Are You Struggling With Insecurity In Your Love Relationship?
Are feelings of insecurity coming from a habitual pattern of overwhelming fear that your partner will cheat on you? Or is your partner acting in a way that leads you to feel insecure? Or is it both? Would you like to know how to break free of these fears so that you can experience all that your relationship has to offer? Let’s dive in.
The first step to break free of insecurities that plague your relationship is to figure out where the feelings are coming from.
Previous Relationship Problems Can Contribute to Insecurity
Experiencing infidelity in previous relationships may cause you to be fearful that it will happen again. Without realizing it you may anticipate that your partner will be unfaithful and may search for evidence to confirm your expectations.
Take a moment to honestly assess your thoughts and feelings about your partner’s likelihood of being loyal to you. Consider these questions:
- Have you been in a previous relationship where your partner cheated?
- Have you always had a fear or belief that your current partner might cheat?
Childhood Issues Can Contribute To Insecurity
Sometimes feelings of insecurity stem from even earlier hurts; perhaps during childhood the impact of your parent’s infidelity affected you and your family. Those wounds may have left you fearful that it might happen to you.
The instinct to protect yourself from physical and emotional pain is so powerful that your mind will assume the worst when triggered by something that seems suspicious. It helps to realize this, calm yourself and address your concerns when you are calm.
Your Partner’s Attitude and Behavior Can Contribute to Insecurity
Problems such as poor communication, frequent arguing and fighting, and feeling stressed may cause emotional distance in a relationship. Feelings of insecurity can arise when a partner is disrespectful and fails to maintain appropriate boundaries with other people. If you are experiencing emotional distance in your relationship, it’s important not to ignore it Express your concerns to your partner.
A valuable exercise to practice with your partner is clarifying your relationship goals. From there you will need to figure out the changes that you need to make. During this conversation make an effort to listen to your partner with an open mind. When expressing your thoughts and feelings, try to do so in a respectful manner.
If You Have Discovered Infidelity
If you and your partner have decided to repair a relationship after discovering infidelity here are some additional steps. In order to rebuild a relationship based on trust, the partner who has committed the breach will need to make an extra effort to be open and transparent. This means volunteering information that will help to reassure you of their commitment to the relationship. Rebuilding trust also requires that the partner who strayed accept responsibility for the behavior, genuinely express regret, and verbalize reassurance that it will not happen again.
When you have been wounded by infidelity, it is normal to experience anger and fear. However, if you have decided to mend your relationship, you will need to work through the process of forgiving your partner and choosing to move on. This is a challenging process and you may find it helpful to seek the counsel of a skilled couples’ therapist.
While insecurities in a relationship can be caused by any combination of past and present experiences, it is important to address them in order to experience all that your relationship has to offer. Once you identify what is causing your insecurities, using the tools above can help you to manage your feelings and work toward mending your love relationship.