Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It (18 page)

There may come a time when you seriously question whether your relationship is right for you, and you ask yourself whether you should stick with it or end it. To decide this, you need to take a good, hard look at your relationship. You might find that you know what you “have” to do, and that the real problem is doing it. Or your challenge might be making a decision even when you aren’t so sure. Neither situation is easy, but the next exercises will provide some guidance.

Exercise: Is It Worth It?

If you are torn about whether to end your relationship, then you need to assess how healthy the relationship is for you, as well as your desire to stay in the relationship, your willingness to work on it, and whether you think your partner has an interest in—and the ability to—meet your needs. To guide you through this, think about the following:

Consider how well your relationship fits the criteria for a healthy relationship.
You may remember that you are likely to feel happiest in a relationship if your partner can do the following for you:

Be emotionally available:

• Be responsive to your wants and needs.
  
• Value you as a person, not just for what you can do for him.
  

Be a safe haven:

• Be supportive and reassuring, especially during difficult times.
  
• Comfort you when you are upset.
  

Be a secure base:

• Encourage and support you in pursuing your interests.
  

To feel like an equal, you will also want to be there for your partner in these same ways. This, of course, means that your partner must be open to sharing his wants and needs with you, turning to you in times of distress, and looking to you for support in pursuing his interests. Your relationship does not need to be perfectly balanced in each of these areas, but you do need to be comfortable with the balance that exists.

Acknowledge your emotional needs and desires.
Look back at the exercises in chapter 8 in which you imagined your perfect partner and perfect relationship. Not that anyone or any relationship is perfect, but how are your current partner and relationship measuring up?

Express your needs directly.
While you want a partner who generally tries to meet your wants and needs, you are responsible for letting those be known. Have you been clear about this? For instance, you might sometimes ask for reassurance that he loves you or say that you want to spend more time together. If you have not communicated clearly and directly about what you want, then you need to think about why this is the case, and perhaps return to the exercises earlier in this chapter on communicating effectively with your partner.

Consider whether your partner has consistently treated you with respect.
A partner who really wants you to be happy will consistently give you the message that you are a priority and worthy of his efforts to try to please you. As you think about whether this characterizes your partner, you might find it helpful to talk with someone other than your partner—someone else whom you trust and respect. If you realize that your partner has frequently made it evident that you are not a priority and has disrespected you as someone who “has issues”—that you are too needy, for instance, or too insecure—then you are dealing with someone who is not acting as an engaged, supportive, and caring partner. It is time to move on. Conversely, if you have not treated your partner with respect, then it is time for you to reconsider your own actions. By trying to live up to the standard of always being respectful—even when you are upset—you are doing your part in nurturing a healthy and respectful relationship.

Compare the picture of your relationship with your experience.
Just because your partner looks to the world like the perfect catch, this does not mean that he is. Some people treat their partners better in public than they do in private. And sometimes, even when someone looks like a good match “on paper,” there might be something about who that person is that makes him or her a bad fit. If you think either of these situations describes your relationship, talk with a caring friend who can validate your experience and reinforce that your feelings matter. If your friend challenges you with the suggestion that your insecurity is affecting your perceptions and is the real issue, then give some serious thought to this. Talk it through with this or another friend and decide for yourself whether you would be better off working on your relationship or ending it.

Exercise: Letting Go

If you decide to leave your partner, it’s important to formulate a plan that will help you to walk away and keep on walking. So consider these recommendations:

Build a support system ahead of time.
As Levine and Heller (2010) point out, breakups are painful and you will do best if you have supportive people to lean on. This means being honest with them about your struggles so that they can understand your circumstance and truly support your decision to end your relationship.

One of the most difficult parts of leaving a relationship is that your partner was the one you relied on (or had a fantasy of relying on) for connection, support, caring, and reassurance. Your partner may be the one person you looked to for a sense of mattering in this world. By having a support system in place, you can turn to these other people to serve as both a safe haven, to comfort you when you’re distressed, and a secure base, encouraging you to pursue your own interests. While feeling like an important part of other people’s lives doesn’t replace having a partner, it can give you a sense of belonging and can make all the difference in how you feel about yourself.

Let yourself mourn.
This is a natural response when you lose an important person in your life—even if you are better off without him. Friends might tell you, “He’s not worth it,” but the fact is that no longer having him in your life is still a loss. So feel the sadness, anger, hurt, or whatever else you feel. But keep putting one foot in front of the other as you walk away. With time, he will be far behind and you will stop looking over your shoulder as your new life becomes more engaging.

Remind yourself of your value and strengths.
This can be particularly difficult to do when you are down. Consider what family and friends appreciate about you. If you are inclined to dismiss or minimize this, don’t be so hasty. These people choose to interact with you because they want to—even family members don’t
have to
stay in contact. You might also find it helpful to refer back to the chapter 7 exercises,
Discover the Value in You
and
Be Your Own Best Friend
.

Choose healthy ways of coping.
While it is always a good idea to take care of yourself, this is especially important when you are going though a difficult time. Unfortunately, this is also when you are more likely to give in to impulses to seek immediate gratification, such as with food, alcohol, sex, or shopping—or to just withdraw from the world. It’s okay to respond in these ways sometimes, but you still need to be smart about it. You’ll only make matters worse by eating your way up a size or more, or buying a Porsche on a Hyundai budget. And hiding out at home never made anyone happy in the long term. So make the effort to engage in the things you know will eventually help you feel better: eat healthily, exercise regularly, get enough sleep, socialize, and return to spiritual practices if you have them, as well as to other activities you normally enjoy.

Engage in meaningful work.
When people feel that they are doing something that is personally meaningful, they are more likely to become truly engaged in it. And a sense of engagement is a wonderful antidote to feeling disconnected. Examples of such work are volunteering at a school or homeless shelter, gardening, going back to school for an advanced degree, or writing a book (yes, that’s my personal example). You can, of course, choose more than one activity to fold into your life.

While your choices do not have to include doing something for and with other people, helping others—and doing it through direct contact—can provide an additional sense of connection and of having value. It is also linked to the helpers’ feeling happier.

Refocus on the moment.
If you get lost in your painful feelings, try refocusing on whatever you are doing in the present moment. For help with this, refer back to the steps in the chapter 7 exercise “Embodying Your Body.”

Be prepared for the urge to reunite.
There is a good chance that you will, at some point, entertain the idea of going back to your partner. You might remember all the good times or think that maybe you can do it differently this time. Before picking up the phone or “happening” to run into him, think seriously about your situation. Acknowledge how difficult it is to stay away, but also think about how hard it was to be in the relationship. If you are flooded with positive memories, do a reality check. Did those enjoyable times really characterize your relationship? Or were there more painful times that outweighed them? Ask yourself why you decided to leave. If you know why, but have trouble keeping those things strongly in mind, write a list (during one of your stronger moments) that you can refer back to. Also, before reaching out to your former partner, reach out to a supportive friend to talk over the situation. Finally, assuming that you know your decision to leave was the right one, remind yourself in weak moments that “this, too, shall pass.”

Be forgiving of yourself if you go back.
Even if you make the above efforts, you might find yourself texting your old boyfriend with the secret hope of reuniting, or find yourself back in his arms before you fully realize what you’ve done. As soon as you realize your mistake, put an end to it. Remember, everyone has weak moments; so forgive yourself. If you need help nurturing self-compassion, the “Be Your Own Best Friend” exercise in chapter 7 might help. The sooner you can put your mistake in perspective, the better off you’ll be.

Breakups are never easy, but armed with an understanding of what went wrong (not only this time, but also so many times in the past), you now have a better chance for a healthier, more secure relationship.

Hopefully, through reading and applying the information in this book, you have a new appreciation for your difficulties in romantic relationships. You can see that they are expressions of struggles with how you relate to yourself, as well as to your partner. You can also identify the path toward a happy, healthy romantic relationship, and have made significant progress down that path. Part of the beauty of enjoying a secure relationship with a partner is that it also encourages and reinforces a secure sense of yourself.

If you do the work laid out in this book, you
will
become happier—in your romantic relationship, in your other relationships, within yourself, and in your life. There’s no doubt that this takes focus, persistence, and effort. But the benefits are tremendous!

Seeking Professional Help

By finishing this book, you’ve taken great strides, but it still might not be enough. For instance, if your partner is not doing her part despite seeming to want to be together, or you seem to be unable to break free of your patterns of anxious attachment, then seriously consider couples therapy. Or if your attachment-related anxiety overwhelms your efforts to develop a sense of self-acceptance or your ability to feel safe in relationships, consider individual therapy.

You can apply insights from this book to therapy; and you can even help your therapy along by sharing them in sessions so that the therapist can integrate them into the treatment process. John Bowlby (1989), the man who first proposed the idea of an attachment system, explained that therapy can help people develop more secure styles of relating to others (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007).

It is essential for you to develop a sense of your therapist as a safe haven and a secure base. With this foundation, you will feel supported in pursuing personal interests and opportunities for growth, and you will also feel safe enough to explore your insecurities. Your therapist can guide you in gaining greater awareness of painful feelings, negative self-perceptions, and problematic behaviors. You’ll learn to consciously recognize your own well-intentioned but misguided efforts to develop a sense of safety and reassurance in your relationships.

Although you certainly want to find an experienced and capable therapist, it’s essential that you also find a professional with whom you have a good rapport. Because therapy involves heartfelt discussions that will leave you feeling vulnerable, you need to feel as emotionally safe as possible with your therapist.

In many ways, the work you do in therapy naturally develops your ability for compassionate self-awareness. Moreover, by understanding compassionate self-awareness, you can talk more directly about it. This discussion can facilitate the work of therapy, helping you to effectively change your self-perceptions and your ways of relating to others.

You Can Do This

Your relationship problems can feel overwhelming, but when they do, remember that there
is
a path to happier, healthier connections. You can find a life partner who is there to support, encourage, and love you, just as you can be there to support, encourage, and love him. The way to do this is what this book has been all about. It offers you a way to focus compassionately on your experiences in the moment, enabling you to nurture yourself and your relationship (or your potential relationship). Together, these actions
will
free your love from insecurity!

I am tremendously grateful for the work of the many researchers and theorists who have been so influential in this book. My thoughts with regards to attachment theory and compassionate self-awareness have been possible only with the foundation that they laid. Though you will find a substantial number of them among these references, I want to express special gratitude to a few. With regards to attachment theory, I am particularly indebted to John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, Karen Bartholomew, Peter Fonagy, Phillip Shaver, Jude Cassidy, Mario Mikulincer, Chris Fraley, and David Wallin. It was also helpful to read the work of others, such as Sue Johnson, Amir Levine, and Rachel Heller, who have shared ideas about attachment theory with the general public. William Swann has provided compelling ideas with his theory about and research on self-verification. With regards to my ideas about compassionate self-awareness, I am particularly indebted to Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the many researchers of mindfulness and meditation, and Buddhism. Many of these ideas only resonate with the general population because of those who have successfully shared them with the community at large, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Jack Kornfield.

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