Healthy Partnership after Trauma

Relationships are, by nature, often complicated.

Add in a history of trauma, and there’s even more complexity to navigate.

As someone who was abused by a mentally ill parent, I once felt unworthy of finding a safe, healthy, and loving relationship. If my parent didn’t love me enough to treat me well, I reasoned, then I certainly couldn’t be lovable to a partner.

Through therapy, healthy friendships, and loving relationships with relatives (other than my abusive parent), I eventually untangled this message.

Even when I dared to believe I was lovable, though, I still questioned whether I carried too much trauma baggage to ever enter a romantic relationship.

 And then I fell in love.

I certainly had to continue the hard work of healing from trauma and communicating my needs and choosing to break out patterns. Relationships didn’t magically become easy or free of trauma triggers. But the healing felt less exhausting, more rewarding, with a loving and supportive person by my side.

My therapist often says, “Wounds created in a relational context can only be healed in a relational context.” I’ve found this to be incredibly true.

This doesn’t mean we hold others accountable for our healing or require them to fix us. However, it does mean our traumatic responses can begin to heal as we experience secure relationships with unconditional love.

I can choose healthy patterns and behavior moving forward—even if they feel strange and unfamiliar.

• After healing from a codependent relationship with my parent, I’m able to consciously choose a relationship of interdependence and mutual support.

• Unlike the anxious attachment with my parent, being in a secure relationship has slowly healed my attachment style into a secure one.

• Counter to the relationship with my parent where giving was my job, I’ve learned to both give and receive.

I can’t emphasize enough that while our partners are responsible for their own health and behavior, they’re not responsible for ours. However, when we consciously choose to fight our trauma responses—and when we experience consistent, safe love from our partners over time—we begin to heal.

A resource for further exploration:

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help YouFind - and Keep - Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.