Did you grow up in a home where a parent made you feel as though you had to strive to win their love? Was their attention hard to get and no matter how hard you tried you could never reach them?

If you answered yes, this primes you to feel a strong attraction to people who will treat you the same way. You experience a trauma bond like the one you had with the parent who abused or neglected you.

Trauma bonding is characterized by an attachment to someone who is hurting you. Even when you know they’re not good for you, it’s difficult or impossible to tear yourself away from them.

Often, the child in a family who is treated the worst by a parent has the strongest trauma bond with them.

trauma bond starts at home

As with all attachment issues that start in the family home, we re-enact these dynamics in our romantic relationships. So, when you meet someone new and feel strong “chemistry” with them that can be a red flag.

Even the sense that someone feels familiar or “like home” can create a cause for concern. Think about your home life as a child and ask yourself if someone reminding you of that is necessarily a good thing.

What’s often happening with chemistry or the feeling like you’ve known this person forever is they are triggering the feeling your parent gave you as a child.

Love to you feels like something you are always wanting and never receiving. So, if someone shows little interest in you, that can be a source of strong attraction or trauma bonding.

The attraction feels so strong that you can’t stop thinking about them even though you’re getting nothing from them. It makes no sense because you’re an adult who doesn’t need this person for anything, but you can’t help it.

There are four billion men in the world, but with your survival brain triggered, he may seem like the last one on earth. And notice it’s not something you can talk yourself out of because it’s primal.

survival brain activated

As a child, you needed your parents to care about you in order to survive. If they didn’t love you, they could abandon or reject you and that meant impending doom, literally.

So, what happens when this inattentive person gives you vibes like they could take you or leave you, but shows just enough interest to dangle the carrot of hope? Your survival brain kicks in and you abandon your own wants and needs to focus on theirs.

What can I do to make them happy? How can I show them I’m worthy of their love and attention? Instead of asking yourself what you want and if they’re meeting your needs.

For women, this amenability often presents as letting down boundaries around sex. That only further cements the trauma bond because now you’ve released oxytocin, the bonding hormone, which makes you feel even more attached.

unearned love repulses you

On the flipside, you will experience a lack of attraction toward someone who gives you the attention you say you want. Unearned affection does not feel like love to you because love is something you chase and never get.

So, if someone is loving toward you from the beginning you may feel repulsed by them. You will not feel the “chemistry” that your body and brain fool you into thinking is a green light.

When you experience someone as boring or unappealing, he may simply be too easy to get. He’s not arousing your interest because he’s offering you something for free that you’re convinced is not valuable unless you earn it.

And despite all evidence to the contrary, your inner child has you believing you can win love by striving for it. She had to persuade you of that to keep your hope alive.

But the truth is that hard to get love will only keep you off kilter. It will set your nervous system on edge and even sabotage you in other areas of your life.

healing the trauma bond

So, what’s the solution?

One of the most important things you can do to weaken a trauma bond is delay sex. Often when you do this, the person will lose interest and you will have saved yourself a ton of heartache.

You will suffer in the short term, but not the way you would if you’d compromised yourself to try and win someone’s attention. Attention you would never receive, by the way, just like in childhood.

Ask yourself why you’re fixated on the one who shows little interest, but de-value the ones who show up for you? Not in a self-accusatory way, but with curiosity.

You’re getting to know yourself and why you do the things you do and that’s a gentle process. No need for guilt and shame since you were programmed as a child and it’s not your fault.

Begin to change your definition of love. Love is not something hard to get and out of reach. It is natural and you deserve to receive it. In fact, you already have it.

All the love you need is inside yourself. If you are looking for love outside yourself and feel incomplete without it, you have some work to do.

That work involves reparenting your inner child and giving her the love and attention she never received. It means retraining your brain to experience good treatment rather than neglect as “home”.

It means getting clear on your values and having standards for the way others are allowed to behave toward you. And if it seems like you keep attracting the same avoidant partners, that’s an opportunity to practice boundaries and self-care.

next steps

Now, you know what a trauma bond looks like and how to heal it. You also learned that it’s starts at home with dysfunctional family dynamics.

If you grew up in one of these homes, it’s likely you played a role that propped up that toxic system (unbeknownst to you).

To find out your role and get some helpful resources to support you, take the quiz below.