Why Sexual Trauma Shows Up in Healthy Relationships

Everything was amazing, for the initial six months of the first healthy relationship I was in, and then the flashbacks started. He would hold me, and my arms would feel like they'd been plunged into ice. He would look into my eyes to tell me he loved me, and I would stop breathing for a moment, my eyes fixed intensely on a distant point.

I knew something was wrong, only I didn't know what. My first thought was to blame the relationship, a devastating conclusion that introduced uncertainty into the first secure partnership I'd ever experienced. I started questioning everything, determined to find the source of my startling behavior shift. Why did his affection cause me to freeze and shut down? Why did his welcome expressions of love make me want to run?

It took months of tracking the experience of floating just a bit up and outside my body to realize I was having a flashback. I got curious about where my attention was going, whenever I felt something intrude into my present-moment experience that didn't match the reality of what was happening around me.

I began to notice split-second flashes of physical sensations — my stomach dropping, my body tense, a vacuum around my heart. I stayed with feeling trapped, unsafe, and deeply alone — emotions I hadn't felt in years. They reminded me of the abusive relationship in my teens that I'd had trouble leaving behind. Only my current relationship wasn’t anything like that — was it?

The doubt opened circles of inquiry that left me even more confused. The flood of sensory memories that came rushing back threatened to overwhelm me — and take my first good relationship with it. 

I’m grateful for the caring partner I had beside me, as I began to face unresolved sexual trauma from the past. We got through it together and came out stronger for it. Instead of shaming me, distancing himself emotionally, or telling me to get over the past, he stayed curious about my process and stood by me, a reliable source of comfort and support.

I'm sharing this to normalize sexual trauma healing within healthy intimate relationships. 

Many of us don't understand what's happening, when the flashbacks, numbness, or shutdown from unresolved sexual trauma arises within a supportive partnership. We don't know what to make of it, so we turn on ourselves and sabotage the safety that made the initial impulses towards healing able to arise in the first place.

If this is you or your partner, I hope this article supports you both to realize that past sexual trauma surfacing in relationships is a good thing. It means the connection and security is there for our nervous systems to finally feel safe enough to heal.

Sexual Trauma Healing Requires Relational Safety

Past sexual trauma has a way of showing up when we least expect it, especially when we finally feel safe, supported, and cared for in an intimate relationship.

This is not an accident. When we're securely attached to supportive, loving partners, our nervous systems experience relational safety at last. For those of us with complex trauma (CPTSD) or developmental trauma from childhood, this might be the first real experience of safety with other people that we’ve ever had. 

After years in survival mode, often trading one unfulfilling or even harmful relationship for another, we can finally let our guard down. Our nervous systems allow us to rest. Our hearts and bodies begin to naturally de-armor.

The sexual trauma that many of us have carried from the past finally sees an opportunity to heal. Trauma, of any kind, always wants to heal. As soon as we create the right environment for healing, our bodies want to unwrap the burden of past experiences and bring them to our conscious awareness for healing.

Trauma heals when we reprocess stuck memories held in our bodies and nervous systems. Once the nervous system knows we're safe, because we have solid support from our partner, the body brings up traumatic memories it’s ready to heal.

These flashbacks have nothing to do with the present, and everything to do with unresolved trauma from the past. When we recognize that flashbacks indicate the path towards healing, they invite us into deeper vulnerability and connection with our partners.

Rationally, we might have known we carried unresolved trauma and expected, perhaps, to make space for our healing in the future.

But in a healthy relationship, the flashbacks that often start to arise are impossible to postpone. They have been waiting patiently until now and will not be so easily dismissed. The more we might try to minimize them, the stronger and more insistent they often become.

We might not like them, but flashbacks are a good sign.

Our bodies long to experience the fullness of thriving available to us now, in our relationships, and will not settle for less. Their persistence invites us towards deep and lasting healing.

Where We Go Wrong when Flashbacks Happen in Relationships

If we don't know that the flashbacks are from past sexual trauma that seeks to heal, it's easy to respond to our experience with horror. We look to the present situation for an explanation and think that there must be something wrong with us or the relationship.

Flashbacks interrupt our sense of safety with our partners, especially during intimacy. Things that made us feel connected to them now make us feel isolated, emotionally overwhelmed, and sometimes even terrified without knowing why.

It’s essential to remember that in a healthy relationship, experiencing shutdown, numbness, and avoiding intimacy can be standard symptoms of unresolved sexual trauma.

If we don't know the signs of unresolved sexual trauma, it's easy to try to fix something that isn't broken. We might throw ourselves into personal development work or try frantically to change what, until now, has been a wonderful and supportive relationship.

We might even respond by isolating in confusion, sabotaging the beautiful connection that we've worked so hard to co-create.

We don't realize that there's a splinter of unresolved trauma buried under our skin, pushing its way to the surface and demanding to heal.

It's easy to spiral into self-sabotage when unresolved traumas arise, because our nervous systems are easily hijacked into thinking that our traumas are still happening, even though they’re not. We can project unsafety everywhere, even onto our beloved partners, simply because we carry the unresolved impact of the past in our bodies until we heal. 

Here are some options for how to respond, when past sexual trauma arises in healthy relationships. 

How to Navigate Past Sexual Trauma in Healthy Relationships

Whether it's your past sexual trauma or your partner's, there are ways that you can meet the experience and help it heal.

1. Acknowledge the safety that you and your partner have created together.

Your nervous systems now have a supportive environment in which to heal. Whether it's past sexual trauma or other types of wounding arising, you have an anchored, secure attachment to each other that signals to your bodies that you are truly, finally safe. This is worth celebrating.

2. Track when you or your partner experience flashbacks.

Flashbacks are sensory fragments of traumatic memories from the past that feel like they're happening in the present. They start in the body and the nervous system and create accompanying emotions and thought patterns that are often intense and sometimes dissociative. There are telltale and predictable signs in the body you can observe, in yourself or your partner, when a flashback is happening. Learn what these are, and you'll be able to map so you can respond. 

3. Normalize what’s happening, without going into detail.

It's essential to recognize flashbacks in the moment. Doing so shifts the experience from shock, confusion, and shame into loving care and support. We need a way to signal, to ourselves or to our partners, that we are aware a flashback is happening. We don't need to share what it is about or try to figure out why it happened. This is a somatic process, not a rational one. It's enough to speak up, so we can pause together and orient our nervous systems towards down-regulation and support.  

4. Normalize flashbacks, especially during sexual intimacy.

Flashbacks are a normal and challenging symptom of unresolved sexual trauma. They are a sign that the body wants to heal. When we notice them without shame or judgement, we create a space for ourselves and our partners to be seen, welcomed, and witnessed in the full spectrum of our experiences. Unconditional love and acceptance are healing gifts, in and of themselves. When they are offered during sexual intimacy, instead of flashbacks that create isolation and push us away from each other, they can bring us closer together and offer opportunities for profound sexual healing.

5. Seek out sexual trauma healing work.

Sexual trauma is held in the body and the nervous system, and it requires a focus on sensations in the body (i.e. a somatic approach) to heal. Whether you do this work with me or someone else who is qualified, it's essential to give yourself the support you need to heal. Find evidence-based modalities (like Internal Family Systems or Brainspotting, among others) that don't require you to talk about what happened to heal. You don't need to remember what happened to heal. And you can even do this work online, from the comfort of your home, surrounded by your support system. But do the work. You deserve it and so does your relationship.

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Safe and caring relationships are foundational for healing. 

But speaking up about the unresolved sexual trauma we're carrying is vulnerable and often scary. Back when our traumas happened, we might have tried to speak up and not been believed. Or maybe we stayed silent out of fear, confusion, and hopelessness, and now we blame ourselves...

As a culture, we don't talk enough about the impact that past sexual trauma can have on intimate relationships. Until the trauma heals, the aftermath is ongoing. We can’t change what happened in the past but we can change how we deal with it in the present.

I hope that this article has inspired you about the power of relationships to catalyze deep and lasting healing.

If I can support you or your process, I encourage you to reach out.

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