Learn About Trauma Dating Patterns

They are the adaptations some of us developed as children to meet our fundamental need for love when it wasn't safely or readily available.

When you were young, your developing nervous system figured out ingenious strategies to get the love and protection you needed, even in difficult circumstances. These styles made perfect sense in the environment that created them.

Everyone's journey is different: People develop different approaches to love based on their unique experiences, personality, and what resources were available to them. Your particular style reflects your individual story.

We view these styles as strengths, not weaknesses. They are evidence of our ability to adapt and survive under difficult conditions. They're not problems to fix because somebody else thinks so. They haven't experienced what you have, haven't walked in your shoes and likely don't understand their survival value. Judging someone else is easy. Living isn't.

The way we understand these styles—they're intelligent strategies that helped you survive and prosper. Each pattern represents your nervous system's solution to early life challenges, and many contain genuine relationship strengths alongside their costs. Having multiple styles actually shows greater adaptability—it means you developed a range of responses rather than getting stuck in just one mode. The goal, as we see it, isn't to eliminate these styles but to expand your conscious choices—developing awareness of when each response serves you versus when it might be limiting the love and connection you want.

Not everyone has these styles—they're specifically for people who experienced challenging or difficult childhoods. You don't need an official trauma diagnosis or anything like that. But if you had a pretty stable, happy childhood without major upheavals, these dating styles probably won't feel relevant to you. They're really about how we adapt when childhood taught us that love, family and relationships could be unpredictable, unsafe, or complicated.

Working with a trauma-informed therapist can provide specialized tools and safe space to explore your relationship patterns more deeply. The right therapist can help you understand how these intelligent adaptations developed, how they've been useful to you so far, recognize when they serve you versus limit you, and expand your relationship roles and love style choices.

Most survivors have multiple relationship styles. Since they are survival adaptations, they get used when you are with different people, in different relationship types and situations. Many survivors have 10-20 or even more styles, depending on their experiences.

Going by which needs of yours are unmet at the moment, those styles will be your main, go-to styles. For example, if you were discriminated against or bullied as a child, but at the moment you've managed to successfully solve your belonging need, your go-to dating personality may not be The Outsider or Drawn to the Margins—they might be The Rescuer or The High Achiever.

While these styles originate in your childhood, they are fluid adaptations to your current environment, rather than fixed roles. If you've experienced multiple traumatic events growing up, it would make sense that you have more than relationship 20 styles and roles at your disposal for different needs, people and areas of your life.

The Trauma-Informed Relationship Styles were created by people who experienced challenging early lives. We're not psychologists. We're app developers and fellow trauma survivors. We wanted to build a supportive, empathetic resource for other people like ourselves, who might be on similar journeys.

While we've done our best to create a useful tool for self-discovery we appreciate that each person's journey is unique. Therefore it's best to view your results as possible perspectives based on common patterns in trauma survivors' relationships, not definitive answers or absolute truths.

These patterns represent themes we've observed across many people, but we don't know your specific experiences or where you are in your healing journey right now. They may or may not resonate with you—and that's perfectly okay too.

Our approach is built on the idea that humans are incredibly adaptive creatures. When we face challenges early in life, our brains and bodies develop creative strategies to help us survive and find connection.

These survival strategies aren't unique to humans—we see similar patterns in many other species. Animals who grow up in harsh environments develop different approaches to bonding, procreating, and protecting themselves than those raised in safety.

The same thing happens with people. Your childhood experiences shaped how your nervous system learned to love, trust, and connect with others. What might look like "personal issues" to others actually makes perfect sense when you understand the environment that created them and why they exist. The way we understand them, trauma dating styles aren't personality flaws—they're evidence of your remarkable ability to adapt and find love under difficult circumstances.