If you’ve been single for a long time and are noticing all your friends pairing up, getting married, and settling down, you may be starting to wonder why you haven’t found your person yet. You may be on online dating apps and going on many dates, but you notice that the relationships you make don’t tend to work out. One possible reason is that you feel insecure and anxious in relationships.
Why do relationships make some people feel this way?
Losing your independence and freedom
One reason people feel anxious about intimate relationships is because they worry about losing their independence and becoming codependent. If you struggle with codependency you tend to focus on your partner’s moods, desires, and needs rather than your own. You blame yourself for things that are not your fault or take more than your fair share of responsibility for problems in the relationship. You struggle with attending to your own wants and needs while also being receptive to your partner’s wants and needs.
You try and solve problems for your partner that are theirs to solve, such as a substance abuse issue. Usually underlying these behaviors is a fear that if you don’t do these things, your partner will abandon you and you would be alone. So rather than risk being abandoned, you cater to your partner’s needs or you avoid relationships altogether in order to not have to deal with the pain of potentially being abandoned.
Intimacy equals conflict
We form our ideas of what relationships are like by watching the relationships around us growing up. This is typically the relationship we saw our parents having with each other. We also form our ideas of relationships by the very first relationships we have, which is the relationship we have with our caregivers. So if you grew up in a household where your parents were constantly fighting and yelling at each other, you might equate intimacy with conflict.
Therefore you might think that if you become intimate with someone, there will be conflict, and not the productive kind. Conflict that is comprised of frequent yelling can feel out of control and activate the flight, fight or freeze response. If you didn’t have healthy conflict modeled for you, you might worry about getting too close to someone out of fear of things getting out of control.
Conflict Avoidant
Another reaction you might have to growing up with parents who were bad at conflict, is to be conflict avoidant. Doing whatever you can to avoid arguing might seem like a better alternative to saying anything that could generate conflict such as disagreeing, stating an alternative preference, or speaking up when something upsets you in the relationship.
Try an Experiment
If you’re not currently in a relationship, but think you might be conflict avoidant, see if you notice this tendency with friendships. Do you tend to not speak up when something bothers you? Do you shy away from stating a preference for even small matters, like what kind of music to listen to on a road trip if it might clash with what someone else wants?
If so, try voicing an opinion where you normally wouldn’t. You can start out with something minor like choosing which restaurant to eat at. Be aware of what comes up when you do this. Do you notice being fearful of what your friend’s reaction might be? Do you worry that they wouldn’t want to be your friend if you’re not so easy-going? Do you notice feeling anxious? The first step to change is awareness, so it’s helpful to take note of what happens when you do something you typically avoid.
Fear that someone won’t like the “real you”
You might avoid intimate relationships because you believe that if someone truly knew you, they wouldn’t like you. For example, you might be introverted or shy and typically you manage this by socializing for only short periods of time, after which you come home and relish in not having to talk to anyone. You have difficulty imagining being in a relationship with someone given that relationships require a lot of shared time with your partner. It’s hard to imagine that there might be someone else out there, who also prefers the quiet company of another person and with whom you could spend extended periods of time, simply enjoying each other’s company.
How to get over the fear that someone won’t like the “real you”
One way to combat the fear that if someone knew the “real you”, they would reject you, is to be the “real you.” For example, if you think you are socially awkward or shy at parties, rather than trying to cover that up by acting confident and trying to be the life of the party, seek someone out who might also feel anxious at the event and start a conversation with them. It might be easier to make a genuine connection with someone one-on-one than to try and be a social butterfly, especially if that’s not your true nature.
Just as we’re attracted to diamonds with many facets because they shine more brightly, the more facets you reveal about yourself, the more someone will be able to find something to relate to you with. This way, if how you present yourself to the outside world matches how you feel on the inside, there is less of a chance that if someone really got to know you, they wouldn’t like you. Because they’ll already know the real you!
Fear of being controlled
Relationships require being able to communicate your needs and wants, hearing your partner’s needs and wants, and knowing how to compromise. If you grew up with a parent who was controlling or had an authoritarian parenting style, you may not have had the ability to express your thoughts, feelings and opinions or if you did, they were quickly shut down.
Throughout childhood and most of adolescence, we’re completely dependent upon our parents for survival. If you had a controlling parent, you might be ambivalent about intimate relationships because you don’t want to return to that helpless, dependent state again. It’s hard for you to imagine a scenario where both partners could be in an equal partnership.
If you tend to feel insecure or anxious in relationships, contact me to see how I can help.
