Background: Child maltreatment (CM) can contribute to attachment insecurity, creating challenges to building supportive relationships that support growth and resilience in adulthood. Studies have focused on understanding how CM survivors adapt to the impacts of CM for their family-of-origin relationships or parenting, but fewer have explored chosen relationships.
Objective: This study seeks to fill this gap by exploring how emerging adults with CM histories subjectively experience, understand, and cope with the impacts of CM for their friendships and romantic relationships.
Participants and setting: The sample consisted of 23 emerging adults (18 to 25 years old) with a CM history, living in Canada.
Methods: Participants were invited for semi-structured interviews documenting CM and interpersonal experiences. A hybrid thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes and subthemes.
Results: Three overarching themes emerged, each dealing with broken trust: 1) Internal experiences stemming from CM preventing trust, 2) Coping with broken trust by protecting oneself, and 3) Learning how to build trust in others and themselves.
Conclusions: Emerging adults described interpersonal challenges stemming from broken trust caused by CM and maintained by internal experiences of fear, longing, guilt, and shame. Coping through avoidance, isolation, and dominance over others further maintained distrust. However, emerging adults undertook a learning process, involving attempts to engage with others, recognize patterns of abuse, and practice behavioural changes. Future research should explore the role of chosen relationships, especially friends, in mental health interventions and efforts to foster greater social support and stronger community among emerging adults with CM.
Keywords: Adult attachment; Child maltreatment history; Chosen relationships; Emerging adulthood; Qualitative research.
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