Why love slips away. Trauma and relationships.

A difficult past — the quiet saboteur of adult relationships

We often think what happened in childhood is a closed chapter. We tell ourselves, “I’m an adult now; I have my own life.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Psychology has long stressed that early experiences — especially adverse ones — become an invisible template for how we build adult relationships.

The impact of childhood trauma on couples became the focus of a study by Ahva Rashin Mozafari and Xiaomeng Xu from the Department of Psychology at Idaho State University. They invited people with insecure attachment — those with low self-esteem, difficulty trusting, and frequent shifts in behaviour — to take part.

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People with this profile may obsessively crave closeness while also showing anger and impulsiveness. That attachment style develops in childhood, often as a result of emotional neglect by caregivers. It leads to emotional insecurity and fear of rejection in adult partnerships.

The Idaho team examined how traumatic childhood experiences and attachment style affect conflict management in romantic relationships — how conflicts unfold and the strategies people use to resolve them.

365 U.S. students took part. They completed surveys on three areas:

• traumatic experiences across the lifespan;
• the presence of relationship conflicts and strategies for resolving them;
• how people emotionally bond with others in close relationships.

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Participants with insecure attachment were less likely to seek compromise during conflict. They more often reacted aggressively, tried to control a partner or decisions, and were more inclined to end the relationship altogether. The number of traumatic experiences was less tied to aggressive reactions but somewhat more to the tendency to break up — according to the study’s analysis.

“Insecure attachment was significantly and positively associated with reactivity in interactions, dominance, submission, and separation, and significantly negatively associated with compromise,” the study summary in Sexual and Relationship Therapy notes.

The researchers showed a measurable influence of childhood trauma on adult relationships and on how partners handle conflict. Still, the survey results should be read with caution: participants self-reported their histories, so memory gaps could affect accuracy — a reminder to contextualise findings when discussing trauma and relationships.

Read this article in Polish: Miłość wymyka Ci się z rąk? Klucz tkwi w dzieciństwie