Dating someone new can be a challenging experience. Not only do they need to meet your expectations for a future partner, but you also have to meet theirs. Finding someone who aligns with your needs is just the beginning; the real challenge lies in determining if both of you can sustain a long-term relationship.
One of the most difficult aspects to address or identify early in a relationship is trauma. This hidden factor is often a major reason why partnerships fail and could be undermining your love life, according to a relationship expert.
Trauma, whether it’s yours or your partner’s, can make you feel as if you’re navigating unclear waters, with their authentic self obscured by defense mechanisms, ingrained habits, and deep-seated emotional wounds.
Bringing unresolved trauma into a new relationship could be a reason for repeated failures, as noted by relationship coach Natalia Rachel. She described her own experience with “trauma-dating.”
She reflected: “It was about three years into my post-divorce dating journey that I realized I was trauma-dating. The level of anxiety, distress, triggers, and shame I was experiencing was completely at odds with how early dating should feel.
“Early dating should feel exciting, a little nerve-wracking, somewhat vulnerable, and maybe occasionally awkward.”
If you frequently encounter issues and setbacks in the early stages of relationships, you might be unintentionally carrying emotional baggage that transforms what should be enjoyable into challenging situations.
Rachel mentioned: “When our feelings feel out of proportion, it’s often one of the first signs that we might be trauma-dating.”
Research supports this idea. A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology found that symptoms of suppressed trauma, such as sleep disturbances, dissociation, and severe sexual problems, can be detrimental to relationships, often leading them to end.
Trauma isn’t confined to the moment it occurs. Experts assert that trauma is a past experience that continually resurfaces in the present.
This can make the process of meeting someone new and forming a connection a highly stressful experience, as the intensity and unpredictability of falling for someone can resurface past painful experiences.
Biologically, this process elevates cortisol levels and accelerates heart rates, which can significantly affect your dating life.
The relationship coach explained: “These can range from over-texting, over-demanding, over-analyzing, and ruminating, to shutting down, pushing away, ghosting… or worse… hot and cold, push-pull behavior.”
Having trauma doesn’t mean you cannot have a healthy relationship or that you should avoid people with difficult pasts. Instead, it’s important to address your own issues and seek partners who are committed to doing the same.
Rachel elaborated: “If we haven’t processed past traumatic relationship experiences, we tend to superimpose them onto our dates, lovers, and partners — either we keep choosing people who have similar unsuitable (or toxic) traits, that will never be able to love us the way we truly want, or we meet nice available people, but we keep seeing or feeling the problems of the past…red flags that just don’t exist.”