Bad reactions to relationship fears
Here are some common and less common relationship fears that people tackle in not so healthy ways. To put your mind at ease, or terror, depending on the perspective, we all have some fears. No matter who we are, we all fear something about relationships. The question is… What and what we do to cope with it, is the reaction proportionate or not, and do we go by the worst option or the best coping method?
I fear I’m not good enough for you, therefore, I’ll run (let someone better than me have you)
This is one of the most common relationship problems there is. You meet someone who you feel instant chemistry with, an instant love, instant attraction. You feel they are interested in you, too, maybe even in love with you, but your love starts to feel so overwhelming and so powerful, and also, so pure and pristine, that you decide to sacrifice yourself so that someone better than you could have that person.
You stop dating them because you figure they’d be better off with someone else.
NOOOO!!
You’ve just decided on behalf of your potential True Emotion Mirror that they don’t love you (enough) and that they’d be happier without you. That is NOT the way to go about this.
Granted, it’s true, sometimes there are people who simply pressure the other into a relationship with themselves and they’re completely disproportionate in their relationship to the other, and everyone can see the relationship isn’t on a healthy ground, but are you sure that’s what this is or are you simply AFRAID you’re not seeing yourself and your potential in a realistic light… Which way are you adjusting the scale? Are you making yourself out to be less valuable or more valuable than what you are? Is there a potential you’re leaving someone whose happiness depends on you staying?
It takes time to fix this fear with a True Emotion Mirror, it takes maturity and understanding to understand how YOU could be the PERFECT partner to the man or woman of your dreams and however you got so goddamned lucky?
I fear you don’t want me, therefore, I’ll run
Another version of this is not really fearing that you’re not good enough or that there’d be another one more suited to them, but a nameless “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me, so I’ll save myself the pain of rejection and get away from you” -fear and response to it. Also very common with and requires maturity to get over.
I fear you’ll reject me, therefore, I’ll reject you, first
This is more a deep, general fear; you fear rejection and you fear THIS person would reject you, so you reject them before they’ve even had the chance to truly open up. You “sense the rejection coming”, even when it’s not coming, and you reject the other person and run as a precaution.
I fear you’ll reject me, therefore, I’ll hit on your friend (NOD-syndrome)
I call it the NOD-syndrome, Next One Down -syndrome when someone is interested in one person, but upon approaching, freezes and hits on their less attractive friend, instead. The second idea here may be that once they’re in a group of friends, they can make a move on the actual target later on, but this rarely is seen positively between two friends who don’t want to steal each other’s boyfriends or girlfriends.
I fear you’ll cheat on me if we were in a relationship, therefore, I’ll date your friend and cheat on him/her with you instead
This is kind of a severe reaction to a fear of being cheated on. There are some people, who literally choose someone for a serious relationship (the public front) and keep true love as the side chick or the “lover”. I believe this comes from an old idea of having an organized marriage as the public front, and, as a natural consequence to non-voluntary marriage, having mistresses or lovers on the side as a matter of course translating back to modern days.
It may also come from the belief that “everyone cheats”, and then arranging the puzzle pieces so that the “better”, “hotter” relationship is on the side, while the tamer, more reliable relationship is kept as the public front relationship.
I fear I’ve gotten too good with men/women, and I am not sure if my approach is honest anymore… therefore I’ll remain single for the rest of my days
The Don Juan -syndrome. Once you get too good at picking up men or women, and you start getting love confessions too easily, you may start fearing that you’ve lost your grip of reality and/or that you’re manipulating your partners into *believing* they’re in love with you when they are not. Even when you try to be authentic and honest, you know exactly what to say and how to express yourself, so it starts to sound manipulative.
An extreme reaction to this would be to never date seriously, in order to protect the people you get involved with by remaining unattached for the rest of your days.
Another reaction to this may be, that having people fall in love with you so easily destroys the wow-factor of having someone’s love, and therefore, you start feeling a disconnect from the situation entirely. The fear then becomes that you are no longer capable of falling in love AT ALL, but that’s not true. (It’s just that you’re desensitized to ego-based love so all is good.) The wrong attempted solution to this is often to date someone superficially suitable, and try and convince yourself you’re actually in love with them.
Self-blinding behaviors, those bad reactions
What’s in common to these approaches is that they’re a method of blinding oneself from the truth, and “talking over it” in some way.
I haven’t found anyone I truly love/find truly attractive, that makes me think I might be a commitment-phobic, narcissist, or a psychopath, or all of the above, therefore, I’ll force myself to fall in love with… You. I’ll try you.
Something akin to one of the points above, someone knowingly seeking for true love can start worrying that they are incapable of feeling love, concluding that they might be a commitment-phobic, narcissist, or a psychopath. The more likely reason is that they’re a highly intelligent sapiosexual, and therefore not easily wowed by people of normal intelligence. The higher the IQ, the harder it is to find an intellectual match in all points that much connect in order to create a base for a successful relationship.
Many people try and force themselves to fall in love with a superficially compatible partner, whether they find them truly attractive or not.
I fear I’m not good enough for you, but I want you, therefore, I’ll shut down my fears and self-doubt, and ram my will home regardless (rape or love rape you)
On the other extreme, a person can fear they are not good enough for a specific person they love, a type of a person, or anyone at all, and in order to silence their fears, they suffocate all self-doubt and replace it with a false ego or simple conviction that they know what they’re doing and all is good. Such a person can be very pushy about the relationship, interpret an authentic rejection as a similar fear, and be very hands-on about pushing their way into a relationship with another person.
This can result to an actual rape or what I call “a love rape”, pushing one’s love on another person by force, similarly as pushing oneself on another person in the sexual sense.
I fear you’ll criticize me, therefore, I never stop talking or screaming over your voice
A person can be afraid their loved one is GOING TO criticize them about something whether due to persistent irrational sense of guilt or for a real reason, and therefore, they feel they can’t let the other one have a turn to speak. People like this can talk a lot, constantly and loudly, in order to drown out any possible criticism of them before it starts. (Not all people who talk a lot do it for this reason, but this type does.)
Another reason for constant talking maybe the fear of a breakup or bad news coming, so one constantly talks (even happily) in order to signal: “NOT THE RIGHT TIME TO BREAK UP WITH ME!! I’M HAPPY, DON’T RUIN MY DAY BY BREAKING UP WITH ME!”
Maybe a better approach would be to allow the other person to have their say, and face the truth?
I fear I’m going to do wrong by you, therefore, I’ll close my eyes and fly blind
Similarly, someone can be convinced that they’re going to “fuck up” somehow. They just know, eventually, they’ll do something really stupid and the relationship is going to be doomed. Therefore, they may choose to blind themselves from the problem and start engaging in all kinds of distraction behaviors, one possible distraction being shopping uncontrollably, namely gifts to the partner as a pre-apology or just-in-case apology for what they have unwittingly done or are going to do, whether such a thing has or will happen or not.
Another reaction is to kind of knowingly NOT contemplate what the partner (child, friend, etc) needs in this relationship, and just distract oneself from it by any means necessary.
A better approach would be, of course, to stop and contemplate whether that fear is based on actual reality.
I fear I’m being forgotten, therefore, I talk constantly, I irritate you, I make a fuss about myself
A lot of people fear (or know) that they are not truly loved by the people they’re friends with. Therefore, they may talk a lot, make a lot of noise, practically throw cartwheels in order to get attention from others, in order to remain on the forefront of their awareness. “If you remember I exist, you can’t leave/ignore/forget me”.
This can go so far, that people connect the feeling of getting attention FOR ANY REASON as a sign of love. Therefore, they can try and constantly provoke you for an argument in order to get your attention. Once they have your attention, they feel loved and cherished. ≈Extrovert[/groups_non_member]-behavior-can-be-moulded-by-telling-them-what-theyre-like/”>All attention, to them, equals love.
I fear you’d drop me as a friend, therefore, I’ll make myself the contact person
A person who fears their group of friends would drop them at the first opportunity can make themselves the contact person everyone else has to go through in order to contact the other. (This person can also be a family member, quite typically a mother.) “You call me, and I’ll organize a get-to-gether.”
The idea here is that people get used to the idea of calling this person rather than another person, for any get-togethers. They fear (know) that if the others would call each other, they’d easily drop them off the list of friends being contacted. This person can also become destructive, as they start pinning friends against each other, in order to solidify their own position in the group.
I fear I’m not good enough for you (or anyone), therefore, I’ll build myself a false ego and INSIST upon INSISTING that’s the real me (and any doubt I may have is just bad self-esteem and I’m just gonna ignore that.)
This is a perfect example:
There’s enough material for a full book to analyze on that clip, but… There you go.
And last but not least:
You’ve observed so many horribly clueless people in your time, and you fear you’re one of them
When you’re aware of how woefully clueless some people are in relationships, their own position on the ladder, their false ego, their patched up self-esteem, the awkwardness and clumsiness of their approaches and so forth, the chances are that you start fearing you’re one of those people. The higher on the ladder you are, the fewer people you can see that are clearly above you, and the more it can give you a fear that your sense of reality is completely screwed.
I call this the M8-syndrome.
The solution? Try and keep your ego in check at all times… Sometimes, ask someone you trust to tell you the truth whether your sense of reality is warped. Be willing to hear the truth, and they should be able to tell you. Forgive those who think you’re joking when you ask – it can be difficult to understand why a full 10 would worry about such a thing.
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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.
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