Your Girlfriend Is Not an Emotional Support Animal

Too many people treat their partners like objects that are supposed to fix them. If they don't feel fixed, they discard. What this comes from is an inability to actually love a person, to see a person, to appreciate the person, to try to help them be the most happy and successful and best version of themselves before expecting that the partner will do that for you. Do you get that from your partner? Do you give that to your partner? My letter today is from a man I'll call Anton, and he writes, "Dear Anna, how can I tell whether emotional detachment in a long-term relationship is an avoidant attachment pattern rooted in trauma or a genuine sign that the relationship is no longer right for me? " All right, I've got my new very cheapo fairy pencil because my pink enameled one went missing in North Carolina. Hey, if you have it, contact me. Mail it to me. I want my pink pencil back. But we got the blue cheapo pencil today, and it's doing the job. Um he says, "I'm a 30-year-old man, and I've been with my partner for almost 10 years. " Okay? I'm going to circle things that I want to come back to on a second reading, but let's go through and see what's happening, what Anton describes here. He says, "This partner is deeply kind, stable, and loving. Being around her helps regulate my nervous system. I tend to be an anxious person internally, and with her I often feel calm and safe. We've built a real life together, and there was a time when marriage felt like the obvious next step. But for a long time I've been wrestling with confusion that I can't seem to resolve. Even though I feel safe with her, I also often feel emotionally flat or bored. Sometimes I find myself disengaged when we talk. I notice myself feeling unstimulated by the way we communicate and by some of her interests. It can feel like something is missing, especially intellectually or emotionally, though I struggle to define exactly what it is. This creates a lot of guilt and self-doubt because objectively, she's a wonderful partner. She loves me deeply and I know how rare and valuable that is. What I can't tell is whether this sense of detachment is coming from avoidant attachment and CPTSD related patterns, where closeness and stability feel dull because they don't activate the familiar anxiety and intensity that I may unconsciously associate with love, or whether this is honest information that we may not be the right long-term match. I worry that I could lose a truly good relationship because I'm mistaking emotional safety for lack of love. But I also worry about staying out of fear, obligation, or confusion if my feelings are trying to tell me something real. How can someone tell the difference between trauma-driven emotional distancing and genuine incompatibility in a long-term relationship? Okay, and that's from Anton. All right, Anton, thank you for sending that in. This is a um a good question and a tough question, and I'm going to read you signs that I see that it might tilt one way rather than the other. Okay? So, you said that um you would like to be able to tell whether the way that you feel emotionally detached is a an avoidant attachment pattern that comes from trauma, or if it's a genuine sign that the relationship has nothing in it for you. Um no longer right for you, as you say. And you're 38 and you've been with your partner almost 10 years, and so I'm assuming she's somewhere in that age range, and I really hope she's not waiting to have children with you, given that if she's your age, her window will be closing soon. She's deeply kind, stable, and loving, and being around helps regulate my nervous system, you say. So, here's what I started to notice in your letter. While it's a legitimate dilemma, it could be either one, um but A, even if it's avoidant attachment that comes from trauma, the thing that I'm going to recommend to you is the same. Okay? If it Maybe it's that it's just not right for you, but what is not right? Now, when you've been with somebody for 10 years, it's it's the a lot of the original passion has transformed into a longer-term deep friendship, right? That's kind of common knowledge. But what I wasn't hearing from you is any This doesn't mean you don't have it, but you didn't tell me about it, is like any like deep feelings of caring about her. I heard that you love how she makes you feel, okay? So, feeling calm and safe with somebody doesn't automatically mean that you love them. And feeling bored

doesn't automatically mean that it's the wrong relationship. Boredom happens in 10-year-old relationships. What's going to keep it going is that is the is a sort of genuine friendship that, you know, what Well, what keeps me going in my marriage, the most important thing that I remember, is that marriage, or if that's what you were thinking about, it's a service commitment. It's basically I'm signing up to be the number one person who's looking out for him, and who is helping him when he needs help to be the best person he can be. And I married him because he does that for me, too. He helps me be the best person I can be. So, I hear that this girlfriend does that for you. You feel very calm with her. She loves you totally. All that's missing for you is passion. But passion, being a fleeting thing, has got to at some point turn into the kind of love where you just really, really want to bring the best to that person in their life. You want to see them flourish. You feel deeply invested. It gives you joy. This is real love. This is love beyond the initial, you know, sexual excitement, passion, oh wow, you complete me thing. You know, everybody's that whole movie thing of like, you complete me. It's a temporary feeling. But there is a kind of healing, I think, in a good marriage. There's a healing in that fundamental loneliness of being alive, you now have your best friend. And it's very precious. But what I hear you saying, and it's kind of concerning for me, like she's not writing to me, but if she were, I'd be like, you got to watch out for this guy. He seems like he's entirely focused on how he feels, and he's not capable of thinking of you. So that's what concerns me. And that's why I started out this video saying, you can't treat a partner like an emotional support animal. So emotional support animals, they they're there to cuddle and make you feel regulated good and deal with panic and things like that. And honestly, the way people love dogs might be more than you love your girlfriend right now. And I'm not trying to say she's like a dog or that you're inhuman or nothing like that. But just like as a barometer, like I have a friend, Angie Peacock. She has a support dog. And I love that dog. She loves that dog. That dog is such an eager companion everywhere she goes, and she's not thinking of leaving the dog. Now, obviously, it's a different thing with a person. But this flatness you feel after a 10-year relationship, there's one thing that you might be able to recommend, cuz it's It has to do with how you show up for the relationship. Trauma can make peace in a relationship feel like flat. and it could also a number of things could do it. They could make you like kind of unaware of her needs and what she feels and more focused on you. So when you say she's wonderful, that's not the same thing as saying, "I'm really emotionally engaged with her. I'm you know, I'm interested for how we can get through the conflicts that we have. I um I want to help her feel safe. become everything she's trying to become in her life. " So using her for like emotional relief, for self-regulation, I mean, I get it. Like a good partner feels peaceful to be around. That is a good sign. But in the absence of love and commitment for that person's long-term well-being, that's what I would say is kind of like a yeah, a using relationship. So you might want to ask yourself, "Do I love her? Or do I love me the way I am around her? " Cuz trauma survivors will often confuse like something that's intense with love. Like if I don't feel kind of like full of cortisol and adrenaline, this is not love. Do you love her? The love the verb, the love that flows from you toward her. It's very fulfilling to love somebody. If you require that it be generated by a bunch of excitement, that's you know, that's not the same thing. And um but I still want to validate like a person shouldn't marry somebody they're not attracted to, that they don't have I call it in my marriage, we call it the rubber band. It's like sometimes we pull really far apart. We'll have an argument or we're finding each other tedious and we'll pull apart a little bit, but it's like there's an invisible rubber band and it's a force and it just kind of pulls us back. That's how I experience the actual marriage-ness of our relationship, that it's got this natural connection that pulls us back together. It's just pulls us right back. So, anxiety and longing and drama, those would be things that a person who, you know, a trauma-driven feeling of a attachment style, that can feel more real to us than stability. Stability is real, drama is not real. Drama is a trigger. And we don't want to mistake that. that activation of a trigger for passion. Avoidance often

feels like numbness. It feels like boredom. It feels like disengagement. It feels like emotional withdrawal. Like, I just don't want to deal with this. And yes, it can masquerade as a lack of chemistry. Whatever you've described here, she doesn't seem to see anything wrong. You haven't told me anything. I don't know. There could be more there. But have you actually opened up emotionally with her about uh how you're feeling? Or have you stayed guarded? Have you actually let her know like the deepest truth of you? Cuz there's an important distinction like when you anticipate like I would be sad if we broke up, is it grief about losing her or is it a panic about losing your safety and stability? Which is fair, you know. If it's giving you safety and stability, who doesn't want that? But real love should still include warmth, curiosity, affection, admiration, humor, emotional, you know, movement. Things are moving along. And a genuine desire to help her become all that she can be. Just like a you take joy in knowing her, where she's come from and where she's going, and you love watching her get there, and you want to be part of that. You want to help her feel strong in that way that she can do that. I mean, that is love. So, that's why I say that marriage is a service position. If you don't have a desire to know her very deeply anymore, then yeah, I it sounds like you're just kind of there out of habit. And that would be like jerking her around, and you don't want to do that. Like, trauma can make us um distance ourselves through like a push-pull cycle. So, we want to get very close, then we feel numb, so we distance, then we feel longing, so we get close again, and then the cycle repeats and repeats. So, that's a That's torture for somebody. That will grind them down emotionally. And somebody who's capable of loving you very deeply could do better, you know, than get jerked around if that's what you're doing. I don't know, though. You didn't tell me whether you were doing this like push-pull thing. It's a quiet feeling that you have. Um you didn't tell me if you have expressed it. It'd be very painful to express to her. This might be something for a counselor, you know, a couple's counselor can help surface these things and kind of help you stay in a space where you're not threatening the relationship while you explore it, even though it's implicit that the relationship is threatened. Now, genuine incompatibility is going to stay consistent even when you're regulated or dysregulated. So, stop overanalyzing your feelings intellectually and let clarity come to you from learning to regulate yourself. Like, get your own tools and do that yourself. Um perhaps you need like more time in your life apart so that you can experience yourself getting dysregulated, and then you can teach yourself to regulate so that you You're not dependent on her and staying with her just so you feel good. You know how to make yourself feel good. It's always an inside job. And then number two, express yourself honestly. Don't just sit there endlessly ruminating. Maybe you go talk to somebody first about how you're feeling, but don't just sit there ruminating, doubting, and starting to create this like, you know, big scar tissue thing about like, I don't know. I know. I don't know. Uh that's a terrible way to go through your life and you know, quite a price to pay for her. Don't leave a good relationship cuz it didn't give you enough adrenaline. And how will you know the difference? You're going to learn your own self-regulation. And don't just stay because she's kind and safe either. 10 years is just too long to keep somebody in emotional limbo. You don't need instant certainty for this, but you do need to make your number one priority honesty. Honesty with yourself and at least one other person and accepting responsibility for your own nervous system state so that you can show up as her equal rather than her supplicant or like a um Well, I'm just thinking of like a um a mama pig with the babies hanging off of her. That's the picture that comes to mind. You don't want to be like, you know, hanging off of somebody. You want to show up for them with strength and with a great deal to give to make their life happier. If this speaks to you, the first thing you can do is take a quiz that I offer which lists some signs that trauma has affected your ability to connect. It's kind of a simple quiz. It's not everything, but it's like a like I think 12 major signs that could be what's going on. And this is um very popular with people. It's just a place to get started to go, "Wait, is that why I am the way I am? " You can get that. It's free. I'll put the link to it down in the top line of the description section below this video. And then under that, I want to leave you with um it's a download. It's like a little mini lesson

on how you know, what are the signs that someone is a great partner? And I want you Anton to apply this to yourself. Are you a great partner? This is a list of signs that somebody is actually marriage material, commitment material, um has the capacity to care about you enough. And there's ways that you can show this. So, have a look at this. I'll put that link. This is for everybody. It's free. It's down in the second line of the description section below this video. And I'll see you very soon. There's this idea out there that to heal from trauma, you need to feel your feelings. But, when you have CPTSD from childhood, the problem isn't always that you don't feel what you're supposed to feel. The problem is that you do feel your feelings too much.