Potential situation:

I was recently dating someone and I knew they had a lot of trauma that they still needed to navigate and that I would need to be patient. It seemed like we were a great match but then they told me that they didn’t have romantic feelings for me. I felt like they had been playing me the whole time and it really upset me.

Situation summary:

We were dating for a bit, I knew they had unprocessed trauma, and then they told me they didn’t have any romantic feelings, did they ever care about me?

Understanding your investment

Dating can be exciting and incredibly anxiety-inducing. When a person that you are starting to see as a potential partner reveals something like they don’t have romantic feelings for you, that can be crushing for not just your self-esteem and ego but representative of the destruction of all the various potentials you were starting to build in your head.

This is because when you allow yourself to be vulnerable and connect with the person you’re dating, you may also start to allow yourself to see the potential of that person and maybe a future too. If so, that type of hope can feel precious and, therefore, really hard to lose.

Dating and actively processing trauma

In situations where we know that the person we are dating is also actively doing a lot of emotional processing of their traumas while trying to get to know us, it can be helpful to try to understand how confusing and challenging it can be to balance that with building trust and vulnerability with someone new.

Those early stages of dating can bring on a flurry of different emotions, nevermind new and triggering situations, and therefore it may be sometimes very hard for someone who is actively trying to process a lot of trauma to, at the same time, know and connect with their own feelings about the person they are dating.

This may happen because, in the early stages of dating, we may look to access our intuition and our feelings to know how we are feeling about a person and what category those feelings fall into, whether that be a sexual, romantic, platonic attraction, etc, but sometimes certain traumas can make this particularly difficult.

Unprocessed trauma can form a wall between us and a real connection. It can cause our subconscious to craft stories that can feel really believable, like “This person is too good for me”, or “This new person doesn’t treat me like all my past abusive partners treat me so I don’t feel the same level of anxiety with this new person and so they mustn’t be right for me” etc. Therefore, being purposeful in addressing unprocessed trauma can be an important and challenging step in a person’s psychological journey.

Knowing your boundaries

Just as it is important for you to know what you are willing to accept and the type of relationship you want, it is important for any potential partner to know the same of themselves.

If your dating partner lets you know that dating them means being patient with them while they work through unprocessed trauma, then be sure you are content with what is being asked of you if you choose to continue to date.

This can be a great time to discuss what you both want from dating and for you to get better clarity on what they mean by patience and what actions or exercises they will be undertaking while you are being patient.

Patience is a virtue but also your choice and an opportunity

Being patient in your relationship is to freely give your partner grace and time, but it does not mean you must forfeit complete control or that the relationship must remain stagnant during that time.

If your partner asks you to be patient about an aspect of your relationship, this can be a great opportunity to discuss the matter further, set expectations regarding the length of time, and understand how to adjust the relationship in the interim, so that you can support your partner in being patient whilst also not allowing the period to stagnate your relationship and still growing your connection with your partner.

An example here might be that your partner asks you for patience regarding introducing you to their family, which makes you nervous, uncomfortable, or upset. In this case, you would discuss the matter further, set an expectation regarding the length of time that your partner would like to wait and you would be comfortable waiting. It is important here to also identify what need within yourself you would be satisfying by meeting their family, for example, you might be feeling like meeting their family shows their pride in having you as their partner.

Whatever your need is, talk about it with your partner and talk about your partner’s reasons for wanting to wait. This might allow you to work together to come up with something that your partner can do that can satisfy that need during this period of patience from you. For instance, your partner could commit to ingratiating you into other personal parts of their life, such as putting effort into building your relationship with their friends. They could do this by scheduling more events or even holidays with themselves, you, and their friends.

Another solution might be that you discuss the matter further and realise that they are nervous about introducing you to a specific family member/s, but might therefore be comfortable arranging for you to meet the rest of the family separately from that family member/s.

To identify workable and helpful solutions here, think about what it is that you might be finding confronting in giving your partner patience on this issue. With the example above of your partner asking you to wait to meet their family, it may be that you worry whether they are ashamed or don’t want to show you off or make your relationship more serious. In this case, not only have conversations where they reassure you verbally but also identify ways that help them overtly prove to you that your worries are unfounded and that, whatever their hesitance, it is not about your relationship or a comment on how they feel about you or their intentions toward you.

Altering your perspective, not hardening your heart

As much as you may want to because of the hurt it’s caused, try not to write off your connection as this person never having had feelings for you at all; it just takes a lot sometimes to allow yourself to like someone, especially when you are undertaking a lot of other emotional processing. It might have just taken them a bit longer to realise that this connection with you wasn’t completely right for them.

You may even be able to perceive it as a compliment that they still pursued a connection with you whilst dealing with so much; actively processing trauma can be very challenging and overwhelming and yet, they were still working to be able to balance that with taking the time and effort to assess the potential connection with you.

Mutual investment and connection is pretty great

At this moment in time, it may have been the best thing that, if they felt unready for this connection with you for whatever reason, they conveyed that to you (hopefully in a forthcoming and respectful manner). Knowing that they can’t identify or feel those romantic feelings for you right now, while very upsetting and disappointing, allows you the opportunity to refocus your valuable time, energy, and effort elsewhere: to find someone who does feel those feelings, who will be in it with you and who will be willing and able to work with you as much as you are with them.

Moving forward, try to keep putting yourself out there as much as you feel able; don’t allow the struggles or mistimings with potentially good connections to close you off to a future of amazing connections that will be based on mutual attraction, investment, and respect.

More questions? Need more answers?

The outlined path above is intended to provide a starting block and help as many people as possible but it is difficult to be able to cover all possible scenarios. However, if you believe I have omitted something important, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

If you would like more clarity on a specific situation you are experiencing, or help long-term, please feel free to book in for your free 20-minute coaching consultation!