Since You Asked: How Can Anxious Tendencies Affect Your Relationships?
Romantic partnerships can be wonderful sources of love and affection. Our partners are kind to us, they send us funny Tik Toks, introduce us to new places to eat or things to watch, and they share all the best stories of things that happen to them (along with some of the tough times, too). Lovers are lucky to have each other as companions and best friends, but every once in a while, one person forgets--relationships aren’t meant to consume our lives, they’re meant to supplement them. Instead, intentionally or by accident, someone will become an anxiously-attached partner.
If we contemplate and suddenly decide we’re an anxious partner, what do we do? If we decide to look into our tendencies, we may want to adjust and find healthier habits in our love lives. They’ll lead to healthier relationships not only between us and our partner, but us and our personal responsibilities and life aspirations.
There are a lot of common behaviors or traits of anxious partners (in relation to their tendencies, not to a medical diagnosis of anxiety). However, just because they’re common doesn’t mean your partner will act in every single way an anxious partner will act, nor will the list of anxious tendencies be all-inclusive.
Common tendencies if you’re in a partnership with someone who has an anxious attachment style can include:
The partner seeking to be close (they will want to message or call often when apart, and when together they crave feeling constant attention from the other person).
They can be distrusting of the others in the relationship, fear irrationally about their partner leaving them, or even doubt themselves/don’t believe their partner truly wants them unless they get the attention they want.
No matter how much attention or reassurance of love they’re given by their partner, a majority of the time it’s never quite enough to satiate the anxious partner.
The anxious partner’s mood is easily influenced by their relationship (i.e., if even the slightest thing goes wrong with their partner, they’re in a sour mood until the stressor is fixed and they’ve been reassured enough by the other person that their relationship is secure).
Though daunting at first, recognizing our anxiousness helps us fulfill ourselves as individuals. If we’re kind and loving to ourselves, we can go on to have more satisfying relationships with others, including our significant others. In this way, our significant other becomes supplemental to us rather than consuming our lives.
When we take on the role of the anxious partner, we become people with a scarcity mindset. Life’s value equates to how much love we have from our partner. We don’t mean to, but we tell ourselves we won’t be happy until relationship-related attention or affection occurs, or that we only enjoy life with our significant other by our side. They should be a positive influence in your life, however relying on them for this happiness can make it difficult to function normally and productively in our everyday lives and when we’re apart from each other. Instead of focusing on our classes, work meetings, or having fun with our friends, we ruminate about our lover until we see them once again. We orient ourselves to their every need, and in the process, forget about what our own needs are beyond our partnership. We associate happiness and life satisfaction with our partner, instead of creating a life for ourselves that balances our own work and life interests with those that involve our lover.
When it’s our partner with anxious tendencies, we can still feel a strain on our relationships, too. We feel our anxious loved one yearning for constant attention, and it implies that we’re expected to be there for them… a lot. Our partner wants us to be their constant lover, their caregiver, their confidence-booster, and their overall life-cheerleader. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things, but when we’re expected to be this way constantly, we feel burnt out of the relationship. We may feel like we’re not giving our anxious partner enough love. We may pull away out of relationship fatigue, or fear of being inadequate to the partner.
It isn’t easy to transition from being an anxious partner to one that is more secure, especially when you initially realize you like to invest your love and time into your partner. But don’t worry, because becoming less anxious in our relationship tendencies doesn’t mean completely dissociating ourselves from our relationships. We can still overcome anxious tendencies while enjoying our relationships, it’s about finding the balance between your personal aspirations, interests and obligations with those of your partner’s, and doing so together can lead to fulfillment not only in life with a partner, but also as a life that is yours.
Written by Nhatalya Pagtakhan
