h2>Dating : Relationship security is an inside job
by: E.B. Johnson
There are few things more toxic to our relationships than insecurity. This type of fear and self-doubt eats away at the core of our connections until we’re left with nothing but a toxic and confusing soup of emotions. We have to shift this fear and find more confident ways to build up ourselves (and our partnerships) if we’re serious about creating happy futures with someone else. Do you want to be happy as a couple? Then you have to shift your fears and learn how to be happy and confident in yourself.
Are you struggling with insecure attachment in your partnerships? In order for you to create something that’s stable and worthwhile, you need to be confident in yourself and confident in the partners that you pick. To get there, you have to get beneath the surface, though. Where did your insecurities come from? Once we address the root causes, we can build something that’s stronger and more reliable.
Past traumas
Did you grow up in a home that was chaotic or abusive? These can leave wounds on our childhood psyche that affect us for decades to come. The damage doesn’t even have to be overt. Our parents and loved ones can damage us in our youth by being dismissive, judgmental, and cold. All of this conditioning in childhood adds up. It defines the way you see yourself but — more than that — it defines the way you see intimate connection too.
Romantic lessons
Not all of our insecurities come from childhood. Sometimes, they are more closely linked to the failed relationships of your past. Are you someone who has bumbled through bad relationship after bad relationship? Maybe they cheated on you, hurt you, or otherwise taught you that it was not safe to love someone (or open up to them). This conditioning from past relationships turns into patterns and beliefs that undermine the quality of all our future relationships.
Lack of self
Who are you? Could you look in the mirror and confidently recognize who you are and the life you’ve built for yourself? When we lack a vision of self, we fall prey to the vision that others create for us. If you don’t know who you are or what you want, you then have to cling to someone else in order to form an identity or a sense of connection to the world. This ends in devastation every time, and it creates patterns of self-sabotage that keep us insecure and in a state of shame.
Societal pressure
Sometimes, our insecurities in love are shaped by everything we’re told in society. There are only a few types of relationships that society holds up as “normal”. In an effort to build conformity, these relationship models are forced on everyone. Whether it’s the right choice for you, you could end up in a one-sided and toxic relationship. As conflict and hurt erupts, you end up wounded and insecure. In many cases, society has taught you that avoidant and insecure attachment is what “real love” looks like.
Wrong investments
Are you someone who constantly invests in toxic or abusive partners? This comes down to your fears, hesitancies, and insecurities. You pick partners you know you can’t trust — people you know are not really in it for anything real. You do this because you’re insecure in who you are, and you don’t believe in your right to be happy. That’s why you fall for partners who abuse and hurt you. You don’t feel secure with them because you’re not secure with them. You’re punishing yourself through your toxic relationships.
You don’t have to let insecurity define your relationships. You can make a choice to change things, and you can literally start right now in this moment. Re-define your priorities. See relationships as a piece of your happiness. Spend time on your own and value it as much as you value time with others. Build yourself up, surround yourself with different forms of love. To move past our insecurities, we have to heal the pain of the past and move confidently toward our truths.
1. Re-define your priorities
A big reason that you’re insecure all the time is because you’ve made your relationship the center of the world. When you put the entire weight of your happiness on someone else’s shoulders, you’re bound to be disappointed. They’re a variable, and variables (by definition) change and are thus unreliable. You’ve got to shift the way you see your relationships. See your happiness as a puzzle. Partnerships should always be a piece in that puzzle — not the whole image that you’re focused on.
You have to re-define the way you see and approach relationships. You have to change the way you prioritize yourself and your partners. They don’t have to be exalted above you in order to know your love. You don’t have to subjugate yourself in order to be worthy of kindness and respect. Clinging to someone won’t make them closer to you.
Romantic relationships have to become a part of the happiness equation for you, rather than the entire picture. Placing your happiness on someone else will always leave you disappointed. Whether you realize it or not, you need more than that in order to be a well-rounded and fulfilled person. For you to feel fully happy and engaged in life, you need excitement and belonging outside of your relationship. That only happens when you learn to put it in its rightful place and see it as a part of your happiness puzzle.
2. Spend some time with yourself
Many of us have been taught that building a stable relationship requires a hyper-focus. We get taught that you have to focus solely on your partner, and that you have to place all your hopes and dreams on the partnership. That’s not healthy, however, and it sets us up for disappointment. One of the ways to build a happy partnership is by making sure that you’re happy on an individual level. Get outside of your relationship and remember who you are.
Instead of focusing all your time and energy on pleasing your partner or finding a partner, take a beat to spend time (and energy) on yourself. If you’re serious about being happy, you can’t sacrifice all your needs and interests on that altar of someone else’s making. You need to invest in making yourself a better person from the inside out.
Spend some time with yourself. Branch out from your relationship and rediscover what it means to be a citizen of the world. Get back into the groove with the friendships you’ve left behind. Reconnect with those hobbies and interests that inspire your passion, or motivate you to move. By getting back out into the world, you expand your sense of self. This increases your confidence and helps you to see reality in terms of what you really need and want from life and your relationships.
3. Build a base of self-esteem
Like it or not, there’s no moving forward from our insecurities without a strong base of self-esteem to launch from. You will continue to doubt yourself and fear real, independent love, until you love yourself and believe in your right to thrive. It’s not possible to build an equitable relationship when you don’t see yourself as someone worthy of an equal stake. For you to be honest with yourself and all future partners, you need to focus on building the strongest sense of self-esteem you ever imagined.
Build a base of self-esteem that allows you to move confidently within your relationships. We have to believe in ourselves in order to build relationships that are stable and aligned to our true needs. Until you are confident in what you want, you won’t be able to create boundaries and you won’t be able to stand up for them.
Come to love yourself as much as you love your partner. Value your needs and desires as much as you value yours. Fall in love with your body. Fall in love with your heart. You are worthy of love and respect, but you have to give it to yourself first. Each morning, look in the mirror and say 3 things you like about yourself out loud. Do this until it is a comfortable practice. Once you are secure in celebrating the good things about yourself, look to the things that make you uncomfortable. Accept them too to see yourself as a whole.
4. Fill your life with love
If you’re here, it’s probably because you’ve spent a long time making romantic relationships the focus of your entire life. You’ve probably been chasing love and connection, and wanting desperately to be validated by that romantic love you’ve seen put on a pedestal since you were a child. The problem here, though, is that romantic love isn’t the only love. Putting the weight of love on a romantic relationship is a failure. There is so much more love out there in the world and — many times — it’s deeper and more revealing.
Fill your life with every kind of love you can imagine. Romantic love isn’t the only (or the most fulfilling) kind of love. When we only make room for this type of love, we leave our lives truly empty in every other respect. If happiness is our aim, then we have to learn to see love in a more authentic way.
Look around and take some time to appreciate all the other forms of love that are out there for you in the world. You are loved by your pets. Your family loves you. Your friends want nothing more than to see you thrive and grow. Is that not love? We limit ourselves when we see romantic love as the pinnacle of deep, intimate connection. It’s not. We could live our lives never being married or having partners and we could still be happy, fulfilled, and surrounded by people who we know love us.
5. Resolve your past pains
When we boil everything down, our insecurities come from specific injuries in our pasts. At some point, someone did something to us or said something to us that made us think we were unworthy. We took this negative idea and ran with it. It snowballed, and we were left standing in total wreckage. If we are to have any hope of putting this right, then we have to look back and heal the wounds of the past. From there, we are given a clean slate and can better see ourselves (and our relationships) for what they really are.
Resolve the past pains that are holding you back and keeping you from healthier relationships. Has your childhood trauma taught you to that it’s not safe to love? Did your last partner teach you that you had to cling in order to feel secure? Until you find resolution to these pains, you’ll keep reliving it in your mind and in your relationships. You’ve got to heal to get where you want to be.
Become the partner you want to attract. Stop settling for people who can’t provide you with anything you can’t provide for yourself. Move past the injury that people caused you in the past. Value the future you can create for yourself more than the pain that others caused you in the past. You are not defined by those traumas and those hurts. You can still be the person (and the partner) that you want to be. Invest in honest healing. Invest in clearing the slate and developing healthier ways to move forward.
It’s not uncommon to feel insecure at moments in our relationships, but when those fears take over, we can find ourselves struggling. We can’t build something strong on a base of fears. If we want to elevate the standard of partner, we are able to attract into our lives, then we have to first seek to elevate ourselves. Change the way you see relationships and the way you see yourself within them.
Re-define your priorities and change the way you see relationships. Instead of centering your life around your romance, make it a piece of your happiness. Get away from the constant couple-dom and spend some time on your own. To be secure in a relationship, you need to know who you are. Build a foundation of self-esteem that allows you to stand up for yourself and create boundaries that prevent settling. Fill your life up with love. Romantic connection is not the only (or the most validating) way in which we can experience love. Then, take steps to resolve that pain and the hangups of the past . Fall in love with yourself, support yourself, and see yourself as the most beautiful thing in the world…because you are. You deserve to be happy on your own terms.
- Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P., Bar-On, N., & Ein-Dor, T. (2010). The pushes and pulls of close relationships: Attachment insecurities and relational ambivalence. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 98(3), 450–468. doi: 10.1037/a0017366
- Overall, N., Fletcher, G., Simpson, J., & Fillo, J. (2015). Attachment insecurity, biased perceptions of romantic partners’ negative emotions, and hostile relationship behavior. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 108(5), 730–749. doi: 10.1037/a0038987
