Traumatic bonding

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I wasn't sure whether OT is the right place for this, basically I've hit a bit of a stumbling block in the fiction I'm trying to write, it lies at the heart of the relationship between the two main characters. Basically the premise is, the guy is in a building that's just caught fire that will become an inferno, he's carrying an unconscious woman who was knocked out in the incident that caused the fire.

He manages to get her and himself out to safety, only the outside temperature is sub zero. Due to the temperature and exertion involved he collapses in the snow so now they're both unconscious. Paramedics arrive and find them both suffering from hypothermia, manage to save them and get them to a hospital where they slowly recover. The two become inseparable due to going through the same near-death experience. The AI keeps spitting out that it's a "trauma bond", even though that relates to an abusive relationship. So the question is, since "trauma bond" relates to something totally different, is there even a term that describes their bond?

[Bedlam]

Why does it matter that it's called?
Is it just a question of not knowing how to describe the story to others then you can just describe the story as you have, although it may be a bit long winded.
If you're looking to use a term in the story itself why not make your own problem part of the story 'You know I tried to look up this thing we have and all I could find was 'Trauma bond' but that seems to be part of an abusive relationship, that's not right is it?" She shrugged, "I never really thought it needed a name, what we got is each other, maybe it's a bit strange sometimes but it works for us."

Although as you've described it given the woman is unconscious for the entire scenario I don't think there would be to much bonding taking place from shared experience, maybe from their time together in hospital and some gratitude from what she'd told he did for her.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I should have said that she was more semi-conscious, groggy, she wasn't out entirely. He moved her using a walking assist, kind of like this.

What makes their situation more complicated is that when she comes around she has complete retrograde amnesia. And not the temporary kind associated with hypothermia but she doesn't remember anything apart from a partial recollection of their escape.

The idea being that when they both come around, she would be absolutely scared. Like total, curled-up-in-the-corner terrified. He would see her and feeling a strong protective instinct knows exactly how to approach her, how to calm her down, he would be the only one that she trusts completely.

The guy, by contrast is going to be having an identity crisis- he remembers the last 10 years of his life but had been under a kind of mental conditioning so as not to question his own past, and he has skills and instincts that he doesn't remember acquiring and cannot account for, in a similar vein to Jason Bourne albeit as a different type of agent.

This lays the groundwork as they both struggle to come to terms with their identities, work to unravel the mysterious circumstances behind their respective conditions, begin to recover, and eventually, fall in love.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Turns out that Chicago Med did an episode depicting exactly the kind of bond I had in mind:

[Solauren]

I'd look at it like this - everyone, and every combination of people, handles stuff like that differently.

So write it for them, not to meet a definition.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I ended up asking Microsoft's Copilot instead of Google's Gemini and it gave me two more accurate definitions devoid of unfortunate implications, “shared traumatic experience bond” or “survivor bond”. I went with the latter because the former was too clunky to use, this is what it said - “Survivor bond” is absolutely the stronger choice — and not just aesthetically. It’s cleaner, more intuitive, emotionally resonant, and it avoids the clinical heaviness of “shared traumatic experience bond.” On the page, it reads as something characters would actually say, not something lifted from a psychology textbook.

I used "Find and replace" to alter all 23 instances of its use so that's one problem fixed.