Can you love someone who has been traumatized and abused before?

[Paradiseequeen]

Gag you been selecting my questions so don’t forget this one 🥹

I come from a serious traumatic abusive background and I don’t know how to love. I don’t feel worthy of love and don’t know why someone would love me. My dad was very abusive especially towards women and just abandoned me. I’m with someone and I don’t know if I’m loved because of my trauma or if he truly love me as a person.

[Anonymous]

People can and they do, but it really comes down to us. If we haven't received professional help to help us to cope with our traumas, most times we end up self sabotaging our own relationships. But yes people can and do love people with trauma.

[IslaTheWitch]

I'm such a person and I still ask myself the same question.

There was a time I genuinely believed that I'm loved. But now my insecurities hit me twice hard.

Take care of yourself.

[Paradiseequeen]

Thanks! Same happens here! Insecurities be trying to flood my brain but it’s hard. Take care of yourself as well! It’s hard

[Lliam]

Yes.

I met a lady when I was 36. As it turned out, she was 30. I asked her out, we went on some dates, and quickly entered into an exclusive relationship. I thought she was gorgeous; my vision of the feminine ideal.
We wound up living together for over a year. I kept my apartment but basically lived with her in the house she rented.
She is the first of all my girlfriends from the time I was 16 that I wound up truly loving with my heart and soul. She was hypersexual and orgasmic, but also very bright, plucky, determined to succeed, sweet, funny, quirky, tender, caring and compassionate, honest, loyal and trustworthy. She had strength of character. I loved everything about her and she loved me.

Early on, she confided that she was a recovering alcoholic. Then she told me her story.
She had been continually sexually abused by her step father for at least 10 years, from a very young age until she reached puberty.
It messed her up. She got married and had a son when she was 17. By then, she was an alcoholic. She got divorced and gave up custody of her son a couple years later, although she had full visitation rights and maintained a close relationship with her son. He visited her, as well.

She moved from Colorado to California to start a new life, learned a well paying career, and entered counseling. She still attended counseling when we were together.

I have no idea what kinds of things she engaged in or went through between her divorce, when she was an alcoholic and single, and when she met me.

Her trauma was deep, though. Even though she put on a courageous front, she had insecurities, guilt and trauma that were impossible for her to share with me.

It broke my heart to think of someone causing such lifelong injury to a perfect, innocent child. I wished that I could hold her in my arms and make it all better.

I still love her with all my heart and always will.

[MemeSupreme]

i think we definitely can BUT our trauma just screws the pooch for us by hurting others ironically. it's why it's gotta be treated

like i've hurt past exes and lashed out plenty of times. literally started arguments bc i feel uncomfortable when things are going right for me like im some cliche. im not dating rn bc of stuff like that since they get tired of being pushed away and i get tired of it too. it's exhausting.

im not dating rn bc it really isn't helping me feel lovable lol literally adds onto it

i hope you're coping with it better than me and able to do well in your relationship. ik how much of an inconvenience it can be

[Anonymous]

Not if she's unwilling to heal. We all have our life traumas. But nobody can heal for that person. They can support them. But at the end of the day they have to do the healing.