Mutual trauma dumping is NOT a sign of compatibility

Maybe you met someone special that surprisingly seemed so emotionally intelligent and so knowledgeable about mental health topics and both of you had a traumatic past. Maybe they were bipolar and you were the same or something adjacent that made it seem like you are so much alike. You just talked for hours until the early morning lights IN THE FIRST DATE, sharing your childhood stories and traumas that you had to endure and everything in between. It was so magical, almost like in the movies… until eventually it ended after several weeks because you discovered you were in fact not that compatible at all.

The above situation is sometimes incorrectly labeled as trauma bonding which actually refers to something else in the literature but it is used in the sense that we are bonding over shared trauma with the other person. This is more of a thing that you might experience if you are a person who likes to read about mental health topics and maybe a little bit into spirituality and such where the idea of stars aligning and manifesting the perfect partner into your life kind of makes sense in your mind which when combined with the shared trauma factor makes you all emotional with zero logical critical thinking to contain your emotions in place.

Dumping everything mutually at the beginning creates a false sense of intimacy and makes you think that you are super compatible with the other person. But the reality is it takes time to get to know the other person. People are more than their traumas or interest in mental health topics. Our personal traumas are sacred to us, so when we face someone who finally gets it we falsely think that they must be super special. No, they are just regular human beings who just happens to have similar experiences and read similar topics. That's it.

Do stupid casual stuff in early dates. Have fun. Because the worse thing is discovering after all that bonding over trauma, that you had completely different ideas of fun in the first place.

Thank you for reading my blog post. Just sharing so someone does not make the mistakes I did, but that's how we learn.