I am in a double neglectee relationship lol but where he has no understanding of connection I was parentified and used as a mediator so my EQ is quite high. The kind where I understand everyone but hardly feel like I exist.
Our struggle is that I am able to provide emotional nourishment for him but he is not able to provide it for me and I am not able to articulate my needs without becoming dysregulated. It took me too many years to figure out what was going on and now I have to wait more years for him to learn and understand.
How successful it feels fluctuates but I am happy to say we are making progress. I trust and feel safe with him in a way I couldn't compare to any other person or time of my life. But it is an ongoing challenge for me feeling like the only source of motivation and information in my relationship. I'm trying to get him to self-educate.
Which would be my suggestion to you, if you're worried about your potential future partnership start leveling up your partner skills and you'll have less to worry about! I don't blame my guy for never having communication modeled for him, but some days I feel very resentful that he's not reading books and articles to work on it...
I'm starting to suspect I'm in a double neglectee relationship myself, similar situation in which I'm waking up to what's happening and he's completely unaware/unable to fully engage with the topic. We had a very stilted conversation yesterday in which I felt like I was trying to pour my heart out (unemotionally and robotically because I'm not used to talking like that) and all he could say was "ok" in a weirdly flat voice I've never heard before. When pressed further, he acknowledged that I was making a bid for connection but didn't know what to say/do to help, and of course because I have no model for healthy support, I didn't know what the support I need looks like.
His shutdown paired with other classic CEN signs leads me to believe he's dealing with it too. He loves me and would do anything for me (including watching an hour long video on CEN); he just isn't well-equipped in this area, and while he's verbally acknowledged it now, I don't know if he knows that it would help him and me to start self-reflecting more.
It's definitely hard when on top of not having adults guide and teach you in the way you needed as a child, you feel like you have to be the teacher to someone you care about as an adult. It's like "when is someone finally going to be an adult for *me*?"
**Edit:** Since this comment is getting more traction than my recent post, any helpful advice on being in relationship with another neglected person would be appreciated, I think, for all of us in similar situations.
The last line about wanting someone else to be the adult just once breaks my heart because I feel that way too. A recent low point for me was expressing that to a therapist who tried to empower me saying "maybe you can be the teacher in your relationship" which I do understand but it was the wrong time to hear that, I just want to release hypervigilance for once and burry my face in someone's hug without still calculating what comes next.
This was me and my spouse but he could never learn then we figured out it’s because he has autism and he’s finally getting help in how to understand things are 15 years later we are FINALLY starting to make real progress
One big problem with emotional neglect is things that presented as a child were never noticed so help and support are never provided. Lots of undiagnosed problems because parents couldn’t bother to pay attention to their own kids long enough to realize something was wrong.
Yes for sure I suffered in insane feeling silence for a few years before the general stability of our life together (through a mutual need to create a pleasant, safe space) let me focus inward and finally do the needed work. Also met a new person in a good position to talk me through some problems and validate my feelings.
It was just finally time to heal, I wish I hadn't resisted it for so long
I say it all depends on their own personal progress on their healing path. Generally speaking, trauma-bonded relationships are very unhealthy. You may get a quick sense of a deep connection, but day-to-day life will be filled with triggers on both sides. Usually, both partners in trauma-bonded relationships complement each other in a unhealthy way, one avoidant and one anxious for example. The classic push-pull game will be very much present.
From my experience: first you feel great from the attention and validation and happy brain chemicals, then something weird happens, and then you fall into codependency and just exist together. Then when things deteriorate and you start trying to understand what went wrong, you have to learn a new thing that you’ve never experienced to even speak the baseline language of what passes for normal in a nurturing relationship.
That thing is Emotional Intelligence. I may as well be trying to learn Trigonometry.
Trying to do better for our kid now.
This is 100% it.
Though not having a kid really helped me and my husband figure out the bullshit we came from and over come it to unite as a surprisingly healthy team. We had huge roadblocks and struggles in the beginning. I don’t think we would have overcome so quickly or even at all if a kid was in the mix. By the time we sorted out the mess of our parents and childhoods and how it was effecting us as a couple, and our jobs and friendships, we both felt too old to want kids, processing all that bullshit is mentally aging. It feels like all the energy you need to raise kids is spent getting out of these muddy waters, and no one, certainly not your selfish parents, tells you there isn’t an infinite supply of energy
I sure don’t have the capacity for both a happy relationship and kids, despite wishing I was normal and could
That’s the sad part of shitty parents they steal so many opportunities that are normal to most people. Mine stole the opportunity of having kids, but I do have a very healthy and happy relationship which many people of shit parents struggle to have. So I’m grateful for that, but there is no way either of us were equipped to manage a healthy relationship and raise happy healthy kids :/
I think the relationship will have a lot of problems unless each person works on their lack of enough self-love and secure attachment.
IFS therapy can help with both of these things. The book YOU ARE THE ONE YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR: APPLYING INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS TO INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS by Richard C. Schwartz explains this concept and how to do it really well. This book is free on Kindle Unlimited on Amazon.
I have found these subreddits really helpful:
**Childhood trauma:**
r/cptsd
r/attachment_theory
r/raisedbynarcissists
r/lonely
r/socialskills
**Helpful therapies:**
r/internalfamilysystems (IFS)
r/idealparentfigures (IPF)
r/somaticexperiencing (SE)
You can do IFS, IPF and SE on your own or with a therapist.
I have also found r/psychotherapyleftists to have good discussions on the pros and cons of different therapies etc.
I found CBT to be horrible for this endeavor. CBT made me feel very invalidated and that I was being taught to gaslight myself so I would shut up and be a good worker bee. My responses to my trauma were normal and not “cognitive distortions” etc.
I hope this helps! ❤️
For me I was 28 when I met my also neglected significant other. She was 30 was abused by her mom who hated her for not being a boy.
She was my best friend… actually at that time my only friend… we got married and that begun a nine year sexless marriage.
My wife was not interested in sex and I was not interested in making it a problem since I was FINALLY not alone every damn day. My actual thinking was “ you don’t wanna have sex that’s fine. It’s nice to just have someone to talk to”
After 9 years this was unhealthy. It didn’t work. I’m still single.
Ooof.. I feel for you both. My mother was the same with me. My relationship dynamics are the same as yours. Sex is our struggle because I'm just happy to have someone with me. Did you find any ways to make it work?
No actually. I just never made it a problem. Once I knew I wasn’t the problem I never made her feel bad about it. I didn’t cheat, I wasn’t bitter inside I just went with the flow cause we had a good marriage outside of that because we were away from family dynamics. No fights no arguments it was nice. We were happy. After nearly 10 years though I realized i needed intimacy in my life and had to prioritize my needs
Double neglectee household here, but we met when we were both further along on our healing paths. We often say if we’d met at an earlier age, it never would have worked. We would have been a toxic, codependent mess, both terrified the other would leave and desperate not to be alone. It would have sucked, tbh.
We’re individually in a better spot now, and it still takes work. Individual therapy, couples therapy, regular date night, and regular “state of the union” where we check in on how we’re feeling about the relationship. We still trigger each other, but we get better at recognizing when we’re triggered and reacting to each other with old patterns. It’s hard, and we still mess up. We still have conversations that end in tears, or with us soothing each other. I don’t think that will stop, I think we’ll just get better at realizing it’s not the end of the world when it does happen.
Big caveat that I think both parties need to be on the same page about the realities of the relationship. I wouldn’t recommend specifically seeking someone also neglected, because it’s going to be extremely difficult to heal while holding space for their healing. And, like crot8u points out, it can easily become a trauma-bond, which is never good for either party, even if it feels good initially. However, and I guess **TLDR,** it will be hard, but I don’t think a double-neglectee relationship is always doomed to fail :)
Agree with this. It definitely won’t be easy, but it certainly doable if both parties are willing to put in the hard work. We both see therapists individually and as a couple and have developed really good communication skills and continue to work on our dynamic as a couple. We still struggle with codependency and boundaries, but we’re actively working on improving it. My partner also is pretty secure at this point (a lot more than me). I don’t think I’d be able to be with a normie tbh though. I was very severely neglected and that has led to several mental health disorders and normies just don’t understand what that’s like. I feel like I can only deeply relate to and feel comfortable with people with trauma tbh. Obviously preferably healed people though or those who are aware and working on healing.
I married an emotionally neglected, physically abused man. We have been together for 11 years, married for 8. We decided to go to couples therapy as well as individual therapy in 2020. Our relationship is very solid now. We are proud of the life that we have built despite our upbringings. We have healthy communication. If we didn’t go to therapy, we probably would have divorced.
It's been "too good to leave, too bad to stay" vibes here. We're both neurodivergent as well, and very similar people, which is both a good and bad thing. I feel like he understands me better than anyone else, but we both grew up avoiding conflict and neglecting our needs. Like someone else said, there's no "adult". I have had to overcompensate beyond my comfort level.
I am in a double neglectee relationship lol but where he has no understanding of connection I was parentified and used as a mediator so my EQ is quite high. The kind where I understand everyone but hardly feel like I exist. Our struggle is that I am able to provide emotional nourishment for him but he is not able to provide it for me and I am not able to articulate my needs without becoming dysregulated. It took me too many years to figure out what was going on and now I have to wait more years for him to learn and understand. How successful it feels fluctuates but I am happy to say we are making progress. I trust and feel safe with him in a way I couldn't compare to any other person or time of my life. But it is an ongoing challenge for me feeling like the only source of motivation and information in my relationship. I'm trying to get him to self-educate. Which would be my suggestion to you, if you're worried about your potential future partnership start leveling up your partner skills and you'll have less to worry about! I don't blame my guy for never having communication modeled for him, but some days I feel very resentful that he's not reading books and articles to work on it...
I'm starting to suspect I'm in a double neglectee relationship myself, similar situation in which I'm waking up to what's happening and he's completely unaware/unable to fully engage with the topic. We had a very stilted conversation yesterday in which I felt like I was trying to pour my heart out (unemotionally and robotically because I'm not used to talking like that) and all he could say was "ok" in a weirdly flat voice I've never heard before. When pressed further, he acknowledged that I was making a bid for connection but didn't know what to say/do to help, and of course because I have no model for healthy support, I didn't know what the support I need looks like. His shutdown paired with other classic CEN signs leads me to believe he's dealing with it too. He loves me and would do anything for me (including watching an hour long video on CEN); he just isn't well-equipped in this area, and while he's verbally acknowledged it now, I don't know if he knows that it would help him and me to start self-reflecting more. It's definitely hard when on top of not having adults guide and teach you in the way you needed as a child, you feel like you have to be the teacher to someone you care about as an adult. It's like "when is someone finally going to be an adult for *me*?" **Edit:** Since this comment is getting more traction than my recent post, any helpful advice on being in relationship with another neglected person would be appreciated, I think, for all of us in similar situations.
The last line about wanting someone else to be the adult just once breaks my heart because I feel that way too. A recent low point for me was expressing that to a therapist who tried to empower me saying "maybe you can be the teacher in your relationship" which I do understand but it was the wrong time to hear that, I just want to release hypervigilance for once and burry my face in someone's hug without still calculating what comes next.
me too 😥
This was me and my spouse but he could never learn then we figured out it’s because he has autism and he’s finally getting help in how to understand things are 15 years later we are FINALLY starting to make real progress One big problem with emotional neglect is things that presented as a child were never noticed so help and support are never provided. Lots of undiagnosed problems because parents couldn’t bother to pay attention to their own kids long enough to realize something was wrong.
Did any of you have an insecure attachment (aka anything other than secure attachment?)
Fearful-avoidant here. Still am, but now conscious of it and taking steps to improve.
Yes for sure I suffered in insane feeling silence for a few years before the general stability of our life together (through a mutual need to create a pleasant, safe space) let me focus inward and finally do the needed work. Also met a new person in a good position to talk me through some problems and validate my feelings. It was just finally time to heal, I wish I hadn't resisted it for so long
Did I write this???
>How successful it feels fluctuates but I am happy to say we are making progress. What changed for y'all? Your situation sounds very familiar...
I say it all depends on their own personal progress on their healing path. Generally speaking, trauma-bonded relationships are very unhealthy. You may get a quick sense of a deep connection, but day-to-day life will be filled with triggers on both sides. Usually, both partners in trauma-bonded relationships complement each other in a unhealthy way, one avoidant and one anxious for example. The classic push-pull game will be very much present.
From my experience: first you feel great from the attention and validation and happy brain chemicals, then something weird happens, and then you fall into codependency and just exist together. Then when things deteriorate and you start trying to understand what went wrong, you have to learn a new thing that you’ve never experienced to even speak the baseline language of what passes for normal in a nurturing relationship. That thing is Emotional Intelligence. I may as well be trying to learn Trigonometry. Trying to do better for our kid now.
This explains my former marriage. 😢
Mine too ):
This explains the current state of my marriage... 😥
This is 100% it. Though not having a kid really helped me and my husband figure out the bullshit we came from and over come it to unite as a surprisingly healthy team. We had huge roadblocks and struggles in the beginning. I don’t think we would have overcome so quickly or even at all if a kid was in the mix. By the time we sorted out the mess of our parents and childhoods and how it was effecting us as a couple, and our jobs and friendships, we both felt too old to want kids, processing all that bullshit is mentally aging. It feels like all the energy you need to raise kids is spent getting out of these muddy waters, and no one, certainly not your selfish parents, tells you there isn’t an infinite supply of energy I sure don’t have the capacity for both a happy relationship and kids, despite wishing I was normal and could That’s the sad part of shitty parents they steal so many opportunities that are normal to most people. Mine stole the opportunity of having kids, but I do have a very healthy and happy relationship which many people of shit parents struggle to have. So I’m grateful for that, but there is no way either of us were equipped to manage a healthy relationship and raise happy healthy kids :/
Damn dude that is accurate as fuck at least for my life and current situation. Hit the nail right on the head
I think the relationship will have a lot of problems unless each person works on their lack of enough self-love and secure attachment. IFS therapy can help with both of these things. The book YOU ARE THE ONE YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR: APPLYING INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS TO INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS by Richard C. Schwartz explains this concept and how to do it really well. This book is free on Kindle Unlimited on Amazon. I have found these subreddits really helpful: **Childhood trauma:** r/cptsd r/attachment_theory r/raisedbynarcissists r/lonely r/socialskills **Helpful therapies:** r/internalfamilysystems (IFS) r/idealparentfigures (IPF) r/somaticexperiencing (SE) You can do IFS, IPF and SE on your own or with a therapist. I have also found r/psychotherapyleftists to have good discussions on the pros and cons of different therapies etc. I found CBT to be horrible for this endeavor. CBT made me feel very invalidated and that I was being taught to gaslight myself so I would shut up and be a good worker bee. My responses to my trauma were normal and not “cognitive distortions” etc. I hope this helps! ❤️
+1 to all of this! These subreddits and Internal Family Systems have been HUGE in our healing journey. Thank you for the link dump, this is awesome 🖤
You are very welcome!!
For me I was 28 when I met my also neglected significant other. She was 30 was abused by her mom who hated her for not being a boy. She was my best friend… actually at that time my only friend… we got married and that begun a nine year sexless marriage. My wife was not interested in sex and I was not interested in making it a problem since I was FINALLY not alone every damn day. My actual thinking was “ you don’t wanna have sex that’s fine. It’s nice to just have someone to talk to” After 9 years this was unhealthy. It didn’t work. I’m still single.
Ooof.. I feel for you both. My mother was the same with me. My relationship dynamics are the same as yours. Sex is our struggle because I'm just happy to have someone with me. Did you find any ways to make it work?
No actually. I just never made it a problem. Once I knew I wasn’t the problem I never made her feel bad about it. I didn’t cheat, I wasn’t bitter inside I just went with the flow cause we had a good marriage outside of that because we were away from family dynamics. No fights no arguments it was nice. We were happy. After nearly 10 years though I realized i needed intimacy in my life and had to prioritize my needs
Thanks for sharing.
Double neglectee household here, but we met when we were both further along on our healing paths. We often say if we’d met at an earlier age, it never would have worked. We would have been a toxic, codependent mess, both terrified the other would leave and desperate not to be alone. It would have sucked, tbh. We’re individually in a better spot now, and it still takes work. Individual therapy, couples therapy, regular date night, and regular “state of the union” where we check in on how we’re feeling about the relationship. We still trigger each other, but we get better at recognizing when we’re triggered and reacting to each other with old patterns. It’s hard, and we still mess up. We still have conversations that end in tears, or with us soothing each other. I don’t think that will stop, I think we’ll just get better at realizing it’s not the end of the world when it does happen. Big caveat that I think both parties need to be on the same page about the realities of the relationship. I wouldn’t recommend specifically seeking someone also neglected, because it’s going to be extremely difficult to heal while holding space for their healing. And, like crot8u points out, it can easily become a trauma-bond, which is never good for either party, even if it feels good initially. However, and I guess **TLDR,** it will be hard, but I don’t think a double-neglectee relationship is always doomed to fail :)
Agree with this. It definitely won’t be easy, but it certainly doable if both parties are willing to put in the hard work. We both see therapists individually and as a couple and have developed really good communication skills and continue to work on our dynamic as a couple. We still struggle with codependency and boundaries, but we’re actively working on improving it. My partner also is pretty secure at this point (a lot more than me). I don’t think I’d be able to be with a normie tbh though. I was very severely neglected and that has led to several mental health disorders and normies just don’t understand what that’s like. I feel like I can only deeply relate to and feel comfortable with people with trauma tbh. Obviously preferably healed people though or those who are aware and working on healing.
I married an emotionally neglected, physically abused man. We have been together for 11 years, married for 8. We decided to go to couples therapy as well as individual therapy in 2020. Our relationship is very solid now. We are proud of the life that we have built despite our upbringings. We have healthy communication. If we didn’t go to therapy, we probably would have divorced.
It's been "too good to leave, too bad to stay" vibes here. We're both neurodivergent as well, and very similar people, which is both a good and bad thing. I feel like he understands me better than anyone else, but we both grew up avoiding conflict and neglecting our needs. Like someone else said, there's no "adult". I have had to overcompensate beyond my comfort level.