A therapist works with someone in a 30-year relationship marked by trauma bonding and codependency. Both partners grew up as oldest children of single mothers, creating compatible but wounded attachment patterns. The therapist's core advice: speak your truth without needing validation, stop expecting your partner to rescue you emotionally, and do your own healing work.
we end up in dynamics like this because of our own experiences, right? Do you come from a traumatic childhood?
Yeah.
Yeah. So we know a lot of times that we bond in relationship with people that also come from a traumatized background because there's compatibility there, and that's what creates similarities.
Yes, we're both the oldest child. You know, we both grew up with single moms. Our dads weren't around very much. My dad more than hers, but, you know, it's a very similar dynamic.
Yeah, and that's what creates the trauma bonded relationship where there's so much codependency. And especially when we've been together with somebody for a really long time. How long you guys been together?
30 years.
Okay, you guys got together when you were in your late teens?
15.
To get together at 15 years old, pretty much in, in the, in the height or the aftermath of a lot of the traumatic experiences that you guys have been through. And there's so much codependency that it's hard for me to establish an identity outside of this relationship. The reason the stuff keeps getting brought up over and over again is because, A, you guys are resentful, but really beyond that, the resentment is really created by the fact that this is a pattern of we just live on the surface. We don't know how to have a deep intimate conversation about hurts. Because I want to bring these things up, but I'm scared to bring these things up because I'm scared that when I bring up the hurt, I'm just going to get hurt again by the way that she deflects or projects or avoids or just completely dismisses what I've been through, plays the victim, acts like she's the victim in the situation, refuses to acknowledge her part. So to me, it's kind of frivolous. So the question is like, how do I bring up things that have hurt me and how do I move beyond these resentments when somebody is not willing to acknowledge that these things even happened?
Right, because if I try to bring up anything that hurts me or bothers me, she instantly flips it around to, well, you do this, you do that, how do you think I feel? You know, it's never just like a listening moment, right, and trying to gain understanding.
And then let me guess, you get enraged by that like most people would, and then she blames you for your reaction.
Oh yeah, because then it ends up drawing out the, you know, then I end up falling right into it. And I'm like, what about when you did this or did that, right?
Okay, this is what I want you to do. This is what I want you to do from now on. If I, if I was standing next to you in the street, right, and we were talking about why— look at the sky today, it's such a beautiful day. And then I said, you know, the sky is orange and the sky was blue. Would that be worth fighting me on if I was just convinced that the sky was orange and I refused to acknowledge that the sky was blue and you saw it as blue? Would that be even worth wasting your energy?
No.
I think for you what it is is you feel the need to waste your energy because you seek her validation for you knowing inside intuitively that these things have actually happened and that you've affected you to the degree that they have. And I'm here to tell you, bro, you don't need her validation on that. You know the truth. Now here's the, here's the point though. You do need her validation on that in order important for you guys to have a healthy relationship. She does need to acknowledge her part. But for you to heal and for you to move forward, what I want you to do moving forward, I want you to speak your truth no matter what. I want you to speak your truth not to hurt your wife, but I want you to speak your truth to your wife. And not, not to your wife directly, but even out loud, these conversations without expecting anything back from her in return. And it's like letting her know, hey, these things have absolutely happened and they've hurt me in these ways. And I'm not, I'm not coming to you wanting something from you. I'm just— it's a declaration. I'm letting you know that this happened, and I'm not going to live in the manipulation or the gaslighting or denial that it did. And see, with those tendencies to invalidate you or dismiss your emotions or minimize what happened, it's all an attempt for her to escape the guilt and the shame and the fallibility that she feels, which is absolutely connected to her childhood. Because her having to confront the shame inside, well, she has to acknowledge, well, why do I make those mistakes? Why did I do those things? And what is that connected to in me? Which opens up Pandora's box for her. So this is what you can do. Speak your truth. Don't seek for validation, right? And the number one thing you could do is encourage your wife to get some help. Your wife needs help. She needs, she needs help from somebody else that can allow her to look inside and acknowledge that I do make mistakes. I am fallible, right? I do fall short. But you got to recognize that those patterns and those cycles, the need for validation— like, we get hurt by certain people and then we go back to those same people expecting them to heal us. And I think for you that that's a pattern in your life, going back to her seeking reassurance, seeking validation, affirmation, recognition, acknowledgment of these things that happen, thinking that somehow when she acknowledges those things that It'll make me feel better. It'll allow me to move forward and forgive her. But the piece of it is really that's keeping you tied in it is still the wounding, right, from your past and your childhood. It's, it's going back to a person who is, who is unavailable to tend to my emotional needs and anticipating that somehow somebody who is fundamentally incapable thus far is going to be able to change in the heat of the moment be available for me emotionally, and that somehow that's going to do something for me. That all comes from our own abandonment. That all comes from our own rejection. That all comes from our own fractured attachment. So what you can do is work on yourself, help your wife work on her. And I think that a part of this trauma bond is that you expect one another to change, and you expect that that change that one another goes through is somehow going to allow both of you to heal, right? But her change of behavior doesn't heal you. Her change of behavior doesn't heal you.
