

The first thing to do is to understand how did these fears come about. Fear protects us from potential danger, so at some point I started to attach danger and uncertainty to those around me. Growing up, I had many different babysitters and people that took care of me. Since these people were not my parents, they were not attuned to my needs. This may have caused me to fear being open about my needs, as they were not always met by those whom I thought were my caretakers. I remember one of my babysitters always cooking up the most spicy food ever and me just having to suffer and other times just refusing to eat her food. I don’t remember many of these experiences just remember that I had always different people taking care of me, until I was in 6th grade and then I just stayed home alone. Also going to 3 different elementary schools could have had an impact. This could be a reason for my fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy. As a child, I came to believe that people in my life were temporary and could not fulfill my needs. No matter how close we may get, they will eventually leave me. Consequently, I should not invest in relationships at all, because at any moment, they can just leave, which is a really negative belief to have and has not served me well in my life so far.

With most fears, many do not serve us but ultimately take us away from living our best lives. Relationship trauma that happens during a young age can fundamentally change the way our nervous systems work and thus cause us to have adverse reactions when dealing with others. I have noticed that I am hyper-vigilant when I am around other people and have been slowly training myself to calm down and tell myself I am safe. However with everything this takes time and it is ultimately up to you and on you to heal your own trauma. This could be doing research online, talking to a professional, or connecting with others.

Unfortunately as relationship trauma was caused by other people, it can only be solved by other people. This can be difficult for those who have an underlying fear and distrust of others, as now we have to do what we fear the most, rely on others. But this is the key. In order to love and feel love we must be able to endure hurt and pain, as these emotions tend to come hand in hand, opposite sides of the same coin. We must be willing to put ourselves out there and be okay with expressing our love and emotions and one day someone show us that we are capable of being loved and will love us for who we are.

Men need women, and women need men. We are complimentary not better than one another. As I have spent time with more women I have realized that they have a viewpoint that differs than mine and can help me appreciate other aspects of life. I would never notice a flower, a sunset, or cute items, on my own but being around women I have learned that these aspects of life can also be appreciated. Also the masculine fulfillment you get from being around feminine women can be the missing piece in many of our lives.

Thanks for reading, let’s grow together :)

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