Who has had a trauma bonding relationship?
Anyone who played sports, broke up with the same partner a few times, you get the idea.
If you’ve ever rented a place in a bad building, worked for a bad boss, or eat in a middle of the road restaurant instead of trying someplace new, you’ve had a bond, traumatic or not.
For example:
You want a cup of coffee at an easy drive-thru, but don’t want to give Starbucks any business.
After enough less than optimal cups of coffee, you can’t stand it.
The solution? Find a local Starbucks without the drive-thru to punish yourself for caving.
That would be the one on Scholls Ferry Road near the Key Bank.
Turn into the crowded parking lot, try not to get clipped, park, and walk over.
The advantage, the moral advantage, is not sitting in a long line with an idling engine killing the world you know and love.
The problem is someone backing into you after a bank transaction gone wrong, or you backing into someone.
At least in a drive-thru no one is showing off their back-up skills.
The Bad Land Lord
I rented a place with the promise I’d furnish new carpet if they installed it.
The current carpet had that old sour smell of things spilled and soaked in.
I got the carpet, they installed it, but the smell didn’t go away. Why?
Because they laid it over the old carpet. Didn’t even vacuum it off first.
It all fit the neighborhood at the time, a stank stretch of SE 11th I fondly remember.
It was my final city apartment before I bought my suburban guy card.
We moved soon after someone jumped, or was pushed, out of a speeding van, bounced off a telephone pole, and died.
The hair and teeth and goo were the last city straw.
I’m sensitive like that, especially with a wife and baby in tow..
Our baby was born in that apartment, a home birth, which I recommend if possible.
We wanted a fresh start with a better foundation, a better carpet pad.
The Bad Boss
An ambitious man was hired to run a section of a department.
When the department head was out of the office, something went wrong that wasn’t his fault.
The section man stabbed him in the back when he convinced the director it was his fault.
He became the new department head, the old guy got a new job description.
I got hired by the equivalent of a bad carpet pad kind of guy. Smelly.
He managed the department with the same tools he used to get the job.
Everyone took a side.
At weekly meeting he stood up to report with a heel click.
It was an interesting experiment in power watching him suck-up to the top guys and cracking the whip on everyone else.
There was a Monty Python aspect that made it hard to keep a straight face.
Average Food
For those rare times when we don’t want to cook, and clean up afterwards, where do you go?
I’m a baby boomer groomed on fast food.
My high school girlfriend worked at Dairy Queen.
It was a lethal combination of King Burger and milkshake and smiles.
We shared trauma bonding when she loaded a burger with horse radish. (Hey B)
Instead of a burger place, a brew pub, or bar, where do you go?
It’s a food question, not where to find flaming sauces at the table followed by knife moves and scolding hot stew served in a volcanic lava bowl that never cools enough to eat.
All you want is average food, comfort food, and not have to cook.
Trauma Bonding: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The landlord ran his business on a tight margin.
That didn’t excuse the mess left after any clean up.
He was lazy.
We had things in common.
One of them wasn’t the son who rented the place next to me so I had a clear path listening to him scream at his girlfriend.
I told the landlord, who said he’d look into it.
Those days are good examples of what not to do.
The house I live in had a smelly carpet when we moved in.
It was worse after a shampoo.
I pulled it up and found about ten years worth of dog pee on the carpet pad.
Instead of laying new carpet over the top, I pulled it all, cut it and stuffed it into those contractor quality big black bags, and sealed the entire floor with KILZ for a fresh start.
It worked. I thought of that apartment the whole time.
The backstabbing boss eventually settled into a predictable routine and turned out good work.
Just as he was rounding into his leadership role, he got sick and died.
It was a drawn out death where he wasted away in his office.
Then one day he didn’t come in. Or the next.
People had conflicted feelings at his memorial, but most agreed he was a character.
The staff had a quiet talk before he got sick, about what happened to make him the way he was.
He had a complicated life, which is how to describe someone who has passed without being critical.
It’s called manners in some circles.
About David Gillaspie
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