Looking for love while living with the consequences of trauma can be a daunting task fraught with confusion and heartache. Speaking as a counsellor and a survivor of trauma, I can personally attest, then when it comes to being promised a glimmer of hope, a potential for love, a traumatised person may tend to put all their chips on red. And for a good reason. Love and connection are an integral part of being human. Disconnection and estrangement have been historically linked to poor chances of survival and both traumatised and non-traumatised people alike know this on some level.
The problems arise when traumatised people seek love based on unrealistic or traumatic experiences of the past. Survivors of childhood trauma may form their understanding of relationships constructed atop the very early blueprint that traumatised them in the first place, because these connections feel familiar like a childhood memory.
Furthermore, a traumatised individual may hold a belief that they are not inherently loveable and that they must fulfil several criteria to be deemed worthy of love. This is the territory where perfectionism and weakened boundaries create a space fraught with anxiety and inadequacy. Perfectionism and performance create an internal subterfuge that dictates that you are only loveable when you act a certain way and the moment you stop you will not be worthy of love. Coupled with often shaky boundaries traumatised folk see themselves sacrifice their differences and uniqueness on the altar of love. Love becomes the means and the end, and deep connections and people are often left behind.
Love formula.
Years ago, my neurodivergent father became obsessed with formulating love in a mathematic equation. He was determined to understand what went wrong in his marriage and went about it the best way he knew how. I think we all have a love formula, or perhaps a love recipe within us. Some of us carry them as family heirlooms and others come up with their own. I came to understand it as a delightful paradox, where the recipe for love is characterised by love being an ingredient (and not even the main one) as well as the resulting product. Loving relationships are made of Trust, Respect, and Love, just like strawberry cakes are made with more than strawberries alone.
There is an argument that trauma survivors may benefit from following a structured approach to dating and finding love. While this may raise eyebrows as being prescriptive, a mindful and boundaried approach to dating can be beneficial to people who have not experienced the foundation of healthy relationships before. What seems plain intuitive to non-traumatised population, can be rather tricky to the survivors. Taking time to build trust and respect is a mindful and truly effortful exercise for people who experienced relational trauma. Without those two crucial ingredients love is left to do the heavy lifting before trust and respect can be established and sometimes without them ever developing. Ever felt like you love your partner but don't really like them?
How can therapy help?
Those of us who had grown up with trauma are love-hungry, sometimes even love-starved. Finding nourishing loving relationships can become an enduring preoccupation and direct all of our resources and creativity to finding a person whose love will sooth our early wounds. Traumatised people may be liable to limerence and end up pursuing people who are unavailable or are fundamentally unsuited for us.
Therapy can help identify the underlying reasons for our anguish and help us understand it while being supported by a compassionate and emotionally stable other. As the client explores the internal processes such as ruminations and outdated messages from the past (like unchallenged slogans we internalise), a self-acceptance may emerge. It is with the acceptance of our own humanness (with its annoyances and its tenderness) that we may learn how to accept another human as they are and begin to experience relationships, that are grounded in reality, and without needing to contort to an impossible standard. And love and be loved because we were built for it from our very first day on earth. You were built for love.