Why We Can’t Let Go: The Psychology of Trauma Bonds

Many of us know what it’s like to hold on to someone we know isn’t good for us. The mind understands the relationship is unhealthy, yet we continue to ache with longing, oftentimes behaving like an addict who goes back for more. The moment we try to pull away, the anxiety feels unbearable – almost as if detachment were a threat to survival.

On social media this dynamic is commonly labeled as “trauma bonding.” Beneath that popular buzzword lies something far more complex: the interplay between early attachment wounds, the body’s memory of safety and danger, and the unconscious repetition of what is most familiar.

Trauma bonding isn’t an attachment to an abusive person or the connection formed over a mutual traumatic experience. It’s related to the concept of repetition compulsion: an unconscious drive to recreate unresolved emotional experiences from the past in the hope of finally mastering them. We are drawn to what feels familiar, not necessarily to what is good for us.

If, in childhood, love was intertwined with inconsistency, fear, or shame, we learn to associate closeness with tension. We internalize the message that love must be earned. Later in life, the nervous system mistakes that familiar charge of danger for chemistry. The person who activates our wounds feels intoxicating: not because they’re our soulmate, but because they echo our earliest attachments.

This can become a kind of addiction. Intermittent reinforcement – the unpredictable mix of closeness and withdrawal – powerfully strengthens attachment. In volatile relationships, brief ‘repair’ moments can feel especially rewarding after stress. Oxytocin released during intimacy can further deepen attachment, even when the overall pattern is harmful. Even on a physiological level, stress and comfort become fused. We chase the very person who keeps us dysregulated, because our system equates relief with love.

Breaking this cycle requires more than logic or willpower. It can begin with awareness: learning to recognize the pattern Ask yourself:

● What emotional experience does this relationship recreate?

● When did I first feel this combination of longing, fear, and hope?

● What part of me still believes that love requires suffering?

Healing also involves building the capacity to self-regulate: to soothe the nervous system without relying on the relationship.

In therapy, we commonly explore these dynamics through the transference — the way old relational patterns surface in the therapeutic relationship itself. When those patterns are understood and handled in healthier ways, a new internal model for relationships can begin to form. Over time, the nervous system can learn that connection and safety can coexist.

When we understand that the pull we feel is not destiny, we can reclaim our power to choose differently. When we stop endlessly chasing connection and repair in the same places that hurt us, healing can begin.