Falling in love can be the best feeling in the world, with highs like you’ve never known. Everything seems like sunshine and rainbows. However, some people might instead find themselves feeling very anxious about their new relationship to the point that it interrupts their life and potentially hurts their relationship. If this feeling doesn’t seem to go away, it could affect your relationship.
This is called relationship anxiety, and it occurs surprisingly often. It can take the comfort out of a long-term relationship and the fun out of a new connection. The good news is that there are healthy ways to cope with relationship anxiety that can help you build your dream relationship and learn what matters to you in the long run.
What Is Relationship Anxiety?
Relationship anxiety is a persistent worry about your romantic relationships. There can be several components that make up relationship anxiety:
- Persistent worry: Constantly questioning yourself, your partner, and the relationship.
- Insecurity: Feeling doubtful about the stability and future of the relationship.
- Fear of hidden issues: Concerns about potential secrets or unresolved problems
- Impact on well-being: Affecting overall happiness and peace of mind in the relationship.
Most people experience anxiety of some sort during a romantic relationship. Maybe you’re nervous when someone is slow to respond to your text. Or maybe deciding if you want to marry someone can bring out some fear. However, relationship anxiety is something that becomes persistent and ongoing, and it often occurs when nothing is wrong with the relationship.
Relationship anxiety becomes a problem when it’s turning a beautiful relationship into something stressful and unhappy. When the butterflies in your stomach become uncontrollable, it might be time to start looking for anxiety support, so you can experience all the beauty of love.
Signs of Relationship Anxiety
In general, relationship anxiety means you’re constantly worried about your relationship. That can look different for every person, though. These are some of the most common signs that you could be experiencing relationship anxiety:
- Constant doubt: If you find yourself frequently questioning the relationship and your partner’s feelings, it could be relationship anxiety. This is especially true if your partner is very clear about how they feel about you, and you still find yourself questioning that.
- Need for reassurance: You might find yourself seeking ongoing validation and assurance from your partner. This could involve repeatedly checking if your partner finds you attractive or still likes you, even if their actions are regularly showing that they love you.
- Fear of rejection: All relationships come with a risk of rejection, but if it’s constantly holding you back, it could be a problem. This fear will often look like worrying about being abandoned or not being good enough. It could keep you from expressing your own feelings for your partner or from taking a risk.
- Overthinking: Often, relationship anxiety comes with obsessing over small details and potential problems. Every word your partner says might become something that you analyze for days to come. A single text could lead to a spiral that then makes you feel unhappy.
- Difficulty trusting: You might find yourself struggling to believe in your partner’s loyalty or intentions. You could end up questioning them often or find yourself believing that they don’t have the right intentions.
- People pleasing: This involves going out of your way to make your partner happy, often at your own expense. It often occurs because you believe that your partner doesn’t want you unless you can make them happy all of the time. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible, and it shouldn’t be the goal of a healthy relationship.
What Causes Relationship Anxiety?
Relationship anxiety can seem to come out of nowhere, but for most people, there’s often a root cause that could be causing this pain. These are some of the things that might lead to relationship anxiety:
- Past trauma: Someone with previous negative experiences or relationships might have anxiety in their next few relationships. For example, if someone was cheated on, they might have a deep fear or rejection and not being good enough and feel anxious regularly, even if their partner is loyal and loving.
- Insecure attachment: Early childhood attachments can lead to insecurity in romantic relationships later in life. People whose parents made them feel like they couldn’t count on love can end up experiencing worry and anxiety in adult relationships. Sometimes these people with this attachment style don’t realize this could be the cause of their anxiety.
- Low self-esteem: Someone with a lack of confidence in themself and their worth might experience relationship anxiety. This individual might worry that they’re not worthy of true love, and that can manifest as pressing anxiety and a constant need for reassurance.
- Fear of abandonment: A deep-seated fear of being left or rejected can cause anxiety. If someone was abandoned as a child or left in a serious relationship, they may fear that could happen again.
- Communication issues: Poor communication skills or misunderstandings can eventually lead to some relationship anxiety. That’s because small issues that could have been resolved have been allowed to escalate into something that causes real and pressing worry.
- Unresolved conflicts: Lingering issues or arguments that haven’t been addressed could also cause worry. Learning to resolve these quickly and effectively can help reduce the potential for a conflict to make some feel unsure about a relationship.
Just because something bad has happened to you in the past doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to experience relationship anxiety. And if none of these common causes resonate with you, it doesn’t make your relationship anxiety any less real. These are just some reasons it could occur.
How to Overcome Relationship Anxiety
While relationship anxiety can be challenging and feel debilitating at times, it is something that can be managed and overcome. Let’s look at some strategies that can be helpful for resolving relationship anxiety and learning to build strong relationships that can withstand the test of time:
Open Communication
Talk honestly with your partner about your feelings and concerns. Having a strong foundation of communication can help prevent some elements of relationship anxiety, and it can help you manage your worries. If you feel like you’re experiencing relationship anxiety, one of the first things to do is to talk to your partner about it. Let them know how you’re feeling. A good and loving partner will want to support you through this, so expressing your true feelings to them is safe.
You might frame your conversation with “I” statements. That way it’s all about how you are feeling, and it isn’t anything about your partner’s behavior. This can help prevent your partner from feeling defensive and support the two of you in your conversation about your anxiety.
Therapy
A powerful strategy is to seek professional help to address underlying issues and develop coping strategies. This is especially important if your relationship anxiety seems to stem from trauma, your childhood attachment, unresolved fears, and low self-esteem. A licensed therapist can help you work through why your past could be influencing your current relationship. They’ll also help you learn and master coping strategies that can keep your anxiety in check.
If you are unsure of what could be causing your relationship anxiety, therapy is also a great place to begin. A therapist can ask probing questions and help you look through your life’s experiences through a new lens to determine what could be fueling your anxiety. Discovering these root causes can help you determine what you can do moving forward.
Sometimes relationship anxiety comes alongside mental illness or even generalized anxiety disorders. Talking with a therapist can help identify if there’s anything else that could be hurting your mental health and provide you with treatment options if that’s the case.
Self-Care
Focus on maintaining your mental and physical well-being. Sometimes feeling bad about yourself is what causes the downward spiral into deep anxiety. Spending time working on a strong relationship with yourself can help you avoid some relationship anxiety. Self-care isn’t just taking bubble baths and relaxing. It’s all about creating a strong foundation of mental, physical, and emotional health.
For example, you might build a consistent exercise routine and focus on eating well to support your physical health. That can help you feel good about yourself and support your mental health as well. You might make a goal to get enough sleep because that can help you feel better in all aspects of your life.
Build Trust
Creating a solid relationship is an important part of overcoming relationship anxiety. Work on establishing and maintaining trust within the relationship. That might involve having regular conversations where you’re both emotionally vulnerable, so you can learn to trust each other. You might talk over any past experiences that could be hurting your relationship and discuss how to move forward. The goal is to help both people in the relationship understand that they can trust each other. That will help you feel more reassured as you continue to navigate relationship anxiety.
Challenge Negative Thoughts
Too often, we let our negative thoughts be the ones to shape our reality. Self-talk in our minds does shape the way we perceive our lives and the world around us. If you’re regularly telling yourself that your partner doesn’t love you or that you aren’t worthy of love, that can become a self-manifesting prophecy. Instead of letting these negative thoughts rule your mind, Identify and counteract irrational fears and insecurities.
Replace these negative thoughts with positive ones that you believe. For example, instead of letting the thought “my partner doesn’t love me” run through your mind, try changing it out for, “My partner regularly expresses their love for me. I can trust that.” Come up with your own mantras that can help shape a positive reality for you and your partner.
Set Boundaries
Create healthy boundaries to ensure both partners feel secure and respected. These are another important part of building a strong relationship that you can trust. Setting good boundaries and then having your partner respect those can help you feel reassured and like you can trust your partner throughout all the challenges of life.
Remember that healthy boundaries aren’t demands. They have to be something within your partner’s control. For example, you might set a boundary that you need time to yourself two evenings a week to exercise. That’s a reasonable expectation with the intention of helping you center yourself, rather than an attempt to control your partner. When your partner respects this boundary, you can both feel more loved and more secure.
Practice Mindfulness
Engage in mindfulness techniques to stay present and reduce anxiety. This might include meditation, journaling, or even relaxing walks. The goal is to focus inward and on your breathing. Doing so can help you manage anxiety in all its forms, including relationship anxiety.
Reframe Your Relationship Anxiety
Relationship anxiety can happen to everyone, but it doesn’t mean that your relationship is over or that you can’t love. You are full of love to give and are a good partner. You’re simply experiencing some challenges that can be addressed by creating a healthy relationship with yourself and your partner.
One support tool to help you with relationship anxiety is Reframe. Reframe is designed to help you change the way you think about your anxiety in an effort to help it become something you can manage. Reframe your perceptions to create the relationship you’ve always dreamed of. Download Reframe today!
