How relationship trauma blocks you from finding your soul mate
Starting a new relationship should never be the only (or main) reason for overcoming relationship trauma
So yes, it’s true – your relationship trauma may be the thing that’s blocking you from entering into a new relationship (or, even more importantly, a new and good relationship). And yes, it’s true – I’ve worked with people whose main motivation for wanting to work with me is so that they can get into a new relationship as quickly as possible. But I’ve never been comfortable with client who seem to have that as their only motivation for wanting to work with me. It just doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t think it should make sense to them either. You should want to heal for your own sake first and foremost, and you deserve to heal. Being in a much better position to find a good partner – and ideally a true soul mate – should be viewed as an added benefit of the therapy process and not its main purpose.
It’s also extremely important to appreciate that it’s totally fine to be single and to not even want a relationship. If that’s where you’re at, then great! Celebrate your freedom and independence! Being single has many advantages, and for some people those advantages outweigh the advantages of being in a relationship.
However, if that’s not you – if you actually really, really want a relationship but feel blocked from being able to have one (or have a good one) because of your relationship trauma – then overcoming that sense of being blocked, and reaching the point of feeling that you do have the confidence and the ability to ‘put yourself out there,’ and find the right person, can be an important part of the process of fully recovering from relationship trauma for you.
How relationship trauma blocks you from finding a soul mate
What is a “soul mate”? A soul mate, as defined by relationship expert John Gray (author of the famous self-help book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus) is simply someone with whom you’re able to feel deeply comfortable to be in a relationship with. They may not be perfect (they almost certainly aren’t) and yet, as he puts it, they feel somehow perfect for you.
There are many different ways in which relationship trauma can prevent someone from finding a soul mate. The most obvious is that it may, and often does, prevents people from exploring the possibility of entering into a new relationship. These are the cases where people simply feel so traumatised by their past experiences and pessimistic about the prospects of ever finding someone good that they reach the reluctant conclusion: “I just can’t be bothered as it’ll never work.”
But there are many, many other ways in which relationship trauma can prevent people from finding good relationships. These include:
Being emotionally unavailable within relationships due to the trauma.
In these instances, people may have the ability to initiate the first stages of a relationship, but lack the ability to be emotionally available within the relationship, often leading to relationship break-down.
Expecting too much or too little of their partner.
People may have the unrealistic expectation that their partner should be deeply understanding of all of their emotional difficulties, and the ability to help them with them, leading to bitter disappointment when those expectations go unmet. Or, alternatively, they may fall into the opposite extreme attitude of thinking that their partner can’t be expected to understand or empathise with them about anything just because they can’t understand all aspects of their psychological pain.
Actively seeking out people with whom they can replay old dramas.
The strangest and most dangerous way in which relationship trauma can prevent people from finding their soul mate is by causing them to actively seek out someone who in some way resembles the person who traumatised them in the past in the hope that they can replay the same drama as before, but with a different ending. This tends to lead to them getting hurt again – making a bad situation worse.
Fully overcoming relationship trauma involves overcoming all of these attitudes and obstacles to healthy dating and relationships.
Overcoming relationship trauma doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find a soul mate… but you should do it anyway
Last, but not least, it needs to be honestly acknowledged that whilst overcoming relationship trauma will allow you to overcome the ways in which you may be blocking yourself from finding a soul mate, it obviously doesn’t guarantee that you will find one. That depends upon many other things in addition to overcoming your relationship trauma (e.g. life circumstances that provide you with the opportunity to meet the right person). However, that shouldn’t discourage you from taking the necessary steps to overcome your relationship trauma. As already stated: You should want to heal for your own sake first and foremost, and you deserve to heal.
