Dating : How I Overcame the Fear of Losing My Partner

There is a lyric I love by the singer Passenger which goes, “When you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose.”

For the first part of my life, I was just trying to survive. There were several moments where I hit rock bottom and truly didn’t care if I woke up the next morning.

In those moments of darkness, I truly believed that I had nothing to lose.

That was a long time ago and my life has shifted. These days it feels like I have everything to lose especially with how much I adore my partner and that has been so frightening to me.

However, living with debilitating terror wasn’t how I wanted to live so here is how I started working through the constant fear of losing my partner.

I began to focus on the here and now.

Recently my grandma passed away. I absolutely loved her, and she had the kindest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.

However, she spent her entire life worrying. Worrying about her kids, worrying about her grandkids, worrying about anything you could worry about… and for what?

The constant worrying didn’t change anything. Life went on and she lived in a constant state of stress about the things she ultimately couldn’t control.

Things happen in life that no one can prevent and worrying about the future will do absolutely nothing.

I saw how much she worried and didn’t want to go down the same path and decided to finally focus on living in the present.

I realized this was different than my past relationships.

A few years ago I was in a relationship that was “almost right”.

By “almost right” this guy checked almost every box. We were extremely good friends and I loved him in a special way.

We had a magical evening and he told me he was going to propose. I was absolutely over the moon and the next day, he went and cheated on me.

He was honest but our relationship was over.

Because of that, my fear of losing people in my life became stronger… but I realized something important.

My partner is not responsible for the mistakes of my past boyfriends nor is he going to make the same mistakes.

I accepted that life doesn’t always go as planned.

When I was with my first love I was certain that I was going to marry him.

I remember being certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was going to happen. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of a fight with my Dad that nothing was going to stop us.

I built the beginning of my adult life around that belief.

Yet, we ended up being wrong for each other. He ended up cheating on me and I had to let him go.

Life doesn’t always go as planned and holding on to something tightly won’t prevent you from losing it.

All we can do is live every moment to the fullest and cherish the time we have with the people that we love.