u/NewHampshireGal

It has been over 15 months since I left my (now) ex boyfriend who was a textbook DA but also leaned heavily anxious at times. Yes, I keep track of it because I still don’t know how I survived that relationship and what came after I left. So yes, I count the months that have passed since my recovery from a trauma bond began.

I have learned many lessons over the past several months but one of the most important ones is that you should NEVER waste your time trying to love someone into healing. I know some people like to think love changes everything. It’s a beautiful concept, isn’t it? But that’s all it is: a concept.

It doesn’t matter how patient or understanding you are, how much grace you give or how well you communicate. If someone is aware they have patterns that hurt people and refuses to address them, your love will never be the thing that changes them. I am saying this as a healing fearful avoidant myself who made the decision to change on her own.

I spent so much of my time explaining, supporting, forgiving him. I stayed far longer than I should have had (almost three years)…and I regret it so much. Every single day. It is a very painful realization to live with.

I have trauma too. A lot of it. Both of my parents left me as a baby then my father came back into my life when I was young only to abuse me. I survived DV as an adult. I never defaulted to painting myself as the victim to justify hurting others to anyone.

I made the decision to work on myself a long time ago. I felt that I deserved more than what life had given me. That what my parents did to me and the aftermath were not going to seal my fate. It’s been a slow process because nobody turns secure overnight.

There is a difference between someone who struggles and someone who is committed to healing. The first deserves empathy but only the second one deserves access to your life. Healthy relationships are not built on potential; they are built on participation. One person should never give far more than the other. You cannot love for two people…ever. You cannot heal nor grow for someone; you cannot take on more than you should have to compensate for another person’s unwillingness (or lack of capacity) to do their part.

Part of me knew I was doing too much. My body was exhausted, I was constantly anxious. I thought it was my fault when he would pull away…deactivate. I thought I did something to cause it. And communication? Forget about it. There was no such thing even though I tried…many times. I was basically trying to save a relationship he was not equally committed to maintaining. I made so many excuses for him and looking back now, it makes me sick.

Learning to forgive myself has been one of the hardest things. It is the only reason why I still think about the relationship and my role in it. I have made peace with everything else but staying after what he put me through (cheating, pregnancy abandonment, continue to cheat after I lost our baby, intermittent reinforcement etc) is something I am having a very hard time with.

What has made it more difficult is being in a relationship with a fellow self-aware healing fearful avoidant. I cannot unsee the contrast. The better he treats me, the worse I feel for tolerating crumbs of affection and lack of presence from my ex. I tell myself “this is what I deserved all along”. He reciprocates, he shows up, he has integrated me into his world. No love bombing, just a lot of words matching his actions.

I no longer make excuses for what my ex put me through. He has been in therapy for over a decade but said to me “I don’t tell my therapist everything”. He knew what he was doing; it was structural and not situational. Unbeknownst to me, that’s how he had been operating since his high school days (he is 36). Sadly I didn’t know it all the time and I internalized everything and self-abandoned in the process.

Being with my boyfriend now has been a different experience but a very good one. I am slowly getting used to not having to overexplain and shrink myself to keep a connection alive. But at the same time it’s been very emotional.

People assume healthy relationships feel immediately wonderful. I mean why wouldn’t they? It’d make sense one would think…Sometimes they trigger grief, sadness, hurt. They become evidence of what was missing before, that you weren’t asking for too much; that reciprocity actually exists. Evidence that your needs were reasonable and that you aren’t impossible to love. I lost sight of all of that for almost three years. I have learned that when someone isn’t willingly or capable of meeting you where you are, someone else out there can and will.

It is easy to assume that healing only happens when you are processing trauma but no. Healing hurts when you start experiencing something healthy for the first time and realize how long you went without it.

That’s when it hits you and it is brutal. It makes you question everything whether you want to or not.

PS: Love is not supposed to feel like dragging someone toward a future they keep backing away from. At some point, the most loving thing you can do is to walk away from a dynamic that only causes you pain. It will hurt, but doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good.

I can’t be the only one who was on the receiving end of a lot of hurtful statements from an avoidant person. My ex (together for almost 3 years) was FA but leaned heavily dismissive. I’d say he was a textbook DA but he had a few FA traits as well. Once he deactivated, he’d become so cold and detached, I almost didn’t recognize him.

“I am going to marry you. I’d be lost with you”.

THEN two weeks later: “you aren’t my person. I can’t picture a future with you”

“We are done here. I am done with you” - two days after I told him I was pregnant. We had been together for over a year and lived together. I lost the baby shortly after and I ended up taking him back. That was the beginning of the trauma bond.

“I never physically cheated on you”. After I broke up with him the final time. He had been sexting a woman he’d met a few months before me. He did so before I found out I was pregnant and continued to do so for months everyday after I lost our baby.

Has anyone dealt with intermittent reinforcement in a relationship?

I was with a dismissive avoidant for almost three years and it did a number on me.

I entered that relationship secure but by the time I left, I was extremely hypervigilant and anxious.
I got pregnant; he asked for an abortion and I said no. He broke up with me. I lost the baby, he came back.
We broke up a total of four times. Last time he started to deactivate and I had to walk out.

At one point I made a post here on Reddit asking if it was normal to feel so anxious in a relationship. I also asked about hot and cold behavior because I had never experienced something like that. I thought I was going crazy.

After the pregnancy loss and his return, I started to shrink myself and downplay all my needs; I did all I could to keep the peace. I never expressed disappointment. Never asked him to make time for me. He had plenty of hobbies and a somewhat hectic work schedule so I took care of things at home. He had to worry about nothing.

I left him 15+ months ago.

I ended up being diagnosed with dysautonomia a few months after we broke up: I couldn’t shower standing up; had to use a chair. I’d black out randomly, I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes nor drive because my legs would shake so much. My hearing would go out, my voice would change mid-conversation. I had no appetite and ended up losing 50+ pounds in a matter of weeks, I lost a lot of hair.

I feel so alone in this because people just kept saying “move on”, “you’ll find better”…all while I didn’t know what was going on with me. My therapist never brought up trauma bond; I had to research this stuff on my own. I felt like I was going crazy.

Sometimes I still do.

PS: I still have symptoms from time to time even though I am in a healthy relationship with someone else now.

Also waiting to hear back from a trauma informed therapist but figured I’d post here in the meantime.

Posts about her father will not be removed. Period.

It’s not confidential information either. The information is public for everyone to see.

So reporting it will be a waste of time.

Just wanted to put it out there.

Carry on.

Looking back my DA/FA ex was very uncomfortable with anything romance related: music, movies. Anything.

I wonder if it is an avoidant thing…

It’s been 14 months since I left my relationship with my FA/DA ex after almost three years together.

At first I was in survival mode and thought he was the love of my life. The trauma bond kept me stuck for months but I was able to detach slowly. I never thought I would.

I have no feelings towards him. He is engaged to his thrice recycled ex whom he cheated on. She supposedly cheated on him too. She used to be very private but their relationship is now all over social media. He, like the avoidant he is, doesn’t post much about her. Shocking? Nah.

I have dated other men in the meantime. I walked away from every single one of those because they couldn’t communicate nor be consistent. I refuse to settle for crumbs again. It is just not going to happen.

I have been seeing an avoidant leaning man for a bit. He’s been in therapy; talks openly about it: about how shut down he was for so long, how hard it was to let others truly see him because he was so ashamed of himself. This man isn’t perfect but he is very consistent: shows up emotionally and verbally; follows through, opens up, tells me how he feels…
We met through hockey (which we both play); we have friends in common including one who’s close to me. They all like him and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on him even before I agreed to go on a date with him. So far, so good…but not naive to think that he is perfect and things will work out. I am not blind. Time will tell if he can sustain what we are building.

Being with him made me see the contrast between an unhealed avoidant and a healed (or working towards being healed) one. I have learned that avoidant tendencies alone are not the death sentence. Untreated, defensive avoidance is. The “I’m fine, disappear, suppress, minimize, detach, make you feel needy for wanting connection” cycle is what destroys relationships.

That’s what I had with my ex. I was emotionally starved; neglected even. That realization hit like a truck because when you’re inside emotional deprivation, your brain normalizes it to survive it. There is excuse after excuse. Stories you tell yourself to try and understand why they are here emotionally today but gone the next. I internalize a lot of the blame for his behavior.

With my ex I spent years trying to extract emotional closeness from a man who (more often than not) pulled away from it. So every small moment of warmth felt disproportionately meaningful because it was scarce. Every crumb he threw my way felt like a huge gesture when in reality it wasn’t. I didn’t want grand gestures. I wanted consistency, closeness, good communication. I wanted to feel chosen. He didn’t give me any of that.

I feel silly sometimes when I think about all that I gave him because I tried so hard to make everything work…when all he did was sit back and let me overfunction.

The contrast between the person I was then and the one I am now. The contrast between what I settled for and what I am building with someone else now cannot be unseen. It pains me having to accept that I wasted so much of my precious time on a relationship that did nothing but drain me and question my sanity.

Never again.

Basically the title.