You spent so long trying to make sense of why the love felt so intense and so painful at the same time. Every high felt like oxygen, every low felt like punishment, and your heart kept clinging to the moments that felt safe. But the truth is simpler and sharper than anything you were ever allowed to see: the bond formed because the pain and the relief came from the same place. That is not love—it’s survival mixed with hope.
Your nervous system learned to attach itself to the person who created the fear because they were also the one who temporarily calmed it. The emotional intensity wasn’t proof of a soulmate connection; it was the body bracing for impact over and over again. You weren’t “crazy,” “obsessed,” or “too loyal.” You were conditioned. Your body adapted to the instability and called the moments of relief “connection.”
It doesn’t make you foolish. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. Trauma bonds form not because someone lacks strength, but because the psyche is trying to protect itself inside a storm. You reacted exactly the way any person would if their safety, validation, and sense of worth were constantly being pushed through a cycle of fear, confusion, and small doses of affection.
What you felt was real. What it was built on was not. And once you stop blaming yourself for the way the bond formed, you finally begin to see the relationship for what it always was—not a love story, but a system your body learned to survive.