do you know how past heartbreak could be impacting your relationships negatively?

Have you noticed that unresolved heartbreak may be interfering with your dating and relationships?

Let me know in the comments.

Based on my research, coaching and personal experience, here are some examples of how unresolved grief and shame wounds from heartbreak, recent or not, can make dating and new relationships more challenging:

1) A traumatic bond with an ex who repeated cycles of seduction and abandonment, which doesn't just impact our ability to trust (ourselves and others) but also strains our relationships with current/future partners.

2) Unhealthy attachments with emotionally unavailable people, exacerbating the type of shame wounds that keep you obsessing about what is wrong with you (nothing!), struggling with trust issues, lack of self-confidence and harsh self criticism which further lowers your self-regard.

All of this makes it hard for you to set and maintain boundaries as well as be vulnerable and connected with dates and partners.

This way you neither seek the emotionally available partners you deserve nor are you able to deeply heal your your intimacy wounds plus develop your own secure attachment skills.

It's, in many ways, because your resources are being consumed with navigating hurt and unresolved trauma.

3) Entering new ( including serious) relationships too soon, effectively rebounding, and not giving your body and attachment system the time to recover from the trauma of heartbreak.

These relationships don't last long (rebounds have a very high failure rate), and when they do drag on despite all the incompatibilities you've overlooked, they only serve to make you more cynical/jaded about love and dating.

They can also be a safety risk as it's easy to overlook red flags soon after break ups.

4) Inability to connect deeply or be vulnerable and intimate with new partners because you have a deep seated unresolved fear of rejection.

This may keep you from sharing your actual needs, priorities and concerns consistently, instead getting stuck in patterns of people-pleasing and avoidance (own needs, open conflict, vulnerability, reality as it is, ending up in fantasy or one sided relationships).

5) Judging dates not on their own merits/demerits but via comparisons with exes, because that is your most recent /immediate reference point, which means you are not seeing people as they are but as either you hope they are or fear they might be (if an ex was toxic or even incompatible).

Instead of taking this time to heal, our strained nervous systems are being overwhelmed with new information about new people before we're ready to clear-headedly vet folks for compatibility, attunement, conflict repair and secure attachment skills-- which is a whole skillset that takes practice even when we aren't overwhelmed or still grieving past heartbreak.

Sometimes, an old break up, an emotional/attachment injury going back years, decades even (early on worked with a client who hadn't dated in 10+ years since the end of a relationship where she was broken up with out of the blue in a long term relationship), can cause us to avoid love, intimacy and the pleasures of connection for years on end.

This type of grief is more common than is talked about because of stigma around "not having gotten over x or y".

As a result, both dating and relationships become hard to navigate in safe, boundaried, authentic ways that are mutually nourishing and healthy.

The longer we stay in this state (often described as feeling stuck, also a trauma response) the harder it becomes to date or love again.

It's why I have dedicated years to researching heartbreak and hold certifications in being trauma informed and providing relationship support as well as heartbreak recovery coaching.

(Dr. Alexandra Solomon's work, Tara Brach and Carol Anderson's research on Abandonment Trauma are key influences)

I am familiar with the impact unresolved heartbreak has on our own well being, self-relationship and health but also the impact it has on current and future dating and relationships, from personal experience (my unresolved heartbreak seriously challenged my relationship and partner in ways that caused a lot of damage) and many clients I've worked with.

It's why my coaching doesn't shy away from heartbreak recovery, and all my dating and relationship coaching clients, even my burnout recovery clients (unresolved grief or heartbreak can be a source of burnout and exhaustion) all benefit from my expertise in this area.

So anytime it comes up, even if it isn't a pervasive theme, folks are able to navigate it with skill and compassion in ways that the grief becomes more an ally opening them up to a softening and greater self-awareness, that rewards them for years, than an unresolved impediment to love.

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My coaching programs offer a high degree of customized support commensurate with the long term sustainable shifts (in the direction of your most healing, abundant, secure and fulfilling long term relationships) that my work is known for.

And at the same time, I structure the programs to make room for flexibility around lifestyle, learning styles, individual goals, intersections and challenges

I am looking forward to speaking with folks who are done with dissatisfying dating or relationships, being held back by unresolved grief and heartbreak and are now interested in healing and experiencing deeply rewarding, pleasurable and fulfilling dating and relationships - long term-.

I work with monogamous and polyam folks.

Contact me for a chat, so we can talk about your visions and goals, and see if we might be a good fit for my deeply transformative coaching programs. :)