When Love Is A Trigger

*This blog includes topics of abuse both emotionally and physically. If those topics will be triggering for you, I urge you not to read further.*

There is a unique kind of grief that comes from trying to heal while still believing you’re unworthy of healing.

That’s where I live. Somewhere between hope and hypervigilance. Longing for love, yet paralysed by the thought of receiving it. I don’t know how to trust the soft anymore, because every time I’ve let someone close, they’ve left me a little more hollow than they found me.

I wish that sounded poetic.

It’s not. It’s just my reality.

The man who said he loved me was sleeping with someone else. I remember the moment I found out, how everything inside me collapsed, like a cathedral set alight from within. The betrayal wasn’t just sexual. It was spiritual. He took the trust I’d built brick by careful brick and shattered it like it was disposable. Casual.

And then there was the one who didn’t take no for an answer.

The first time, I froze. I said no. Clearly. Quietly. But clearly.

He didn’t stop.

I told myself I must have been unclear. That maybe I miscommunicated.

But no. He heard me. He simply didn’t care.

That moment rewired my nervous system. I can barely be touched now without wondering if I’m allowed to say stop and be believed.

And before them both, there was the one who never raised his voice, never struck me, but made me doubt the truth of my own emotions. Gaslighting isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet erosion. He told me I was “too sensitive” when I expressed hurt. “Too dramatic” when I cried. “Too much” when I needed comfort. And so, I became less. I muted myself to maintain the illusion of peace. But the silence was deafening.

Each of them, in their own way, taught me that love was conditional. Transactional. Dangerous.

So now, when someone good enters the frame, a kind man, with warm hands and honest eyes, I don’t lean in. I retreat. I catastrophise kindness. I study his words like a legal brief, searching for loopholes, for signs of insincerity. I test him without meaning to. I punish him for crimes he hasn’t committed. I expect betrayal. I anticipate coercion. I assume manipulation.

Because that’s all I’ve ever known. And somewhere deep inside me, I still believe that’s all I’m worthy of.

I’ve tried to love again. But each time I do, the ghosts pull up a chair.

The silence after I share something vulnerable? An ex used to use that same silence to punish me.

The man says he’s tired? An ex used “tired” as a cover for lustful nights spent with someone else.

The man says he respects my pace? I panic. Because the last one said that too, right before he didn’t stop when I said no. And even again he ignored when I pleaded.

The trauma doesn’t knock politely. It just arrives, uninvited, and rewrites the story before it can begin.

The most maddening part? I ruin it. Not them. Me.

I sabotage. I disconnect. I walk away from men who actually see me, because I don’t trust the mirror they’re holding up. Because they reflect back a version of me I don’t yet believe in. Whole. Deserving. Sacred.

And I’m terrified that I’ll never be able to let them in.

I try to remind myself that the things done to me do not define what I deserve. That the fact some men saw me as a body before a person doesn’t mean that’s all men ever will. That the pain I’ve survived does not make me damaged, it makes me discerning.

But late at night, when I lie awake rehearsing every conversation, every text I shouldn’t have sent, every silence I misread, that voice returns:

This is why you’ll end up alone.

You’re too much work.

No man wants a broken woman.

I know that voice isn’t truth. But it’s familiar. And in moments of fear, familiarity often masquerades as safety.

I’m still single. Not by choice, but by consequence.

Not because I don’t want love. But because the love I long for feels foreign. And I’m afraid that if I reach for it, I’ll contaminate it with all the fear I carry.

And yet, I haven’t given up hope.

Because I believe there is a man, somewhere, who will not mistake my caution for coldness.

Who will see the shaking in my hands and not recoil but stay.

Who will understand that my hesitance is not rejection, it’s residue.

And I believe that love, the real kind, will not flinch at my ruins. It will walk carefully among them, not trying to rebuild what was, but honouring what is.

So no, this isn’t a story with a tidy resolution.

I haven’t found him. I haven’t healed. I’m not “over it.”

But I’m surviving. I’m showing up. I’m learning to sit with the discomfort of being loved and not immediately fleeing the scene.

And if you’ve been where I am, if you too flinch at softness, if your past relationships have made it almost impossible to believe in goodness again, I want to tell you something:

You are not too broken.

You are not too far gone.

You are not too much.

You are someone who has lived through hell and still dares to hope for heaven.

And that? That is holy.