Have you had some crazy thoughts about your relationship even when it’s going great? Let’s be honest; we all have those. But what if you have it like, all the time?
You can’t stop thinking about whether your partner is cheating on you. You freak out when they get busy at work and don’t call you as much. You’d like to think about all of the possible things that the relationship might end up badly.
If you aren’t sure about your answer, let’s take a look at these signs to see if you happen to do any of these, and if you do, don’t worry; you aren’t alone.
There are ways to overcome this as long as you are willing to change.
You Stalk Your Partner’s Social Media
You might think this is normal, but it’s not. Stalking your partner’s social media or even going through their phone while sleeping isn’t something people in a healthy relationship do. It does nothing but shows you the lack of trust you have towards your partner.
It’s like a rabbit hole. It didn’t do anything good to my mental health. The more I checked, the more anxious I became. It eventually affected the whole communication between my partner and me. So I stopped before it got worse.
The truth is, if you truly trust your partner, you won’t have the need to go stalk what they are up to on social media or who they talk to over the phone aside from you. People like to normalize this idea, and in their excuse, it’s necessary to “check-in” once in a while whether your partner is still faithful to you or not.
Little did they know, it won’t help them feel “secured,”, and instead, it’ll bring all sorts of anxiety and insecure feelings. No matter how many times they check, it’ll never be enough.
You Constantly Doubt Their Love to You
No matter how many times your partner says “I love you” and how hard they work to show their love to you, you still don’t think it’s true.
You’ll doubt their feelings from time to time. “Do they really love me?” is the one question that’s been on your mind.
People who don’t feel anxious about their relationship that much know that it’s useless to keep questioning whether your partner really loves you or not. You clearly can see through their actions and how they treat you daily.
So the action itself to keep asking whether your partner loves you or not isn’t really about finding out the answer. It’s more about you who need constant reassurance from them.
You Keep Thinking the “What IFs” Scenarios
I used to tell my partner all about the what-ifs scenarios — even the crazy ones. Like for example, “what if you go back to your home country and never come back?” when I know for sure that his job is here and practically it doesn’t make sense to leave for now.
If you are thinking all of those what-ifs to yourself, then it’s a different story. Coming up to your partner and having conversations that might only end up as drama isn’t healthy because it also can affect your partner’s mental health.
One day, my partner told me it’s tough to deal with me whenever my anxiety comes up, and without I realized it, I created drama that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
So if everything is going well in your relationship, yet you can’t stop thinking about the worst scenarios all the time, then it’s a sign you have too much anxiety that needs to work on.
You Revolve Your Life Around Your Relationship
Do you cling to your relationship too much? To the point where you don’t have anything else going on in your life?
My God, I’ve been there many times, at least in the first 2 years of my relationship.
It was so bad because I literally didn’t have any goal other than catching up with my partner. Looking back, no wonder my anxiety level was really high.
Yes, building a solid relationship with someone is important because what’s the point of working hard and having all the money but end up being alone, right? A meaningful relationship is what makes your life more colourful.
But focusing on your own life is also as crucial. Life isn’t all about relationships. When you overthink about it, there will be no space to grow.
Having your own goals outside the relationship, in fact, will make you a better partner.
You Have the Tendency to Sabotage Your Relationship
I didn’t realize I had the tendency to sabotage every relationship I was in, at least until I was 22. My anxiety was out of control, and I didn’t know how a healthy relationship should be.
This is one of the common signs of people who have anxiety in their relationship. When things go really well, your fear tells you that it’s something that you don’t deserve because you are so used to think the worst-case only.
So what would you usually do? You create unnecessary drama and make a small argument into a big one without you even realize it.
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Final Thoughts
If you think that your anxiety might ruin your relationship, here are things that you can do to prevent it:
- Learn to trust your partner and respect their privacy. This means you don’t go and check their social media or phone because you know there’s nothing in there, and doing it will only make you feel worse, not better.
- Find new hobbies that you’ve been neglected. Hobbies that you used to do before you even got into the relationship. Keep maintaining your hobbies to the point where you think you have the same excitement as being with your partner.
- Whenever the thought to question your partner’s love occurred, take a step back and don’t react right away, instead take time for yourself to see whether it’s true or not, is your partner still acting the same? Is he still doing what he usually does to show his love to you? If the answer is yes, try to change your thoughts by saying good and positive things about your partner. This will help your negative thoughts disappear.
Finally, I can’t tell you how long you can overcome this anxiety feeling. It’ll still come up once in a while because we are human. We don’t feel the same type of emotions every day.
But being aware of it whenever it shows up in front of you will help you gain confidence over time in handling it. You know it won’t sabotage or make your relationship go in the wrong direction because you control your anxiety.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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