By Linda C J Turner | Trauma Therapist & Advocate
You stayed for decades.
You tried to talk, to reason, to connect.
But your needs—small, everyday needs like warmth, presence, and shared joy—were dismissed, minimized, or outright ignored.
No favourite meal.
No flowers—because his mother didn’t like them.
No Sunday lunches, no movies curled up together, no long walks, no shared passions.
Not even a TV program.
Not even a conversation when you were hurting.
🧊 What does this say about the relationship, psychologically?
This is not simply “incompatibility.”
This is emotional deprivation—a chronic, subtle form of neglect that starves your nervous system of connection, co-regulation, and emotional intimacy.
Over time, your body begins to ache for what it’s not receiving:
- Touch that says “I see you.”
- Words that say “You matter.”
- Moments that say “We’re in this together.”
But instead of comfort, you were locked out—literally and emotionally.
Silenced when you tried to communicate.
Dismissed when you brought up problems.
Your feelings treated as inconvenient, unimportant, or dramatic.
From a psychological perspective, this is a form of emotional abuse and coercive control—not through aggression, but through deliberate absence.
And from a neuroscience perspective, the impact is profound:
🧠 Your nervous system becomes dysregulated. It learns to expect rejection instead of connection.
🧠 The limbic brain (which governs emotion) stops seeking comfort because it no longer believes comfort is available.
🧠 The prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational thinking) battles with the emotional brain: “Why am I not enough? Why can’t I make this work?”
Over the years, this emotional starvation becomes internalized:
You stop asking.
You stop expressing.
You stop hoping.
And that’s the trauma—not an explosion, but a slow fading of the self.
What many don’t realize is that neglect can be as damaging as overt abuse.
Because love isn’t just about what someone doesn’t do to you—
It’s about what they fail to give.
💬 No curiosity.
💬 No shared joy.
💬 No companionship.
💬 No effort.
And after 32 years, you’re left wondering—did I matter at all?
Let me tell you this:
👉 Your needs were never too much.
👉 Wanting Sunday lunch, flowers, a shared laugh, a walk together—this is not “high maintenance.” It’s basic emotional nourishment.
👉 What you were living with was withholding as punishment, not love.
To anyone surviving this kind of emotional neglect:
You’re not cold. You’re not broken. You were deprived of warmth for so long that your body forgot what safety felt like. But it’s not too late. You deserve love that shows up—not just in words, but in presence, in joy, in shared life.
#EmotionalNeglect #WithholdingAffection #CoerciveControl #ChronicLoneliness #NeuroscienceOfTrauma #HealingAfterAbuse #LindaCJTurnerTherapy #TraumaAwareness #RealLoveConnects #YouDeserveToBeSeen
— Linda C J Turner
Trauma Therapist | Neuroscience & Emotional Intelligence Practitioner | Advocate for Women’s Empowerment
