Does suffering verbal, emotional, and two instances of slight physical abuse at the hands of my ex gf (most of this happened after she had been drinking) constitute trauma bonding?
Even if you threw out the physical abuse, the trauma bonding would STILL be at play. I'm not downplaying the effects of physical abuse, but just proving that you could erase some of your experiences, and it would still be a situation where trauma bonding could easily occur.
Crappy thing is I feel like I deserved it because I didn't stand up to her, maybe I wasnt a "man".
I did stand up to her though when she sent a hurtful and inappropriate message to my kids about their mother (my ex wife)
You didn't deserve it. The only way you would ever deserve being hit or chastised is if someone was fighting back in self defense. And even then it's questionable depending on the situation. You didn't deserve it. I suppose you are a gentleman, and you were just trying to be nice. The hard lessons we've learned here is that being nice doesn't cause borderlines to be nice back. It gives them the feeling that they can get away with a lot. So hopefully we've learned to create boundaries so that these people can never harm us again. Boundaries scare them away.
