Trauma Mismatch in Couples: When Her Space Is His Abandonment (And Tuesday Is a Minefield)
Thursday April 3, 2025.
You love each other. You really do. You both even go to therapy.
You read The Body Keeps the Score together (well, she did the book, he watched the YouTube summary with dramatic voiceover). You say things like “regulation” and “somatic” with astounding fluency.
And still—you keep tripping over each other like two people trying to dance in different time zones.
Welcome to the world of trauma mismatch, where your early wounds don’t just coexist in your relationship—they collide, with sparks, sobs, and occasional ghosting.
What Is Trauma Mismatch?
Trauma mismatch is the emotionally thrilling, utterly exhausting dynamic where two people with very different trauma histories accidentally become each other’s emotional triggers.
Examples:
One partner grew up with neglect: silence, distance, unpredictability. Now they crave closeness and panic at withdrawal.
The other partner grew up with enmeshment: no boundaries, no privacy, overbearing love-as-control. Now they crave space and suffocate in intimacy.
Together, they reenact their childhoods in reverse.
She pulls back to breathe. He interprets it as abandonment.
He leans in for connection. She experiences it as suffocation.
They’re both right. And both haunted.
The Meme Version
Let’s not pretend we aren’t already memeing this in our group chats:
“She needs space to regulate. He sees space as abandonment. Welcome to Tuesday.”
“Couples therapy: where two trauma patterns enter, and only one cry-laugh survives.”
“My childhood wound just met yours, and now we're calling it intimacy.”
It’s funny because it’s true. It’s also funny because the alternative is crying into a weighted blanket while doom-scrolling Attachment Theory TikToks.
How This Shows Up in Couples Therapy
Therapists see this dynamic constantly. It often shows up sounding like:
“I just need time to think!”
“Why are you shutting me out?”
“I’m trying to be close.”
“Why are you smothering me?”
But underneath those words is a much older, unspoken sentence:
“Please don’t make me feel the thing I’ve been avoiding since childhood.”
The slow horror of trauma mismatch is that both partners are trying to stay safe, and in doing so, inadvertently threaten the other’s safety.
The Attachment Angle: Protest vs. Retreat
From an attachment theory perspective:
The neglected partner often develops an Anxious Attachment style: “Please don’t leave me.”
The enmeshed partner leans Avoidant: “Please don’t consume me.”
Together, they form a loop:
Anxious protest → Avoidant withdrawal → More protest → More withdrawal → Passive-aggressive leftovers in the fridge.
As Sue Johnson would say, this isn’t a communication issue. It’s a primal panic loop.
Contrasting Research: But Wait—Aren’t We Supposed to Heal Each Other?
Now here’s where the science gets spicy.
Argument A: “We attract what we need to heal.”
Some trauma-informed therapists and authors argue that we unconsciously seek out partners who mirror our unmet needs, believing that love can re-parent us. This is the "wounded healer couple" model, supported by writers like Harville Hendrix (Getting the Love You Want, 1988).
The Big Idea: We recreate our earliest wounds in adult relationships—not out of masochism, but in hopes of repair.
Argument B: “No, this is co-dysregulation. You should run.”
Trauma researchers like Bessel van der Kolk (2014) and Janina Fisher (2017) suggest that relationships between unresolved trauma survivors often result in mutual dysregulation, not healing.
The nervous systems involved are too reactive, too raw.
These couples can heal—but not without serious support and often time apart.
So which is it?
Answer: Yes.
Healing can happen—but only when both partners stop trying to heal each other and start healing themselves in parallel. Otherwise, they just trigger each other in increasingly creative ways.
Neurodivergence Complicates the Story
Trauma mismatch is often mistaken for a neurodivergence problem:
“She’s dysregulated because of autism.”
“He’s flooded because of ADHD.”
But it’s far more complicated than that.
Research suggests that neurodivergent souls often experience higher rates of trauma (Kerns et al., 2015), which means the lines between trauma response and neurological processing get really blurry. I see this in my public mental health clinic nearly every day.
One partner might need space due to sensory overload, while the other interprets that as emotional abandonment—not because of immaturity, but because of their own past.
It’s not just that you see the world differently. It’s that you see each other’s behavior through a trauma-tinted lens.
What Actually Helps
A few things, but none of them are quick:
Name It, Don’t Blame It
Say the thing: “I think we might have opposite trauma responses.”
Then pause before diagnosing each other like underpaid therapists.
Create Rituals of Safety
Instead of demanding closeness or fleeing into silence, try rituals:
“When you need space, say how long. I’ll trust you to come back.”
“When I reach for you, tell me gently if now isn’t the time.”
Do Your Own Work, Together
The way I prefer to work this is to embrace the obvious paradox.
In our sessions, I guide each partner to work on their trauma in front of the other, so that the therapeutic experience becomes a site of witnessing—not fixing.
Trauma mismatch is an essential idea in neuroscience and trauma informed couples therapy. Trauma mismatch finally names something people feel but don’t know how to explain.
It’s not that you’re incompatible.
It’s that your emotional GPS systems are calibrated by entirely different maps of pain.
And yet—you're trying to navigate the same road, together.
The challenge isn’t to become the same.
It’s to learn each other’s pacing, signals, and triggers, like emotional cartographers.
Which is just a fancy way of saying:
“When I pull away, I still love you.”
“When I reach for you, I’m not trying to trap you.”
“Let’s build a third nervous system—one that can hold both of us.”
Trauma Mismatch in Couples: Attachment Triggers, Polyvagal Theory, and the Myth of Mutual Healing
You’re not crazy.
You’re just in love with someone whose trauma rhythm clashes perfectly with your own.
It’s like jazz, but with abandonment issues.
Where one partner’s silence triggers a childhood wound, and the other’s need for closeness feels like being emotionally mugged.
Let’s Go Deeper: The Nervous System as Relationship Third Wheel
Trauma mismatch isn't just about two different childhoods.
It’s about two nervous systems reacting in real-time to ancient alarms.
According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (2011), our autonomic nervous system constantly scans for danger—what he calls “neuroception.” When it perceives a threat, we drop into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
In trauma mismatch relationships:
Partner A (abandonment history): perceives withdrawal as a threat → pursues for connection.
Partner B (enmeshment history): perceives pursuit as engulfment → retreats for safety.
Each partner thinks the other is unsafe. Neither realizes their nervous system is acting like a very dramatic, slightly confused bouncer.
Contrasting Models: Reenactment vs. Regulation
Here’s where things get interesting.
Model 1: The Healing Reenactment Hypothesis
Popularized by Harville Hendrix and Imago Theory, this model suggests that we unconsciously select partners who will help us “finish” our childhood wounds.
"Conflict in a relationship is the voice of the wounded inner child looking for healing."
— Hendrix, 1988
The promise: If you stay with your opposite, lean in, and do the work, you’ll emerge healed and whole—like an emotional butterfly who used to be codependent.
Model 2: The Nervous System Dysregulation Hypothesis
In contrast, trauma clinicians like Janina Fisher and Bessel van der Kolk argue that some trauma pairings lead to mutual dysregulation, where partners inadvertently re-traumatize each other—no matter how well-intentioned they are.
"Traumatized people simultaneously fear connection and are driven by a longing for it. This ambivalence plays out in relationships with painful regularity."
— Fisher, 2017
The contradiction? One model says, “Stay, heal, and grow.”
The other says, “Get regulated before you torch each other.”
Research Tension: Can Dysregulated Love Be Healed—or Is It Doomed?
The empirical jury is out. Here's what we know:
A 2016 study by Johnson & Zuccarini found that emotionally focused therapy (EFT) significantly improved trauma couples' capacity to co-regulate over time.
But a 2014 study by Cloitre et al. found that trauma survivors in romantic relationships without secure individual regulation showed higher rates of depressive symptoms, relational distress, and re-triggering.
The tension is clear:
With the right support, trauma mismatch can become trauma-informed intimacy.
Without support, it can become a trauma reenactment loop with decorative throw pillows.
Attachment Science Isn’t Always Your Friend
Let’s take a moment to thank—and side-eye—Attachment Theory, which gave us labels like Anxious, Avoidant, Secure, and Disorganized.
These are useful until they’re not.
Critics like Fraley and Roisman (2014) argue that attachment style is less stable and predictive over time than many pop-psych memes would have us believe. Context, mental health, and even hormones can shift attachment behaviors dramatically.
So while your trauma mismatch may look like anxious-avoidant hell, it could also be burnout, grief, sleep deprivation, or pandemic fatigue. Or—as Fraley puts it—“attachment style is not destiny.”
In other words, you’re not stuck. You’re just under-resourced.
This isn't just about "trauma bonding" (which has its own clickbait problems). It's about:
Attachment Trauma: unmet needs that shaped how you seek (or avoid) closeness.
Relational Triggers: those sudden panics that feel bigger than the moment.
Emotional Flashbacks: when your partner’s tone sends you straight back to age six.
Co-Regulation and Rupture: your ability (or inability) to soothe and be soothed together.
If these sound technical, don’t worry. They’re just fancy ways to say: “I want to be close, but sometimes you feel like danger.”
So What Actually Helps?
Glad you asked. A few research-backed strategies that work—if both people are game:
Name the Pattern, Not the Partner
“I think we’re triggering opposite responses in each other” is more useful than
“Why do you always disappear when I need you?”
This diffuses shame and gets both partners curious instead of defensive.
Ritualize Space and Return
Porges’ work shows that predictability builds safety. If one partner needs space, the key is not taking space but naming when they’ll return.
“I need an hour, and I’ll come back and hug you—even if I’m still quiet.”
Individual Nervous System Regulation
Before you can co-regulate, you have to self-regulate. This is not optional. Self-regulation precedes co-regulation.
Fisher’s model encourages couples to meet each other’s wounded parts with compassion, but only after each person has a secure relationship with their own inner chaos.
Final Thoughts: You’re Not a Bad Couple—You’re Just Time-Traveling Wrong
Trauma mismatch in couples will attract more notice clinically because it speaks to a modern paradox:
We are more trauma-literate than ever—and yet, we still keep triggering each other like it's our job.
Here’s the truth:
You might be each other’s wound.
You might be each other’s medicine.
You’re probably both.
The question is: Can you build an intentional shared nervous system that honors the pace, history, and wiring of both souls?
Because love isn't about avoiding triggers.
It’s about learning how to walk through each other’s haunted houses holding hands—without accidentally slamming the door behind you.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Cloitre, M., Stovall-McClough, K. C., Miranda, R., & Chemtob, C. M. (2004). Therapeutic alliance, negative mood regulation, and treatment outcome in child abuse-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(3), 411–416.
Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors. Routledge.
Hendrix, H. (1988). Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. St. Martin’s Press.
Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown Spark.
Kerns, C. M., Newschaffer, C. J., & Berkowitz, S. (2015). Trauma and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Review, Proposal for DSM-5, and Future Research Directions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(5), 1201–1221. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2377-3
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.