IT ENDS WITH US: Ways Traumatized Children (Then Adults) React

It Ends With Us is about ending the cycle of domestic violence. At least on the surface, it is. But, looking more deeply into Justin Baldoni’s film, we find different ways traumatized children (then adults) react. All these reactions, painfully and tragically played out by Lily, Ryle, and Atlas in It Ends With Us, lead to later problems with love.

Love isn’t safe for traumatized children. You can’t trust it. You’re afraid you might lose it. Love is scary. Insecure. Unreliable. Love can turn against you when you least expect it to.

You can’t even love yourself.  Lily, Ryle, and Atlas feel all of these things about love.

The question is why?

Lily and Atlas’s trauma is domestic violence as children. They witnessed it and got entangled in it. Atlas was kicked out of the house and abandoned. His mother was addicted to her abuser.

Ryle’s childhood trauma is different.

At 5, he accidentally killed his beloved older brother. He didn’t know the gun was loaded. And, he blamed himself.

It ruined his life.

Childhood Trauma in It Ends With Us

As It Ends With Us begins, Lily’s father dies. She goes home for her mother. But when her mom insists she give the Eulogy, she balks. “Oh, it’ll be easy. Just say 5 things you love about him.”

Lily goes up to the podium. She opens a piece of paper. The page is blank. Except for the numbers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. She can’t think of anything she loves about her father.

Panicked, Lily runs out of the church.

Wanting her childhood memories) to be over, she leaves for another city.

Next, we see Lily, on the rooftop floor of a building. She dangerously sits too close to the edge.

A man (her boyfriend or husband? but it turns out he’s a stranger) kicks chairs and furniture in a violent fit. This should have been a warning sign. But it’s not. Lily has blocked out her past.

The man is Ryle. He’s charming. Seductive. Not a “love person,” he says. Lily is the kind you take home to Mama, she says. This should have been another sign. It’s not. The flashbacks begin.

The first flashback is to her first love, Atlas, on the bus to their High School.

Trauma & Problems with Love

 Lily’s father was like Ryle, but she doesn’t see it. Not even after he pushes her down the stairs.

Like Atlas’s mom, Lily’s mother couldn’t leave her abuser either. Lily’s father beat and almost killed Atlas when he found the two childhood sweethearts together in her childhood bed.

She ran from it, but this is what she’s used to. Her mom didn’t protect her. The parents she needed to love her were inconsistent, abusive, traumatized themselves, or neglectful (as a start.)

If you experienced these kinds of parents, you can’t help but carry problems into later love. You had to learn to protect yourself in various ways. We see these ways in It Ends With Us.

You might try at love as Lily did with Atlas. He was hurt, abandoned by his mother, and kicked out after he got in the way of a boyfriend’s abuse … “She likes dating guys who beat her.”

He had no home. Lily understood. Violence was in her family, too.

This was before she lost her ability to feel safe being tender and vulnerable. She cared for Atlas, fed him, gave him her father’s clothes, and stood up for him with the bullies at school who didn’t understand. They slowly, sweetly, fell in love. Atlas was gentle (not like Ryle.)

But then her father caught them in bed after their first time, making love.

Atlas joined the Marines and went away. Lily never saw him again. That is, until later.

Childhood trauma leaves its scars. We see that clearly in It Ends With Us.

All three characters live with them. And trauma has triggers. Ryle’s reaction is violence when he feels unwanted. Violence isn’t excusable, but it can be understood. Atlas goes away

When love seems fleeting, you toughen up. That’s Lily, her flowers, and the Oak Tree.

Ways Traumatized Children React in It Ends With Us

1. Having to “Go It Alone”

As teenagers, Atlas helped Lily plant her flowers and plants. “What makes you want to grow things.” “When I take really good care of these plants, they reward me with things like flowers and vegetables. And when I don’t, they shrivel up and die.” “Kind of like us,” Atlas says.

When you aren’t nurtured as a child, you shut down. You have to go it alone.

You tell yourself you need no one because no one can be trusted: Like the Oak Tree:

“It doesn’t need anyone to grow because it’s capable of taking care of itself. No matter what, it’ll keep going because it’s strong and sturdy, and it survives … because it’s a Goddamn Oak Tree.”

An Oak Tree may need no one to survive, but that’s not true of a person, no matter how hard you try. You might tell yourself you’re fine – because you can’t trust love. You’re scared.

Lily is seductive and wants love but can’t quite let it in. She’s tough and sarcastically challenging when she meets Ryle. At least, at first. And, then, there’s Atlas. He quietly goes away.

Ryle? He isn’t a relationship person.

Love doesn’t work for Ryle. He fights it. Because he hates himself. He has his reasons. When you hate yourself, you don’t think you deserve love. That’s a big problem.

2. Repeating The Trauma of the Past

We watch how Lily repeats her childhood trauma. She doesn’t heed the red flags when Ryle throws the furniture. Still doesn’t see he’s abusive when he pushes her down the stairs.

Lily walks right into her parent’s relationship. The difference is: that she finally leaves.

3. Trying to Repair What’s Happened

Filled with terrible and intolerable guilt. That’s Ryle. He becomes a neurosurgeon to repair what he couldn’t. He knows that when you accidentally shoot and kill your brother, it ruins your life.

Lily doesn’t want to repeat the past, but she does.

Yet, maybe, unconsciously, she believes if she can ignore the signs and change Ryle by loving him and making him love her back, then maybe he won’t be like her dad.

But this isn’t how the past “ends with us.”

She will have to go away from the abuse again, but this time, hers won’t be running. It won’t be the kind of self-protective “going away” to protect yourself from being left alone and abandoned.

4. Going Away Before You’re Left

When you don’t expect to be loved, sometimes you try to protect yourself by going away first. This is Atlas. He leaves for the Marines, and he never reaches out to Lily after he returns.

Ryle goes away differently. He refuses to commit to love. He can’t. Until, with Lily, he does.

We see what happens. He hasn’t faced his past. Or the way the past made him feel unwanted and undeserving. His guilt and unresolved grief have ruined his life. It’s made him hate himself.

5. Self-Hate (& Violence)

Self-hate starts with the question: “Do I deserve love?” When the conclusion is “No” (and Ryle has his supposed “proof”: “I killed my brother”), the self-hate is so strong and unrelenting it is unbearable. When he decides to try with Lily, he takes a huge risk. He makes himself vulnerable.

There’s no doubt Ryle, blaming himself, felt he lost his parent’s love when his brother died. Maybe something did change. So, finding love that he won’t lose? No, he can’t believe in that.

So, when he falls in love with Lily, his trust in her love is fragile, perhaps even nonexistent. Then Atlas shows up and Ryle believes she’s turned away to someone she thinks is “better than him.”

He feels worthless, less than, not lovable, something he tries to prove he is with all his surgical successes. In It Ends With Us, now, again, Ryle believes he’s “failed at love.”

Feeling unwanted brings on self-hate. He lashes out at the one who makes him feel that way.

Self-hate makes it hard (if not impossible) to trust love and let love grow.

How Love & Trust Grows

 Remember. Lily told Atlas: “When I take really good care of these plants, they reward me with things like flowers and vegetables. And when I don’t, they shrivel up and die.”

Have you been hurt and disappointed in love? It’s hard not to shut down to protect yourself. Growing into love means opening up and learning who to trust (and who not to).

When she and Atlas say goodbye so that Lily can decide about her pregnancy and life, he tells her: “If you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again, please fall in love with me.”

That’s a vulnerable thing to say, for someone as hurt and guarded as Atlas.

Lily, too, is vulnerable and open when she asks for a divorce. She tells Ryle she wants to name their daughter Emerson after his brother and call her Emmy. But she makes him face what he’d do if anyone abused his daughter as he abused Lily. He says: I’d tell her to leave.”

Lily learns to take care of herself and her daughter. Not to rush into anything, like she did with Ryle, seduced by her hunger, loneliness in a new city, and his charm. She sees who she is.

Atlas does, too.

And a few years later, at a park, Lily sees Atlas:

“Are you still ….,” he asks. “No, it’s just us. Are you with anyone?” Atlas answers: “No, not yet.”

There’s hope in being open to seeing how you’ve repeated the past or grown wary of love.

Growing into trust and love takes patience, time, vulnerability, and self-acceptance. It means not shutting down, but knowing and trusting yourself well enough to choose love safely and well.