Don't Let a Bad Childhood Run Your Dating Life - 3 Strategies

Three strategies to prevent childhood trauma from controlling your dating life.

By Patrick Teahan

so if you found yourself in a pattern of choosing bad partners and having a really hard time finding a healthy relationship this video is for you if you come from a background of a dysfunctional family in a toxic family system that tends to drive our relationships and that's usually the root cause of why our relationships don't really work out i'm patrick tian li csw childhood trauma specialist and i work with adults who have been through childhood trauma and in much of my individual sessions and groups best sessions we spend a lot of time talking about how to find a healthy partner what to look for and what are the things that drive us to be attracted to people who might be toxic or unavailable or both those things in short I don't really think that anybody really knows how to date it's not in Western culture we don't really sort of I don't think we talked about it in family systems so there isn't really a blueprint about how to sort of date but I find that for people who come from dysfunctional family systems is it tends to be a little bit more messy no actually a lot more messy so if you have found yourself dating people and there tends to be some trauma bonding going on where you're deeply codependent with somebody and you both have sort of low standards and you kind of both take care of each other in a locked way that isn't really functional or healthy or if you tend to date a certain type of person whether they're sort of a narcissistic person if you tend to date someone with addictive qualities or even if you tend to date kind of like you know seemingly healthy people like they look good on paper but you miss major red flags and you end up in a place of kind of like really confused about how you got there and what did you miss we're gonna get into why that all happens and how to avoid it so here's what we're going to cover in this video we're gonna cover three things the first thing is what the pattern of unhealthy dating feels like and where it takes us number two why we tend to date the wrong people and number three we're gonna look at three healthy qualities to look for in a potential partner so when we start dating somebody and we become smitten with them or an with them were really into them trauma survivors tend to look at this person through tunnel vision and we don't see the potential mess that lies underneath it's what this person has going on this is very important because we tend to miss major red flags because we only look at the person's good qualities so I know the video just started but I gotta say that this is probably the most important thing that I want you guys to walk away with having tunnel vision is usually what gets you into trouble by not paying attention to what is really going on with the person because we so we're so desperate to make something work and we're so into the person so this is why it's important to really take our time and be thoughtful you'll see what I mean in the steps later and our tunnel vision is driven by our childhoods our negative core beliefs recently did a video on that and also our rush to be in a relationship we usually want a relationship really fast this leaves us making poor choices and we get caught in a power struggle with the wrong person and this leaves us more hopeless than when we started dating so why do we tend to date the wrong people well this is complicated when we grow up in trauma and dysfunction it leads to having unfinished business which is essentially our issues and that leads to trying to fix our childhood issues with our present partners meaning that we try to get somebody to see us to love us to listen to us and we also might spend a lot of time trying to get somebody to wake up for us this leads to finding people that replicate our parents in some way we go with what is familiar meaning if we are familiar with somebody shut down we might be attracted to somebody who is shut down we also tend to have a broken radar system a healthy person has a working radar system that catches the red flags of dating and sees them upfront but when you grow up in trauma you usually spend a lot of time not trusting your own person option spending a lot of times second-guessing yourself and second-guessing other people and to be honest we often our poor judges of character when we grow up with crazy we have a hard time seeing it when it comes up making the radar system broken trauma survivors tend to have an approach to dating where their stakes are too high and the bar is too low meaning that out of desperation loneliness and not thinking we can do any better we take a gamble on people and our standards are too low that we usually end up frustrated and baffled why it doesn't work and what all this means is we need to take a different approach where we need to be more discerning and we need to take our time and slow things down to make sure the person is a good fit we also need to aim higher so like the tunnel vision thing the high stakes and low bar is super important where I think when you guys are on a date or when you start to dating someone or think back to your prior relationships you probably knew you were either going too fast or making a bad choice in some way maybe not so much in the front of your mind but somewhere in there you might have known and I want you guys to really pay attention to that part of you that is your gut sometimes you trust your gut and sometimes you don't but if you approach your dating life from a little bit of sort of desperation and impatience and having low standards it's not gonna work you're not gonna find that the partner that you want so I want you guys to really take a step away from this and start doing things differently here are three qualities of healthy partners and what to watch out for when dating number one low neuroticism neuroticism by definition means anxiety worry fear anger frustration envy jealousy guilt depressed mood and loneliness I'm gonna be throwing a lot of stuff at you guys right now so this is a lot soloed eroticism the list on the left is more of what I call submissive neuroticism the list on the right is more aggressive narcissism think about prior partners pause the video and go over this list and think about did any prior partners exhibit some of these stuff in essence what we're looking for in our dating life to ask ourselves is the person that you're dating are they an easy person or they're a difficult person everybody has stuff but we want a minimal amount of stuff that is manageable number two we want our potential partners to have a high ability of self reflection is the person psyche minded if you're watching this video chances are that your psyche minded and would you or the person you're dating would they be into the video as well has the person been through some experiences have they been through some stuff and learned from it have they come out the other side of some bad relationships and grown and lastly are they on some kind of path of recovery are they in a 12-step program do they do therapy do they do meditation do they do anything but beware some people can talk a good game about being self reflective but do they walk the talk anybody can post like an inspirational mean but that doesn't mean that they have a good high sense of self reflection in short is the person you're dating are they aware of what they do and why they do it number three we want our partner to have a high ability to own their part think about your parents ability to own their part and you'll see what I mean can the person you're dating are they able to stay present during conflict and listen can they tolerate being wrong if that happens do they get that their behaviors affect others and most importantly do they actually change their behavior after discussions about it or bumps in short is this person compassionate and mature in a relationship so those are the three qualities of looking for a healthy partner and I want to challenge you guys and maybe you're already thinking of this is where do you lie in these three qualities you know if someone's dating you do you kind of bring in too much neuroticism do you need to be working on are you self-reflective do you sort of know why you do things or and how you do things and do you have the ability to be able to own your part and conflict without being too defensive it's not just about you know where our dating life can often fail is sort of what we bring into it as well so it's important to sort of sort of judge yourself against these three qualities and if you don't really have that kind of going on to be nobody's perfect but to be working towards it I think that working on an eroticism is a huge step forward when it comes to stuff so to recap number one low neuroticism what that means is the person is really secure and confident number two high self-reflection what that means is the person has insight and is into personal growth in some way number three they have a high ability to own their part meaning that they're not driven by shame in their relationships so at this point after looking at those three qualities you guys are probably thinking magical unicorn it's never gonna happen this person isn't out there and you know I know what you mean and part of you is right I'm not sort of saying that you need to find the person with these three qualities only but what I am saying is like these three qualities is I want you to be thinking about these three things when you are on a date you're gonna meet a person who's not gonna fit this bill but I want you to be thinking about meeting a person that's different than your norm that's different than your usual person that you might be attracted to or find yourself with so I very much get that it's and these standards are impossible these three things but it's not about that it's looking at it a good-enough way because you could meet somebody who is like kind of highly neurotic but they're really working on it or they're they're neurotic in a way but they really are able to own their part in things and be self-reflective so doesn't have to be perfect in any way so I hope this video was helpful to you guys and I wanted to end with an analogy that I give in my group coming back to the dysfunctional family system when I'm having this discussion in groups I'll give a hypothetical about dating in our teenage years which i think is read you know in Western culture that's when sort of like you know young adults start to date and they go on their first dates and they're had their first crushes and first falling in love and children even at that age need a lot of help the hypothetical that I give is that teenager goes on a date with somebody and you know Pizza the movies that kind of a thing and then they come back and that the premise of this hypothetical is that that this is a healthy family system the kids coming from a healthy family system so they go on their first date and they come back and they go to their mom the mom was like how was the date and the kid says well not really that great they just really just talked about themself the whole time and they made me pay for half of my pizza and it was just sort of kind of really awkward and I just kind of wanted to come and go home and they were on their phone a lot and the parent rightfully will be like whoa and then you know and then the kid says and you know then I agreed to go on another date with them and then the parent is there's the teaching moment is when the parent sort of says you know like well honey you know it's like it might not be a bad idea to you you have the right to change your mind and you know do you know why maybe you said yes and maybe the kid says something like oh we just kind of on the spot and I didn't want to hurt their feelings do you see kind of what I'm getting at is that a healthy parent in that place would say hey you have the right to change your mind and it's really important to date people that you kind of not only connect with but you feel like they can kind of be sort of available and kind of interested in you and they're not just kind of about themselves you know and I know the hypothetical is odd is maybe the kid that their kid went on a date with was and was nervous there's that quality too but the lesson is is to be able to give our children choice is to be able to give our children the ability to change their mind and take their time but more importantly is to allow our children to have the process of finding out who you like and to do that from a shame place chances are in the toxic family system this analogy is well first of all it's kind of a moot analogy because most likely if you're growing up in trauma dysfunction you don't talk to your parents about your dating life because it's probably not safe you're either going to be neglected in it or criticized in it or something like that but imagine in a toxic family system the parent might just kind of say like sort of like well you probably can't really do any better I've had clients that parents literally say that about their their children and they're their problems and relationships is that might as well as say you can't do any better and that's coming right from the horse's mouth so that might've been a little bit rambling but I hope you guys kind of get my point there is kids need a lot of help and this stuff this stuff is hard for anybody dating is hard at any age but it's it's amazing when we are able to find somebody that we really connect with and we feel safe with and we have this really really great connection with and I find that we can't really get to that person if we're approaching it from a place of having a broken heart so hope the video was helpful you guys subscribe hit the little bell notification ask questions and we'll see you next time thanks so much

Finding a healthy partner when you grew up in a toxic family system is complicated but not impossible. In this video, Patrick Teahan, LICSW speaks to childhood trauma survivors who keep finding themselves in unhealthy dating patterns — trauma-bonded relationships, codependent dynamics, magnetic pull toward narcissistic or addicted partners, or 'great on paper' people whose major red flags they somehow missed.

Patrick covers three things: what the pattern of unhealthy dating feels like and where it takes us, why trauma survivors are wired to pick the wrong people, and three specific qualities to look for in a potential partner that actually signal safety rather than performance. He places particular emphasis on tunnel vision — the way survivors fixate on the good qualities of a new person out of a desperation to make something work — and explains how it combines with negative core beliefs and the rush to be in a relationship to drive poor choices early on.

The video is framed less as a dating tips list and more as a challenge to slow down and pay attention to the pull itself. It is aimed at viewers who want to break the cycle of choosing partners from their unfinished childhood business and start dating from a more grounded adult place.

This video is part of the following playlists...

No items found.

This video is featured in...

No items found.

Want to go deeper?

Overcoming the Toxic Family System

Topics

Referenced videos

No items found.

Playlist

Referenced posts

No items found.

This article is related to...

Information provided is not intended to be a substitute for in person professional medical advice. It is not intended to replace the services of a therapist, physician, or other qualified professional, nor does it constitute a therapist-client or physician or quasi-physician relationship.

If you are, or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call a local emergency telephone number or go immediately to the nearest emergency room.

If you are having emotional distress, please utilize 911 or the National Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255

Don't Let a Bad Childhood Run Your Dating Life - 3 Strategies

This video is part of the following playlists...

This video is featured in...

Want to go deeper?

Overcoming the Toxic Family System

Topics

dating

toxic family systems

childhood trauma

blind spots

core beliefs

mirroring

Referenced videos

Playlist

Referenced posts

This article is related to...

Subscribe to the recovery newsletter loved by 1000s of survivors