What are the Symptoms and Triggers of Betrayal Trauma

Inadequate intimacy or connection might rekindle these past longings, resulting in a profound craving for love that is satisfied in the marriage.

There are different ways in which partners protect themselves, which results in a sense of deprivation in the marriage.

1. You refrain from expressing your emotions in order to prevent conflict.

At times, disagreement can be overpowering, and you may be hesitant to say something that would offend your partner. The inability to express one’s sentiments might result in feelings of humiliation, remorse, or rejection. As a result, you refrain from expressing yourself and suppress your emotions in order to prevent conflict.

Approaching another person and expressing one’s concerns might reactivate attachment stress, making it safer to withdraw when fearful of the other person’s reply.

2. You maintain a safe distance in order to avoid feeling wounded or rejected.

If you internalized the concept that your needs are unimportant and felt uneasy expressing them as a child, this can result in a permanent pattern of shutting it down and failing to communicate your feelings.

You may seem distant, detached, and stonewall in order to avoid feeling shunned for just how you feel. This may force you to withdraw from your relationship and isolate yourself, keeping your emotions locked inside. It may feel risky to express your emotions to your partner.

If your emotions get overwhelming, you may rely on another person who may understand. Then you develop affections for this other person who you think understands you, thus eroding your relationship with your spouse.

3. You’re feeling lonely and have reached a point of hopelessness.

Once you’ve removed yourself from your spouse, the end outcome is typically a sense of isolation and despair.

As your desire for a secure connection grows stronger, you attempt to meet your needs through another person.

4. You create a misleading impression that everything is good so your needs are neglected.

You may have alienated your partner by failing to communicate your feelings. You might be puzzled why they don’t pick up on your emotions when you have brushed them aside.

You may harbor latent resentment toward your spouse if the relationship appears to be all about them and not about you. When the connection becomes overpowering for you, you cannot hear how they are experiencing. It appears as though it becomes about another person’s needs rather than yours, prompting you to close down even more and desire to flee.

The partnership may feel depriving, prompting you to seek a safer refuge elsewhere. You may say the right things to avoid disagreement and maintain peace, but deep within there is a yearning for intimacy and a void that keeps you dissatisfied with your relationship.

5. You have unsatisfied emotional demands and a strong desire for love.

When you are unable to explain yourself or reach out to your partner, the affair is frequently a final choice for meeting your unmet emotional demands.

Related: What is Generational Trauma?

When you feel neglected and lack self-love on a deep level, you may find yourself looking for love outside of yourself, hoping to meet that particular person who will compensate for your unfulfilled wants, longings, and yearnings.

When you’ve spent your entire life searching for your perfect soul mate, you might invest everything in your marriage in order to experience the sensation of being loved. You can put your wishes and aspirations onto them, even to the point of sacrificing your own interests and becoming self-absorbed, in order to obtain the love you’ve always desired.

6. You sacrifice your identity and self-worth for the marriage.

At moments, it can feel as like you’re tending to everyone’s demands, until you realize your own aren’t being addressed and you fall out of love, trying to find someone who can fit your requirements from outside your marriage.

Regardless of how deeply you like your partner, you run the risk of losing yourself in the service of your family or marriage. You stifle your wants or give up on yourself in the assumption that making everybody else happy will bring you happiness.

Your defenses against feeling unwanted drive you to invalidate yourself. You can lose touch with your ‘self’ and become unsure of your wants or how to communicate them in your relationship. As a result, you make an automatic assumption that your spouse will match your needs without articulating them or revealing your most intimate sentiments. As a result, your needs are not addressed.

7. You point the finger at your partner when your needs are not met.

The reality is that you are disconnected from your true self and unable to communicate yourself to get your concerns met. Rather than that, you fixate on how your spouse is failing to meet your needs, leaving you feeling unwanted and abandoned.

8. You are unable to communicate yourself or your demands.

The more you criticize your partner for your sentiments, the further you withdraw from your spouse and fail to communicate your wants or feelings inside the marriage. As a result, you look for the fulfillment of your wants outside of your marriage.

9. You wish to liberate yourself from the emptiness within.

Oftentimes, the misery and despair associated with falling out of love are caused by the shattering realization that not just your partner, but also no one else, can satisfy those unmet longings or needs.

Rather than addressing the source of the grief, the seek for love persists outside of the relationship. Nothing ever feels sufficient to fill the void and desolation left by a love-deprived inner child.