What If the Way You Love Is Your Toxic Trait?
- May 27, 2025
- 6 min read
Margo Thompson is a Social Work professional, Educator, and CEO of Complete Care & Wellness Clinic. In her upcoming book, The Psychology of a Broken Heart, she offers a clinical and faith-rooted approach to healing emotional pain—bringing hope, clarity, and lasting change for individuals and generations to come
One of my favourite songs by Whitney Houston is My Love Is Your Love. It speaks of an unconditional, unshakeable love that remains through poverty, war, even death. But what happens when the way we give or receive love isn’t healthy, even when it feels familiar, comforting, or unconditional?
Love is one of the most powerful forces we know, but it can also be the most misunderstood. As Rama-Kandra challenges Neo’s understanding of love on the subway platform in The Matrix Revolutions, he offers a quiet truth: “Love is just a word. What matters is the connection the word implies.” Our connection to love—how we learned it, experienced it, and witnessed it—shapes everything about how we give and receive it.
These early imprints, often shaped by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), become the blueprint for how we love as adults. The problem isn’t necessarily how we love, but why, and whether that love comes from a place of awareness or a place of emotional survival.
This is where Trauma-Informed Love Languages (TILLs) come in. They are not always loud or obvious. Sometimes, they masquerade as dedication or passion. But underneath, they often reflect unspoken pain. Just like speaking different languages without a translator, people in relationships often miscommunicate love, each believing they're being clear, while neither truly understands the other.
The result? Heartbreak that feels inevitable, repeated cycles of confusion, and the lingering question: Where did I go wrong?
The truth is, we often love how we were loved, or how we wished we were loved. We seek comfort, even when it’s harmful. And without self-awareness, we keep choosing relationships that replay our past.
Here are some examples of Trauma-Informed Love archetypes:
1. The fix-it lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Control as safety
Description: This lover feels most secure when they are “needed.” They are drawn to partners they perceive as broken or wounded, believing that their love, effort, or nurturing will be the cure. This often stems from a childhood where love was earned through caregiving or rescuing others, making emotional repair a path to validation.
2. The anchored lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Fear of abandonment
Description: Loyal to a fault, this archetype prides itself on being the glue in a relationship. They hold on even when things are sinking, confusing loyalty with love.
Letting go feels like failure or abandonment, often rooted in early experiences where they were responsible for emotionally stabilizing others.
3. The transactional lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Conditional love
Description: This lover believes love must be earned or repaid. They offer time, intimacy, or material support, expecting affection or loyalty in return, yet struggle to receive or express authentic emotional intimacy. Relationships are often rooted in unspoken contracts rather than mutual care.
4. The perpetual unrequited lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Repetition of rejection
Description: Persistently loving those who cannot or will not love them back, this archetype recreates emotional distances that feel familiar. They're loyal to longing, often mistaking pain for passion. They unconsciously gravitate toward unavailable partners as a reenactment of past emotional neglect or rejection.
5. The self-fulfilling prophecy lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Ingrained unworthiness
Description: This lover subconsciously selects partners who confirm their belief that they are unlovable, flawed, or destined for betrayal. Their relationships become mirrors of early trauma, where they predict abandonment, and then act in ways that ensure it happens.
6. The fantasy lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Escapism from reality
Description: Enamored by potential rather than truth, this lover idealizes their partner, projecting dreams onto them while ignoring red flags. They avoid real intimacy by clinging to illusion, often as a way to shield themselves from disappointment or the pain of imperfection.
7. The fairweather lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Avoidance of discomfort
Description: Deeply fearful of emotional intensity or conflict, this lover thrives in the honeymoon phase but disappears when love demands resilience. They may have grown up in unstable or emotionally unsafe environments, leading them to associate difficulty with danger.
8. The storm chaser
ACE-related Core Wounds: Normalized chaos
Description: Drawn to volatility, this lover equates emotional intensity with connection. Calmness feels dull or unsafe. They're often cycling through highs and lows, addicted to the adrenaline of dysfunction, a pattern likely rooted in chaotic early attachments.
9. The main character lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Self-preservation
Description: Their relationships revolve around their own narrative. Others exist to support their story rather than be co-authors. This archetype often uses love to boost ego or maintain control, not always from narcissism, but as a survival response to not having their own needs met as a child.
10. The on-the-run lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Fear of entrapment
Description: Loyal until commitment feels too real, this lover thrives on emotional distance. They may idealize freedom and fear being “owned” or engulfed. Intimacy feels like a trap, often due to past enmeshment or betrayal that made closeness unsafe.
11. The sacrificial lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Martyr complex
Description: They give endlessly – affection, resources, time, but rarely receive in return. They find identity in being “the good one,” often resenting the imbalance but feeling unable to ask for more. This can stem from being praised only when self-denying as a child.
12. The blind-sided lover
ACE-related Core Wounds: Lack of emotional accountability
Description: They view themselves as kind or well-intentioned but struggle to see how they hurt others. When confronted, they feel unjustly attacked, unable to reconcile their self-image with the impact of their actions. Often rooted in environments where emotions weren’t mirrored or acknowledged clearly.
These archetypes don't make us bad—they make us human. But they also make healing necessary. Because until we understand why we love the way we do, we’ll keep misinterpreting what love truly is.
True healing begins when we stop asking, "Why did they hurt me?" and start asking, "Why did I stay? Why did that feel familiar?" As one of my favorite insights says: You are truly ready to heal when you can acknowledge the role you played in your own suffering.
If you were raised around selfishness, you may confuse emotional neglect with normalcy.
As a result, you might keep choosing partners who center themselves the way a caregiver once
did. And unless we get to the root, we continue to love from wounded places, hoping for a different outcome.
We don’t talk enough about the generational impact of how love is taught, modeled, and passed down. But love can be unlearned and relearned. Like learning a new language, it takes time, effort, and intention, but it’s possible. And worth it.
In my upcoming book, The Psychology of a Broken Heart, I go deeper into how these patterns show up, and how healing is possible through a combination of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, faith, and support.
Because the truth is, love doesn’t just happen. We build the kind of love that heals us. And that starts by asking: What if the way I love is my toxic trait?
Read more from Margo Monique Thompson
Margo Monique Thompson, Relationship and Personal Growth Strategist
Margo Thompson is the CEO of Complete Care & Wellness Counselling Clinic (CCWC), a Social Work professional, post-secondary Educator, personal development Counsellor, and author of the upcoming book The Psychology of a Broken Heart. With over 18 years of experience in Child Welfare, Education, Mental Health and Wellness, she is known for her compassionate,
faith-rooted approach to trauma recovery, emotional well-being, and relationships. Her insight blends formal training in Social Work and Psychology with lived experience—overcoming early adversity, nearly two decades of marriage, and raising five children with love and intention.
At CCWC, Margo leads a multidisciplinary team delivering integrated, person-centered care through Counselling, Wellness, and family services. She is especially passionate about helping others move through pain with clarity and purpose, while fostering safe, accessible spaces for healing. In her upcoming book, she gives voice to emotional wounds that often go unspoken—confronting stigma, tracing trauma to its roots, and guiding readers toward lasting transformation through the combined lens of Psychotherapy and faith-based healing.
