Effects of Childhood Trauma on Adult Romantic Relationships

Difficulties with close relationships, especially romantic relationships, are some of the most common presenting issues in psychotherapy. People often seek psychotherapeutic treatment because they are beginning to notice unhealthy or even destructive patterns in their relationships, as well as patterns in how they experience their relationships and how these relationships end. So, one may constantly find themselves in toxic or abusive relationships, whilst another person may constantly find themselves unseen, under-appreciated, rejected, used, or engulfed. Still, someone else may find it difficult to find the right partner and may begin to despair in the face of not understanding why that is.

These difficulties in relational patterns are, however, deeply embedded within our psyche and governed by the unconscious laws that were determined by adverse experiences from our past—our childhood traumas. Our childhood experiences influence our perception of ourselves, others, and the world. Our past close relationships—mainly the experiences we had with out parents and within our families of origin—are reflected in our adult attachment patterns.

Childhood Trauma and How It Affects the Perception of Ourselves, Others, and Our Close Relationships

To find answers to our relationship difficulties, we need to look into ourselves rather than others or the relationships themselves. Even when it seems evident that the relationship difficulties are caused by our romantic partners, the fact that we have chosen them, and continue to choose them, reflects our own internal psychological conflicts. These internal perceptions of ourselves (and others) can be deeply unconscious and, from outside of our awareness, continue to affect our everyday experience of our close relationships.

What underpins a person’s reoccurring relationship difficulties is their unconscious internal experience of themselves, so their identity, that formed during childhood, as a part of their childhood experience of close relationships, and may have been altered and skewed as a result of childhood trauma.

Childhood trauma, depending on the nature of it and its severity, can impact the development of personality and identity (Dereboy et al., 2018; Kouvelis & Kangas, 2021). It alters the perception we have of ourselves and people close to us, as well as how we experience the world and our lives.

Development of Stable Identity and Healthy Relational Patterns in Romantic Relationships

So, how does our sense of self develop and how does it impact our relationships?

As a child is brought up by their caregivers, provided that the caregivers meet the child’s needs, the child will internalise the favourable parental experiences. Putting it simply, as the child feels unconditionally loved, comforted, soothed in distress; as their adverse and traumatic experiences are processed and made sense of together with their parent, the child will internalise these experiences as parts of themselves. Early relationships and the experiences of those relationships become the experiences we have of ourselves; they become the building blocks of our identity.

How the parent felt about the child and how the child felt whilst being cared for by their parents is how the child will end up feeling about themselves in their adult life and this is the perception of themselves and others that they will re-experience in close relationships for the rest of their lives.

If the child was wanted, celebrated, cared for, respected, allowed to express themselves, and separate and individuate into a healthy independent individual, then the child will develop a coherent sense of self, feel confident about their abilities, and develop the capacity to self-soothe in stressful situations. Their self-esteem will also not shift depending on other people’s opinions or remarks nor will it be dependent on their relationships. They will be resilient and will develop a healthy sense of independence which comes with a grounded sense of self.

As an adult such person will tend to seek out romantic relationships that are healthy, as opposed to relationships that reaffirm any negative perception about themselves that may have been caused by their childhood experiences. Such individual will engage in relationships confidently and will not experience a drop in self-esteem and self-worth when relationships fail or when they are rejected by their romantic partner or a prospective romantic partner.

Because of the favourable experiences during their childhood, such person will likely have developed secure adult attachment style. For example, during the dating stage of the relationship, they may not disclose too much and too quickly, nor disclose too little and too late, as well as not over-emphasise the sexual elements of the relationship (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2017).

A mature and psychologically integrated adult will be looking for as a romantic partner who is, similarly, psychologically adult and independent individual, who attaches securely.

How Childhood Trauma Becomes a Part of Identity

Childhood trauma can take many forms. It is underpinned by various adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which can range from those most subtle to those that can be considered as physical, verbal, or emotional abuse. In fact, emotional childhood trauma, for those suffering from depression and anxiety, appears to have a more detrimental effect on adult relationships than childhood physical trauma (Huh et al., 2014).

Childhood trauma may also take the form of neglect or the parent's dependency on the child to meet the parent’s needs rather than the parent meeting the child’s—a phenomenon known as role reversal or parentification. Or, it may take the form of authoritarian, controlling, and critical parenting, or parenting styles that may have been overly permissive or neglectful.

What is important to note is that childhood trauma can be subtle and can thus, more often than not, go by completely unnoticed. Many go through their lives unaware of their traumatic experiences and may only realise that they were traumatised once they engage in psychotherapy.

So, how does childhood trauma become a part of identity?

A child is completely and utterly dependent on the parent to survive both physically and psychologically. As such, the main preoccupation of the child is to maintain attachment to the parent. When the parent is abusive, the child will still need the attachment because the abuse is still preferred to abandonment.

This is how attachment to trauma develops—an attachment carried forward into one's adulthood as a part of their identity.

Because of this need for the parent, regardless of what the parent is like, when a child is subject to childhood trauma, the child will unconsciously take the blame for that trauma. By taking the blame for the abuse, the child can reframe reality of the abusive parent into the child’s own reality, which is “My parent is good. If I am mistreated, it is because I am 'bad', not my parent.” This is how the image and experience of the parent remains 'good'.

How Identity Affects Close Relationships

Through interaction with their parents, the child develops the perception of themselves and their parents, which remains a part of the child’s identity and is transferred into their adult relationships.

Unhealthy relationship patterns are mostly the result of a person unconsciously seeking to reaffirm the perception that they have of themselves and others, which were skewed by their childhood trauma.

The poor sense of self, lack of self-worth and self-esteem, a perception of one as unimportant or non-existent, or any other view a person may hold about themselves, gets re-enacted in close relationships. For instance, research shows that individuals with a history of childhood trauma tend to experience themselves and their partners as relatively more conflictual than those without the experience of childhood trauma (Busby et al., 2011).

Similar is the case with the unconscious view one holds about others. So, if one sees others as manipulative, deceiving, exploitative, rejecting, this is the view they will be tempted to re-affirm through their romantic relationships.

A person who, as a child, was abused, neglected, or used to meet the parent's narcissistic or dependency needs will, as an adult, unconsciously seek relationships where they end up having the same experience. This tendency persists despite one's best conscious efforts to go against it.

Re-Enactments of Childhood Trauma in Romantic Relationships

Re-Enactments of Abuse

Let’s take an example of childhood trauma in the form of parental emotional or physical abuse.

As the trauma occurs, the child perceives the abuse as a reflection of their inherent “badness”, “worthlessness”, “unworthiness”, rather than blames the parent for it and see the parent as “bad”. Because the child is caught in a dilemma between either enduring abuse or experiencing abandonment, trauma may become preferred to abandonment.

There is, however, more to this process. The abuse also takes the child's experience from one of being abandoned, unseen, unrecognised, unimportant, to one of being seen and recognised. In other words, the abuse itself prevents the child from feeling abandoned, unseen, and inexistent. As such, the child may also begin to regard it as a form of recognition. “If I am abused, I exist, I am seen. If I am not abused, I feel irrelevant and may be abandoned.” The unconscious conclusion one may carry based on this is “To feel seen and to keep others close, I need to experience trauma.”

These internal conclusions occur outside of child's awareness and remain buried deeply within the unconscious. They form parts of the child's identity, and are carried forward into their adulthood, where they may cause one to engage in relationships that are either overtly abusive or where one is used and treated as an object.

The issue, however, is often that the person who endures abuse or trauma also often remains unaware of it.

Because of these experiences, the person develops a blind spot for abuse—perhaps not all of it, but most often at least some of it. As such, the abuse may either be justified or unseen. It is not uncommon for a person to become aware of these violations, as well as the past ones, only once they engage in psychotherapy and explore their unconscious experiences.

There are numerous examples of such re-enactments of childhood trauma in romantic relationships.

Consider a person who keeps wondering why all her relationships begin as loving and with lots of passion and infatuation, only to end with her being rejected. Perhaps, with rejection, she realises that the other person never cared as much as she thought, and she only ended up being used each time. In psychotherapy, she may learn that, when she was a child, her authenticity was crushed by her parents' narcissism as they wanted her to fulfil their own dreams rather than hers. She may also realise that she was re-enacting her trauma by attracting romantic partners using her sexuality and seeking partners who appeared confident. This made her prone to attract narcissistic men who lacked the capacity for intimacy and used her to meet their own needs while never attempting to commit. In psychotherapy, she may gain full awareness of how she was used by men. Such awareness may not only shift her experience of the men she dated but also her experience of herself. She may begin to fully see how she sees herself as an object, ready to be used by others. She may realise how closely this parallels her childhood. Because it was then when she buried her experience of being objectified deeply into her unconscious in order not to see the narcissism in her parents and so that she can continue experiencing them as loving. Namely, becoming fully aware of how she allows others to treat her as an object may help her see her romantic partners’ narcissism. This, in turn, may cause her to feel less connected, cared for, and loved in relationships, resulting in feelings of loneliness, abandonment, helplessness, and despair.

Re-Enactments of Controlling Parenting

Re-enactments are not only isolated to overt trauma. They occur with various adverse childhood experiences and may involve any psychological disconnection between the parent and the child—also experiences of controlling parenting.

A child that is excessively controlled by their parents may not internalise this as a reflection of the parent’s own insecurities and dependency, but rather as “I am being controlled because I am incompetent and incapable.” This way, the child can see the parent as competent whilst attributing the parent’s excessive controlling behaviour to the child’s own inadequacies. The perception of oneself as incompetent, dependent, inadequate, and unable to tackle adult world becomes a part of the child’s identity, influencing not only their relationships as an adult, but also their sense of self.

As without guidance such individual may find adult life difficult, confusing, and overwhelming, they may seek out partners that provide guidance. However, whilst they may have grown to resent the control from others because of the trauma from their childhood, seeking guidance often makes them end up in controlling relationships. So, whilst on one hand they may resent being controlled and may perceive it as engulfing, suffocating, and as losing freedom, they may unconsciously seek it as it prevents them from feeling lost, alone, and directionless.

Searching for the Opposite to How the Parent May Have Been

While a person tends to re-enact childhood trauma by unconsciously seeking romantic partners that somehow resemble their parents’ "traumatising" characteristics, the reality is usually much more complex.

It is not uncommon for a person to find themselves in a romantic relationship with someone who seemingly may be the opposite of how their parent was.

A person who may have experienced their parents as punitive, controlling, perhaps even sadistic or aggressive, may continuously find themselves involved in romantic relationships with partners that, on the surface, seem quite different. Perhaps they are mellow, aloof, withdrawn, disinterested, avoidant, depressed, or in some way need to be taken care of.

Intuitively, finding a partner who is the opposite of the punitive parent may seem like a solution against the re-enactment of early childhood trauma. However, what we often see is that such relationships may then bring up feelings of not being seen, lacking freedom and feeling engulfed, or feeling like the person needs to take care of their partner and act as a substitute parent to them. In other words, while one may seemingly be escaping the trauma of the past by searching for a partner that is different to what they experienced as a child, they may, in fact, be re-experiencing other aspects of the same trauma.

To conclude, re-enactments of childhood experiences in romantic relationships are complex and multilayered processes. They are unique to the person and need to be assessed individually. Even though it may not seem so on the surface, the relational dynamics between romantic partners almost without exception reveal some form of re-enactment from the person’s past. And, to break away from these re-enactments, it is important to bring them into awareness and allow them to be worked through.

Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor

Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.

References:

Busby, D. M., Walker, E. C., & Holman, T. B. (2011). The association of childhood trauma with perceptions of self and the partner in adult romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 18(4), 547–561. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01316.x

Dereboy, Ç., Demirkapi, E. Ş., Şakiroğlu, M., & Öztürk, C. Ş. (2018). The relationship between childhood traumas, identity development, difficulties in emotion regulation and psychopathology. Türk Psikiyatri Dergisi, 29(4), 147–156. https://doi.org/10.5080/u20463

Huh, H. J., Kim, S. Y., Yu, J. J., & Chae, J. H. (2014). Childhood trauma and adult interpersonal relationship problems in patients with depression and anxiety disorders. Annals of general psychiatry, 13, 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12991-014-0026-y

Kouvelis, G., & Kangas, M. (2021). Evaluating the Association Between Interpersonal Trauma and Self-Identity: A Systematic Review. Traumatology (Tallahassee, Fla.), 27(2), 118–148. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000325

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2017). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.