Question: I met a wonderful guy online and after a few chats we met in person. He says he is attracted to me and I admit I am very attracted to him and find decent and good qualities in him. The hardest thing is to not overanalyze his every action to see if he is reacting positively or negatively towards me. When we are together I feel that I love him more than he loves me but he says I need to relax and stop making myself anxious over nothing. Every relationship I get in I destroy it by worrying that the person will leave me. It is almost as if I am purposely trying to destroy the relationship.
If I could be able to relax and enjoy my relationship I could actually have a chance at a lasting relationship. I love him and don’t want to lose him, but at the same time I am not sure what to do? I’m really scared that I may die alone.
Yangki’s Answer: I can only imagine how much of a strain this must be to you both. The unfortunate reality is that overanalyzing other people’s reaction to us is the symptom of a much bigger underlying problem manifesting itself in as excessive worry that anyone who gets close to you will hurt you by leaving you.
Overanalyzing his every action to see if he is reacting positively or negatively is your way of looking for any signs that he is thinking of/wants to leave you. Bringng it up, creating a “false self” to hide the vulnerable you, not allowing yourself to get “attached” or pushing him away is all an attempt to control the timing of what you perceive to be the inevitable.
There is not much you can do in terms of learning a skill or superficial technique to stop yourself from this kind of excessive and often unfounded worry. To prevent this relationship from going the way of all others, instead of talking to him about not feeling worthy of being with him, try to explain to him in detail — solid facts/information rather than feelings — why it is that you just can’t relax and enjoy the relationship. He may think it’s just one of those “woman’s worry,” and talking to him about it may help him understand you better.
Give yourself the opportunity to learn how to connect with someone — even with the risk of losing him. And give him the opportunity to give unconditional support to a woman he cares about. He may even be able to relate and appreciate what you go through.
This is just a band-aid to stop things from falling apart before you can do something about it. I encourage you to spend time working on yourself and not feel like you have to be in a relationship/have someone love you to feel worthy. It may even be necessary to have some counselling/therapy. Breaking habitual reactions is hard to do on your own. Until you have a full understanding and full appreciation of yourself, you’ll continue to feel like you have nothing of value to offer to someone or bring to the relationship.
Last but not least, be kind to yourself. Almost everyone has something in their past that they wish they could go back and redo with the knowledge they now have. You don’t have to be fully evolved — no one is fully evolved. All you have to do is get to that place where you believe you’re worthy of love, and can allow someone to love you.
Avoiding the issue indefinitely may actually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Because I love people and care about them, only to find I am the only one usually doing any of the “caring”.
May be you can help me with my situation. I so desperately want to be in a relationship but afraid to get into one for fear of being hurt. How to stop this fear?
Ever heard of the saying, “better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all”?
Nobody enjoys being rejected or having their heart broken. Like everything in life, relationships have a risk attached to them. There in is no magic spell for this but there are a few things you can do alone or work with a professional to 1) understand some basic man/woman interaction dynamics, 2) get your self confidence to a healthy level, 3) learn some basic dating & relationship skills and 4) do it afraid. I could go in detail on each of the above but that would be a post in a post.
i’m very like you, barelydated but younger. I want men i almost certainly can’t have and the ones that are attracted to me/flirt with me are those that i have no attraction to. it’s difficult.