4 Ways To Keep Your Insecurities From Ruining Your Relationship
When you haven't learned healthy ways to be with somebody, feeling insecure in a relationship can impact everything from how you select a partner to how you treat them, and sometimes, it can even bring about a relationship's early end if you let it get the best of you. While the only way to heal an insecure attachment style is to learn security within a relationship, it takes enormous effort and acknowledgment of your hangups to achieve the confidence and self-possession that flourishes in a healthy relationship.
There are definitely relationships that provide the reasons someone might be insecure. Partners who violate the boundaries of monogamy, prey upon your fears, or find ways to put you down are more or less setting out to cultivate your insecurities so that you will stay with them. But sometimes, insecurities arise even when this isn't the case. If your partner is kind, communicative with you, and nurtures your goals, but you are still feeling insecure in a relationship, then you need to find a way to break away from the unhealthy thought and behavior patterns that are ruining your relationship.
Here are some things you can try:
1. Identify The Source Of Your Anxiety
Feeling insecure in a relationship stems from some source of anxiety. The anxiety you're harboring might be about your place in the world, what you bring to a relationship, or even whether or not your work has meaning. Even though your relationship might be the place where these anxieties are rearing their ugly heads, that doesn't mean that's where they actually exist.
Are you projecting your worries from a completely different arena of your life onto your partner? Or are they really doing something that's resulting in feeling insecure in a relationship? Take some time to figure out what, exactly, is bothering you before you bring it up with your partner.
2. Put The Phone Away And Talk Face To Face
You should never initiate a heavy relationship talk over text, but you also shouldn't use texting your partner throughout the day as a way to escape your anxieties or insecurities. Even though the phone is an easy escape from the stressors of work and your day, texting can also become a way to feed everything you are feeling to your partner — even when they are not there. Constantly texting back and forth can create the illusion of intimacy, while leaving both of you feeling empty. Really, there's no good substitute for eye contact and physical touch, especially when you need to talk about something serious.
If you're feeling insecure in a relationship, you are probably texting your significant other as often as possible to try and make yourself feel more stable. But all this behavior is doing is feeding into the insecurity more and more. Try minimizing the amount of time you spend talking to your partner throughout the day. When you're not on your phone, you might find that you are better able to enjoy the present, rather than worrying so much about your relationship. This might also relieve some of the pressure you put on your partner for them to entertain you or to constantly funnel your concerns.
When you put away your phone, then you will really be with your partner when you are with them. And you will learn how to sustain yourself when you are apart.
3. Acknowledge What Makes You Happy
When you are feeling insecure in a relationship, all of your attention is probably going to what isn't working with your partner. A partner who cares about and is devoted to you is going to pick up on this and will feel like they aren't good enough for you or able to provide all of the things you want. Nobody can be anybody's everything, but it's easy to forget that when you are in a relationship, and it feels like you are making your partner feel insecure and letting them down.
If you are feeling insecure, despite your partners' best intentions, be sure to tell them what they do that brings you a lot of joy. Only articulating what isn't working in a relationship is definitely going to ruin it. Be sure to pay attention to what the relationship is bringing you and how your partner is helping you along a healing path. Otherwise, feeling insecure in a relationship might bring about its untimely end.
4. See Your Partner As Clearly As You Want Them To See You
When you're feeling insecure in a relationship, it's easy to get swept up in your own thoughts. Anxieties have a way of narrowing your internal lens. You might forget that there are two people in a relationship, and your partner is also being affected by your insecurities. While you definitely shouldn't abandon the work you need to do on yourself in order to coddle them, you should be sure to check in with them and see how they are doing. They probably have some insecurities, too.
Unhealthy relationship patterns can be broken when you have a partner who is willing to work with you on your insecurities and help you heal. But it does take work, and healing from insecurities won't happen all at once. If you are feeling insecure in a relationship, even though your partner is completely devoted to you, have confidence that the both of you can work on it together and become better and stronger together because of it.
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