A String of Bad Relationships

I re-traumatized myself as a young adult by getting into one bad relationship after another and not understanding why

Trauma can include any experience where one feels overwhelmed with hopelessness or fear. “Inside traumas” are things people do that tend to re-traumatize themselves, according to Anna Runkle. Other terms for this are self-defeating behaviors or self-sabotage. These behaviors often start as an innocent flight away from pain but can create more trauma and life problems if they persist, keeping people from healing. One major “inside trauma” is the attraction to troubled partners. Those affected by childhood PTSD are often attracted to people who were traumatized and tend to have high levels of drama and overwhelming levels of conflict in many areas of their lives. The good news is recognizing an “inside trauma” in one’s behavior means they are already halfway to healing that behavior. By recognizing the behavior, one can work on forming a better response.

I was a victim of inside traumas where I got into relationships with one unsuitable partner after another. The relationships didn’t meet my needs and didn’t last long, meaning I went through one breakup after another. It was emotionally exhausting and each breakup dampened my hope that I would find the right partner for me. After experiencing four defining relationships, each of which ended in a painful breakup, I was fed up with the anguish. I looked at my friends who were in long-term relationships and wondered what they had done differently than me. How and why were they choosing people they were making it work with? And why was I picking people who would end up leaving me? I felt each breakup was traumatic and I was tired of hurting myself over and over again. I needed a big change.

One mistake I was making was that I didn’t recognize unhealthy people. For example, one partner I chose told me from the outset that they had a bad family history. Their parents divorced when they were very young and it deeply impacted them. They were forced to grow up quickly. Their father was no longer in their life and they had a lot of resentment toward their father. A different person would have read between the lines of this history and had some doubts. On the other hand, I didn’t think much of it and plunged ahead with the relationship. It turned out they weren’t able to meet my emotional needs and I constantly felt on edge with this person. Yet, I was so used to being emotionally neglected at that point in my life that it felt normal and I tolerated it. I picked a distant and emotionally unavailable commitment-phobe when what I really wanted was a nurturing, loving, and supportive person. I couldn’t tell the difference because I didn’t have any good examples to compare.

This person eventually ended our relationship suddenly without an explanation. The breakup sent me into an emotional spiral that took me years to recover from. I was confused and distraught. I was left wondering what happened and blaming myself in the absence of an explanation. When friends asked me why we broke up, I couldn’t give them a reason. I spent months combing through my memories trying to figure out where we went wrong and was haunted by flashbacks. I was shaken that I was so mistaken about the relationship. The sudden breakup rattled my self-esteem, and sense of trust and safety. The breakup sparked fears in me that I didn’t know how to have a lasting relationship, that I had lost the best person I could find, and that I’d end up alone. I had trouble moving on and developed limerence about the person, believing they would eventually change their mind about the breakup.

Instead of cutting this person out of my life, I continued to reach out to them occasionally for years afterward. The worst part was they were giving me space and I was the one who kept chasing. In the beginning, my behavior was partially driven by a need for a satisfying answer about the end of our relationship. A year after the breakup, I finally got an explanation. I could have dropped it and moved on after that, but instead, the limerence continued to keep this person alive in my memory and I stayed emotionally connected. I thought of the person positively and found myself listening to songs that reminded me of him. I compared every new dating prospect I met with my ex. I think I didn’t feel ready for another relationship and didn’t want to face loneliness again, so I clung to the memory of this person for a while.

After several down moments in my life including after breakups, I saw how big a difference having a strong support network made for me. Breakups always come with some loneliness. When I told my friends about the breakup, some of them invited me to hang out with them whenever I needed to. I was grateful to my friends who lent a sympathetic ear as I vented about the breakup repeatedly. I appreciate the ones who invited me along to their nighttime hangouts and let me crash at their places afterward. I found a lot of comfort in just hanging out in my friends’ homes and spending an evening going for a walk with their dogs, being treated to dinner, having summer BBQs, and watching TV. Those warm moments with friends helped me get through many difficult moments. The support helped to prevent me from going down a dark path.

At the same time, it was when I turned to friends (or my parents) who were emotionally unavailable that I was most likely to spiral downward. These people couldn’t offer me any real comfort or stop me when I was inclined to engage in risky situations. In some instances after a breakup when I didn’t have adequate support, a negative chain reaction would happen; a breakup would lead to heartache which led to risky sex with a stranger. Since I wasn’t getting fulfilling emotional support, the prospect of affection and validation, even from strangers, seemed appealing. Of course, that didn’t lead to healing, only distraction and more potential pain. When supportive friends were around to comfort me and keep me occupied, doing something risky lost its appeal.

“Trauma is something that happens to you that makes you so upset that it overwhelms you. There is nothing you can do to stave off the inevitable; you basically collapse in a state of confusion, maybe rage, because you are unable to function in the face of this particular threat. But the trauma is not the event that happens, the trauma is how you respond to it. One of the largest mitigating factors against getting traumatized is who is there for you at the time. When as a kid, you get bitten by a dog, it is really very scary and very nasty. But if your parents pick you up and say “Oh, I see you are really in bad shape. Let me help you.” That dog bite does not become a big issue because the foundation of your safety has not been destroyed.” — Bessel van der Kolk

Back then, I held the idea that I should be able to handle a breakup on my own without needing very much professional help. I didn’t want to burden others with my troubles and thus isolated myself more than I should have. I also didn’t think it was worth it to put money towards psychotherapy or counseling. I started therapy but quit before I had fleshed out my major problems because I didn’t want to pay for therapy sessions after the free ones offered through a workplace wellness program ran out. I could have afforded more sessions but my Asian frugality kicked in (to my detriment). When I look back now, I think I should have kept going with therapy. I found out a few years (and several limerence incidents) later that I had not fully healed from the breakup and other traumas and I did need long-term therapy. I delayed getting myself the help I really needed because of cultural and financial ideas stigmatizing therapy.

In fact, I should have reached out for as many resources as was necessary to help me get through those tough times. I should have approached it with a strong sense of self-assuredness. If I didn’t get myself the help I needed, who was going to do it? I should have felt entitled to get as much help as I need, for as long as I need, to feel whole, safe, and confident again. I see how I shortchanged myself in my recovery journey due to misguided beliefs and inadvertently prolonged the pain by not getting myself the help I truly needed. I made things harder for myself out of a belief that I needed to be strong and “should” be able to handle it. Those are outdated beliefs stemming from a culture of toxic masculinity or toughness that do not serve me.*

Looking back now, I realize that I was pursuing people who were going to neglect and abandon me as I experienced in my childhood. I was choosing people who were putting me through abrupt and devastating breakups instead of ending the relationship in mutually respectful ways. Ending a relationship can be done in a gentle and thoughtful way. I’ve seen other relationships wind down over a period of time and wondered why mine ended so abruptly. It was because the partner I chose was emotionally wounded and didn’t appreciate the benefits of letting others down gently. Their thinking was “the relationship isn’t going to work so why waste time?” without appreciating the emotional impact on the two parties.

Each time I experienced heartbreak, I was set back and worn down. I was being derailed from what I really wanted, which is a healthy and fulfilling relationship with an emotionally available partner. I felt like the possibility of a good relationship was slipping further and further away with each disappointment. I felt lost and like I wouldn’t be able to find a good partner because I was carrying around so much energy from being hurt.

Once I understood that I had a pattern of inside trauma, especially with attraction to troubled partners, I worked on developing healthier patterns. I made a big effort to understand attachment theory and studied how to identify secure and emotionally available partners when I was dating. Comprehension of my situation came the fastest when I found trauma-informed resources which described exactly what I was going through and put words to how I felt. Previously, I didn’t realize that many hardships I experienced were connected by the thread of trauma and childhood emotional neglect. Now that I understand the truth of what I went through, I embark on my healing journey slowly and gently as I work to undo patterns set in place by trauma. I’m hopeful that I can steer my life in a safe, warm, and pleasantly peaceful direction.

It is 7 years after that devastating breakup.

I am in a secure long-term relationship now.

I was finally able to see the old relationship in a new light many years later after discussing it in therapy. A year after the breakup, my ex and I met for a conversation where he told me that the breakup was driven based on his fears of divorce in the future. He also told me that he didn’t actually like many of the activities that we regularly did. Yet, I never heard anything about this when we were together. His people pleasing and self-sacrificing tendencies were so strong and he had such poor communication skills that he just agreed to doing things I wanted to do. I felt like I was in a relationship with a completely fake person who didn’t even exist because he was lying to me the whole time. In the end, he ran when he could no longer take being in the box he placed himself in.

Re-framing the relationship this way helped me to finally put the whole thing to rest. In the end, the breakup was not related to me at all. It was based on the other person’s fears and he made a unilateral decision to end the relationship and I didn’t get a say in the matter. I could stop blaming myself for being the cause of the downfall of the relationship. I could let go of my fears of being abruptly abandoned because I can recognize avoidants now and I consciously do not get in relationships with them. If I met this person today, I wouldn’t choose them as a partner. It was for the best we ended when we did because he would have grown resentful the longer we were together. The happy ending I had pictured in my head would never have come. I’m now free to create a different happy future with someone else who does not have commitment fears.

*Even though toxic masculinity generally applies to men, I find some of the ideas do spill over to women, especially women who grew up in patriarchal cultures.