Dating Is Triggering Because You Have Unresolved Wounds
How trauma shapes the way you date and keeps you stuck
Dating is triggering. It’s full of disappointment, rejection, mixed signals and more ridiculousness. But most of us date because it carries the potential for pleasure, connection, and something meaningful to develop into a relationship. There’s risk, and there’s reward.
And yet, fewer and fewer people seem willing to take the risk.
I see a lot of posts online about being fed up with “unavailable people,” avoidance, rejection—about how it’s all too much to handle. How dating is so wounding. How it’s dating’s fault, or the culture’s fault, or everyone else’s inability to show up.
And honestly, my knee-jerk reaction is: come on. While not false, it’s also missing a big piece of the story.
Maybe I’m lacking empathy. Or maybe I’m reacting to something that feels… off. Dishonest. Not because dating can’t be hard—it definitely can. It can be really fucking awful sometimes. But so is life. And the problem isn’t that hard things exist. The problem is how little tolerance we seem to have for them. Or maybe more accurately: how unwilling we’ve become to be honest with ourselves about the unresolved wounds that shape our experiences.
Somewhere along the way, we absorbed this idea that things shouldn’t be difficult, that pain means something is wrong, that we should always feel validated, and that discomfort is unacceptable. It’s not true. It’s not how being human works.
Yes, dating will trigger you. But honestly? Everything will trigger you if you’re walking around with unresolved wounds you keep handing to strangers and calling it “chemistry.”
So when people say “dating is traumatic,” a lot of the time what they’re really saying is: dating is touching my existing wounds—and I don’t want to look at them.
Sometimes it’s not “dating is awful.” Sometimes it’s: I’m looking to be validated, chosen, and reassured by someone who barely knows me. I’m outsourcing my worth to a stranger. And when it doesn’t work out, I fall apart—not because the person wounded me, but because something in me was already wounded and they touched it.
Instead of taking responsibility for what’s getting activated, people blame dating itself—the algorithm, “unavailable people,” modern culture—while also being unavailable themselves.
And I’m not sure why we draw such a hard line between “I’ve become avoidant because I’m anxious about being hurt again” and “I’m avoidant because it’s my attachment style/structure.” Because the outcome is the same: avoidance. Withdrawal. Emotional unavailability. And a further reinforcement of an avoidant dating culture. So… what’s the difference, really, if the behavior stays the same?
Can We Let Ourselves Feel?
On one hand, we talk about feelings more than ever. On the other, we seem less and less able to be with them. We act like pain shouldn’t be part of dating. Like rejection shouldn’t happen. Like disappointment means something is broken.
But honey—rejection is part of love. Disappointment is part of being human. And dating, by design, includes uncertainty, rupture, and pain.
