Multiple hurtful relationships can indicate an untreated trauma history.
Key points
- Having many hurtful relationships can indicate a traumatic childhood event left untreated.
- Capacity to feel fear and experience fight-or-flight is often replaced by freeze or detachment from feeling.
- Coping strategies are distorted and can leave one vulnerable to another in a relationship.
- EMDR is helpful for floating back to identify and process earlier trauma that impacts current functioning.
Victims of intimate partner abuse (IPA) who find themselves repeating harmful relationships most likely have early life experiences that contribute to their vulnerability to perpetrators. Vulnerability does not in any way imply responsibility—that lies solely with the person perpetrating the abuse.
Past exposure to abuse, neglect, or violence can shape a person’s coping skills, self-worth, and learned understanding of what makes up normal or acceptable behavior, increasing future vulnerability. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 2026)
What’s missing is the connection a child develops with his or her emotions that can then be distorted when a caretaker cannot help to identify, name, accept, tolerate, or regulate emotions (Mosquera, 2021).
During childhood, when unhealthy relational dynamics are present and repeated, there is a greater likelihood that those harmful experiences get internalized. When this occurs, both victims and perpetrators can be born. At an early age, some perpetrators learn to counterbalance through blaming others and the use of aggression, while victims might lean toward types of submission (Mosquera, 2021). These behaviors used in the service of self-protection can become well-established coping strategies that show up in future relationships.
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