Pick your Poison- On Trauma in Relationships
Sep 09, 2024
If you want to have any hopes of maintaining a long-term relationship, you need to find someone whose trauma patterns and frustrating habits you can work with.
There is no imaginary person who doesn't have some complexes, shitty behaviours and annoying habits. They don't exist. I've worked with thousands of people sharing their intimate truths over the years, and I can say I've never met a person who DOESN'T have some BS they're playing out. It's part of being human.
Even after all the personal development, all the spiritual awakening progress... we might minimise the power these wounds have on us, but they're still there.
So anyone you relate with is going to have their things-
Their mummy or daddy issues, trust issues, clinging, avoiding, numbing, coping, jealousy, fear... we all have something.
And we're going to be amazingly compatible with a lot of aspects of someone we're attracted to...
and we're going to clash in areas and be totally-not-compatible in certain areas.
When you marry someone, or commit to them long-term, you're marrying their trauma. You're marrying their wounds. You're saying yes to the whole, complex being that they are, 'warts and all'.
There are some trauma patterns we can learn to work with, and some we can't.
And that will be based on our personality and trauma patterns and how they interact with the other person.
Sometimes 2 patterns clash in a way that creates so much drama, pain and suffering that the relationship can't last. One or both of you are over your capacity to be with that wound and the relationship implodes.
Other times you'll be frustrated and annoyed by these patterns but you'll be able to keep your center most of the time and be compassionate with your partner.
As you explore love and relating, only you can really decide and explore what wounding patterns you can be with.
Sometimes the anxious person with abandonment wounds just can't be with someone highly avoidant who lacks the ability to empathise deeply enough and support them, and that wound will just re-activate over and over until they're in a near constant trigger.
Sometimes the spacey-avoidant person is a perfect match for the highly sensitive reactionary person, because they can take space and not react to the triggers and create drama spirals.
Some people can be with and love an addict, for some people it's too much.
It doesn't make any single person wrong or unlovable because of the way their wounding patterns play out. We don't need to be perfectly 100% healed to have life-changing and powerful relationships that support us to thrive.
We just need to find what kind of trauma we have the ability to stay with and love through. We must learn to understand the patterns showing up in our partner and within us, be humbled by them and curious about them and compassionate towards them.
And to be honest with ourselves when we just can't stay in connection with someone whos pattern causes them too much overwhelm and becomes too much to bare. Not because they're a terrible person but because our wounds just aren't meant to dance together.
Yes, conflict is expected in a relationship, but it shouldn't consume you.
If you spend as much time in activated or triggered states as you do happy, you're over your capacity and a re-negotiation of the relationship is likely the best course of action.
We can be madly in love with someone, and we can have wounding patterns that react so intensely that we can't remain in a relationship with them. Actually this is very often the case for people who are in 'Twin Flame' style dynamics. It might work during the honeymoon period but eventually when you're comfortable enough around each other for your deepest wounds to surface then they can tear us and the relationship apart.
Sometimes people can alchemise these deep patterns into deeper love, but sometimes we need to know when to change the shape of the relationship to take more space.
Being in constant reactive triggers and overwhelm is not supportive to having a thriving life, and despite how much we love someone, if the relationship causes so much suffering it's likely not meant to last.
We need to be really honest with ourselves about when it has become too much, and find a way to love from more of a distance.
But before stepping back it's important we really look at these patterns, because if we don't start to bring them out of the unconscious and into the light then they'll just repeat in the next relationship.
This is why when I work with couples who are in the volatile time of relating where these activations arise I don't promise they'll stay together, but I do know that 'doing the work' and looking at these patterns now will support whichever relationships they end up with in the future.
Check out my couples Liberated Relationship journeys if you're looking for support.
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