Is Your Relationship Built on Healing or Hiding?

This is the second post in a two-part series. Read the first post here.

Source: StockSnap/Pixabay

“Sometimes, the most dangerous thing we can feel is relief.”​

Anna was not looking for love when she met Leo.

She was running from a relationship that had become a cage, from a boyfriend who made decisions for both of them without her input. She had emotionally left months before, but he hadn't. When she finally broke it off, he didn't take it well. He followed her. Waited outside her classes. Showed up at her apartment, uninvited, at all hours. Her friends got involved. But nothing worked. Her life had become a loop of fear.

Then, Leo appeared.

Was It Love—or Just a Way Out?

Leo was a casual connection—her uncle introduced them. But when Anna opened up about what she was going through, he didn't judge. He listened.

And when she asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend to get her ex to finally let go, he said yes.

Together, they staged a breakup meeting. It worked. Her ex disappeared.

And that night, for the first time in a long time, Anna felt a deep, quiet exhale. Not joy. Not passion. Just... relief.

That feeling can be dangerous. Not because it's wrong—but because it feels like salvation. Relief can masquerade as love. And the nervous system, after being stuck in fight-or-flight, will cling to anything that feels like peace—even if it's not the whole truth.

From a trauma-informed perspective, Anna wasn't simply falling in love. She was reenacting a survival pattern—one rooted in the body's physiology. According to O'Shea Brown (2021), when someone experiences prolonged emotional distress or coercive control, their nervous system may default to automatic trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The fawn response—in which a person overly attaches, appeases, or merges with someone perceived as safe—isn't weakness; it's the nervous system trying to create stability.

Recent research also shows that trauma can impair the brain's ability to accurately detect safety, especially in relationships. When the autonomic nervous system is dysregulated, as described by Garling (2024), people may misread calm or protective behavior as emotional intimacy, even if a deeper connection isn't present. In other words, Anna wasn't just drawn to Leo—her body mistook him for the exit from fear.

It’s also how, in psychological terms, attachment wounds tend to repeat themselves. Individuals with anxious attachment styles—often shaped in childhoods where love was inconsistent, unpredictable, or conditional—often equate emotional intensity with emotional intimacy. The faster the bond forms, the more convinced they are that it must be real, even if it lacks long-term emotional safety.

As noted by Vitale (2025), children who experience emotionally deprived or unstable caregiving environments often grow up seeking urgent, high-intensity relationships in adulthood, not because they're impulsive, but because their nervous systems have learned to equate chaos with connection. They mistake turbulence for truth, and calm for danger.

But fast is not deep, and calm isn't always safe, especially if you've never known what real safety feels like.

About a year later, they decided to get married abroad. Anna picked a beautiful destination in Southeast Asia—her very first trip outside the country. She was full of hope and excitement.

But right before they landed on the island, a bird hit the engine of the plane, and it caught fire. The cabin filled with panic. People were praying. Anna was frozen in fear. The plane made an emergency landing, and thankfully everyone was OK. But that feeling? It stayed with her.

She brushed it off. Just bad luck.

Their wedding was everything she had imagined—almost too much. The venue glowed with candlelight and color. Gold thrones waited at the center of the space, with two attendants on either side, waving giant peacock feather fans as part of a traditional ceremony.

Anna sat down, overwhelmed by the beauty.

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And then—right beside her—one of the attendants collapsed.

A seizure. Mid-ceremony.

The music stopped. Someone screamed. People rushed in. The man was carried out. He survived. But Anna couldn't unsee it.

She kept asking about him. Kept watching the doorway. And maybe that was the real moment her nervous system recognized the truth: Something inside her was trying to get her attention.

In trauma psychology, this is known as somatic memory—when the body remembers what the mind can't yet explain. It's the panic that seems to come out of nowhere. The tightness in your chest during moments that are supposed to be joyful.

We often label this as intuition, something mystical or abstract. But research shows it's often much more tangible. According to Greenman et al. (2024), survivors of childhood trauma—especially those with disrupted attachment patterns—often carry unresolved emotional pain in the body, which can emerge as unexplained anxiety or physical discomfort.

It's your nervous system quietly whispering: "I've seen this before. And I'm not OK."

They posed for wedding photos. They laughed. They filmed videos of the cake. And then they forgot the camera at the hotel. Every photo. Every video. Gone.

Later, they had a baby.

And shortly before their child turned one, they got divorced.

No betrayal. Things were escalating—misunderstandings, fights, arguments. Emotional exhaustion. Two people who cared about each other but were never really on the same page to begin with.

And Anna? She finally started asking the deeper questions.

Anna might not have realized it, but she was recreating a pattern. She didn't take time to heal.

She rushed from survival into attachment. From fear into what felt like love.

And the hardest truth?
What we don't heal, we repeat.

Maybe if she had paused after the breakup or taken time alone, or simply asked herself, "What do I need, really?" If she had listened to the signs—not just the dramatic ones, but the whispers inside.

But maybe she needed to live it to learn it. Because sometimes love doesn't come to stay.
It comes to show us something.

Anna didn't make a mistake. She made a choice from the tools and awareness she had at the time. And now, she's learning. She's slowing down. She's starting again—not with someone else, but with herself.