A thread that nobody asked for: how relationship trauma has severely damaged how I move forward in dating/talking stages

Whenever I’m in a talking stage and things go great, I go beyond being apprehensive & cautious. Being cautious about a new face and new energy is normal, but I go into severe attack & defense mode.

I know that isn’t healthy nor does the person I’m talking to deserve that (because they obviously were not the person who hurt me), BUT I also have no experienced a variety of outcomes in talking stages and relationships.

In the two relationships I’ve been in, I’ve dated serial cheaters and men who truly did not value me as a person. In talking stages, I’ve often been paired with men who were not honest about their intentions, and that has been damaging also (conversation for another day tho).

After being with someone who hurt me when you are trying to love him and trying to build something with someone who does not have the credentials for that type of relationship— naturally I’m going to assume that the next man I encounter will hurt me in some shape or form.

It is even more difficult to navigate those feelings because there is no guarantee that the next man that I will encounter will be empathetic with my experiences.

Usually, when discussing these things with a guy the conversation will go two ways:

1) He will excessively agree with me to appeal to my emotions & take on a “captain save-a-hoe” mindset to try to “fix” me and my issues when I do not need a hero, I just need a complement.

2) He will gaslight me and find ways to explain where I went wrong. That can be anything like “well you just date the wrong people and that’s your fault” or “at least he didn’t do x,y,z so you should give him another chance” or be cool with a little cheating.”

Before I deviate to my other point, I just want to say that it is ridiculous that we are in a place where we have to applaud men for doing the bare minimum. I should not have to be grateful that you “at least did not cheat.”

Loyalty is not a gift, loyalty is the standard.

I should not be thankful that you at least talk to me every once in awhile when you’re on the game. I should not be thankful that you decided not to slide into that girl’s DMs.

A man doing the bare minimum should not be praised when his standards for another woman are excessively high...especially if she meets or exceeds those standards and there’s no guarantee that he will be loyal to her as a result.

But I digress, moving on...

The hardest thing about navigating through relationship trauma is meeting someone who does not operate the same way that your exes do. The first relationship you have after the most damaging will always be the most difficult for various reasons.

The first reason is the fact that you have no idea how to categorize them. We naturally will put people into like/dislike & good/bad categories based on various things, we especially do that when we are dealing with trauma.

It’s scary to deal with someone who is harming your mental space, but it is even scarier to have someone who genuinely brings peace and protection because that is something you have never experienced before— it’s uncharted territory.

So here I am getting information that is foreign to me: I get complimented even while wearing a bonnet and the same ugly t-shirt reserved for wash days, I get someone who prays for me, I get someone who I enjoy.

And it is so hard for me to enjoy the treatment I deserve because my fact of life is that as soon as I get someone that I can learn to trust & who I can teach to love me, they find some reason to walk away from me, and I have to start all over again.

Because of that, I am extremely insecure, and rightfully so, but that becomes an issue because I might end up pushing the right person away from me. That’s scary because I could hurt someone who has a good heart because I do not have the energy to receive.

It is so, so hard to sit comfortably in being loved in the right way when all you know is pain. It’s hard because I have been conditioned to believe that I do not deserve love and respect when we all deserve that— all I know is how to suffer and settle.

To deviate from me for a sec, it is also difficult for men when it comes to the conversation of dealing with someone with relationship trauma. There is tension between men who are misguided and men who want to love and be loved.

From what I understand, men who have relational intelligence and men who are stable, it is so frustrating to them to handle women who are damaged because there is a wall there that he cannot take down.

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot love someone out of trauma. You cannot have one conversation and expect months/years worth of trauma to disappear.

Sometimes that can be really confusing because what seems to him to be common sense (in regards to how to treat someone) is what is frowned upon by the collective. Let’s take a little deep dive.

Being a man who is accepting, loving, patient, and understanding is not common— let’s look at the Boosie v. DWade situation.

We had men and women on the front lines defending Boosie’s “right” to subject his preteen/early-teen sons & nephews to sexual acts by an adult. In the legal world that is statutory rape. However, to the community that is seen as a right of passage & sex-ed in a sense.

While defending that, we also had men & women condemn DWade for accepting his child‘s wishes to be called a name she preferred and pronouns she preferred to make her comfortable with existing in this world. We judged this man for being a parent who cared about Zaya’s wellbeing.

Even though it seems ridiculous that people cannot see the difference it makes sense: there are a lot of Boosies in this society and not just that, there are a lot of Boosies who get uplifted and promoted.

A lot of us can identify with a Boosie, we’ve dated a Boosie, we were parented by a Boosie, we hung with a Boosie— we may or may not be able to say the same about a DWade.

To tie this back to the men who are stable v. men who are not— it is easy for me to project my insecurities and pain onto a man who is stable because I have not experienced him before.

And that is confusing to him because he can see what the men who have hurt me couldn’t, so he is giving me the treatment that I deserve while I am not receiving it. Sometimes those interactions become dangerous too!

That can become dangerous because these men can see that the women they are trying to love refuse to receive it from them, but they will receive it from someone who is operating on treating them horribly.

And you know, monkey see, monkey do.

A lot of the time these men will subject themselves to the damaging behaviors of someone else and the cycle continues. It does not help when men who are operating on a lower caliber will proceed to bash the men who want to treat women right.

We tend to see a lot of men categorize other men as simps or soft or corny when they want to treat women right— that is exemplified in the Future v. Russell Wilson debate. We tend to characterize women who receive better treatment as problematic or flawed.

We also praise women who endure trauma, bad treatment, and borderline abuse as women who are solid and wifey material. We love to praise struggle love as a standard of a perfect relationship.

Testing people’s loyalty is the most damaging thing that we can do to each other, and it is so wrong to do.

We condemn women who leave their relationship in search for better treatment— we love to say “she wasn’t a rider and she left me when I was down and out trying to figure myself out.” No, sir. It was not her fault that you could not stay loyal. We will not gaslight here.

You can be lost within yourself and continue to be faithful. You can struggle (whether that is financially, emotionally, physically, etc.) while still understanding that people deserve respect— especially a woman who genuinely cares about your wellbeing.

You do not have to make your body a community recreation to see if she will still be loyal or to prove that you are struggling. If there is a woman with a good heart and intentions, the only thing you have to say is “I am struggling.”

There are certain people in this world who have more than enough love to give, and it is not difficult to get out of them. You do not have to lower yourself to see if someone is willing to support you. You should know better than that.

Whew, I’ve said a mouthful, so I’m gonna close with this: What are some ways that we can navigate through relationship trauma & emotional damage?

I cannot speak for everyone because everyone’s journey is different. With that being said, sometimes people navigating through this for the first time have zero ideas on how to cope, so I’ll give some of my methods.

1) Get therapy. Finding the right therapist worked wonders for me because I finally had someone who could help me navigate through the flood of my emotions. It was good to have a 3rd party person to talk through the things that my peers may not understand.

2) Find a trusty person to speak to. Not all of us are comfortable w/ therapy or we cannot afford it (I was one of those people), but find someone who you can have a meaningful conversation with. Your therapist may not always be there when you are upset at 2AM, but a pal might.

3) Start aquatinting yourself with the simple emotions first (i.e. happiness, neutralness, frustration, etc.) Sometimes detecting what simpler emotions feel like will help you navigate more complex ones.

I know for me, I always said that I “didn’t do feelings” while talking about my feelings with my therapist. I never acknowledged that simple feelings are feelings too, and that was why complex emotions stressed me out.

4) Change your terminology. “I don’t do feelings” is really dismissive, I decided to start saying “strong feelings makes me uncomfortable/scared.” This allowed me to analyze why I feel the way that I do and allows me to take action in handling them.

5) Please make sure that you are listening to this, okay?

Understand that you will not always operate at the highest caliber all the time. You do not have to be your best self at all times.

Navigating through emotional trauma is extremely hard, and you do not have to put on a singular brave face every occasion...especially while you are grieving.

Your brave face will shape shift. It may or may not look the way you’re used to, but it does not mean it lost it’s bravery. It just so happens that it adjusted to fit how your bravery needs to look while navigating through your pain, and that is okay.

*its’

I’m sorry I’m illiterate.

Anyways, allow yourself to celebrate your sadness or any other big feeling. Allow yourself to process those emotions. However, I cannot guarantee that you will not lose some love interests or friends along the way (I certainly have).

But regardless, you will look and feel different while experiencing trauma, and that is okay. New relationships will be hard, the relationship you have with yourself will be hard because you are unpacking a lot of bags collected over an extended period of time.

Healing isn’t linear either, there will be other obstacles that may pause your healing for a bit.

For me, I had my heart shattered in January and experienced a terrible grieving period & depressive episode for 2 months. Then, we’re in a global pandemic & my dad and I both fell ill. I am in a lot of physical pain that I have to heal from.

I am no longer in a rush to heal. I am no longer putting deadlines to end my grieving, I just know that one day I’ll wake up and it won’t hurt anymore. That’ll be hard to accept sometimes because I’m impatient, but I know it’s there.

I pray that one day you’ll find that same peace.

Wow, I’ve said a mouthful. I apologize if you were tired of hearing me talking, but thanks for getting all the way through the thread— I hope you found comfort in at least one thing that I’ve said, and I pray that you will heal if you are in that place.

Goodnight y’all :)