What Are Relationship Insecurities and How to Fight Them

Romantic relationships between people in love have many sides, both positive and negative. Something that originally seems to be cute and even pleasant may turn into a real nightmare under different circumstances. Even when people find true love and decide to start official relationships, there are always times when one or even both partners believe that they are not good enough for each other. Unfortunately, it is not always too easy to remove all doubts. In this case, these small insecurities may not only trigger serious quarrels between you and your love but also may negatively affect your self-esteem.

Those doubts are called relationship insecurities. Most frequently, insecurity in relationships affects only those who underestimate themselves and not aware of their real value as a lover, life companion, and person in general. However, if you feel insecure in a relationship, or even when you try to find a romantic partner, you will be glad to know that this situation can be changed. For example, you can try online dating, quite often, women are seeking men online because this is a much more convenient way, and since you will meet more partners online, it becomes easier to deal with insecurities of all kinds.

What Can Be Called Insecurity in a Relationship?

When people fall in love, they begin to create emotional ties and connections. Those bonds and connections, in fact, have both positive and negative effects. Surely the closer you become with your partner, the happier you are. However, due to this connection, you may begin to feel certain insecurity in a relationship. This happens because the more we like something, the more fears we have concerning losing it, especially when it comes to losing romantic partners. In other words, we may call insecurity as a side effect of love. But, is being insecure in a relationship a normal thing? To cut it short, you should never confuse insecurity and care. While care is an inner desire to help and support your significant other, insecurity in a relationship is fear that your partner will cheat or leave you. The main reasons for relationship insecurity are irrational fears and thoughts that you are not good enough, that you won't be able to live without a partner and that your partner is inevitably going to search for someone else. Those people begin to control their partners and turn into suspicious detectives who always try to find imaginable traces of cheating. The main reason behind insecurity is low self-esteem.

Needless to say that this behavior is dangerous to relationships. Most frequently, partners who experience insecurity in relationships destroy their happiness with their own hands. The situation reminds a self-fulfilling prophecy because when a partner suspects cheating, his or her behavior changes accordingly. As you have guessed, those changes can't remain unnoticed by a second partner, who also changes his or her behavior according to the situation. As a result, both partners begin to feel cooler, and their relationship slowly breaks apart. However, there is still hope because there are many ways to resolve this problem.

Where Do Relationship Insecurities Come From?

If you are feeling insecure in a relationship, do not despair, everything is not lost yet. The studies have shown that there is a certain number of factors that may make a person suffer from insecurity in a relationship. Thus, by controlling those factors, you can resolve or fully prevent this problem from happening. Of course, this will require a decent amount of effort. But have no doubt, those will pay off. To help you with this, we are going to list all those factors below.

1. Low self-esteem

You will never be able to build a happy and healthy romantic relationship if you or your partner suffer from low self-esteem. In this case, this partner will be very controlling and jealous. The root of this behavior lies in his or her fears of losing you.

2. Lack of self-confidence

This one is very closely related to the previous problem. However, in this case, we are talking about the inability to express his or her thoughts and opinion. Thus, one partner will always feel oppressed and burdened because of fear that his or her real opinion will ruin a relationship.

3. Perfectionism

When we start romantic relationships, we always have some expectations and want to make our romantic relationships perfect. Unfortunately, in the real world, nothing can be perfect. So, we inevitably face limitations, and those may make us feel insecure. We begin to feel that something is wrong in our relationships, even though everything is okay.

4. Previous negative experience

One should never underestimate the impact of this factor. Sometimes it is very hard to recover from previous mistakes and negative experiences, especially when it comes to love and relationships. In this case, you will have a feeling that something is not okay in a new relationship, just like it was in previous ones. This is why psychologists recommend not to start a new relationship if you haven't recovered from the previous attempt.

Signs Your Partner Has Insecurity in a Relationship

So, how to handle insecurity in a relationship? One of the main problems in dealing with insecurity in a relationship is that a partner who suffers from it, very rarely admits the real reasons for his or her behavior. Don't blame him or her for this since they may not even truly understand this problem. If you are the one who has insecurity in a relationship, then you can skip this part of our article because here we are going to share the main signs that should help you understand whether your partner has attachment insecurity in a relationship or not.

1. Overwhelming jealousy

Of course, there is no romantic relationship without jealousy. However, there is a certain level of it that considered healthy. For example, it is not okay if your partner is questioning your whereabouts, spying on you, tries to control you, behaves to clingy, or tries to provoke you.

2. They demand access to your accounts

His or her desire to control is the clearest sign that your partner is insecure in your relationship. Today, the best way to control a person is to have access to his or her gadgets and accounts. People with insecurities always wonder if their partners have naught apps or inappropriate conversations with other people in PM.

3. Paranoia and disbelief

You will never miss this sign in your relationship because it is very tiring if your partner is always questioning your whereabouts and intentions. When a person is insecure, trusting a partner is very challenging for him or her. Thus, they will bombard you with questions and doubts.

4. The need for constant reassurance

How often your partner asks you something like, "Do you love me? Am I attractive? Do you actually want to be with me? Are you faithful?" The questions may vary, but the main idea will always be the same because your partner always needs reassurance from you because he or she doubts themselves.

5. They hate to be alone

When a person has insecurity in a relationship, his or her worst nightmare is to be left alone. The silence of loneliness is haunting for them because they begin to dig themselves and think about things that don't deserve time or attention. Thus, your partner will never agree to stay alone even for a short period.

6. They avoid confrontations

In healthy relationships, it is normal for people to have a confrontation, because it helps them adapt and adjust to each other. In the case of insecurity in a relationship, your partner will avoid confrontations at any cost, because he or she fears that one of those will end up with a breakup.

How to Understand You Feel Insecure in a Relationship

Your partner is a very lucky person because, at first sight of this problem, you immediately started to google it. Surely, those signs that we have already shared with you in the previous part of this article will serve well for you as well. However, it may be pretty hard to understand the true nature of your behavior because people are very subjective. This also explains why sometimes we can't analyze our behavior to avoid quarrels in relationships. So, we will give you more personal signs that will help you understand that you feel insecure in your relationship.

1. You don’t fully trust your partner

Mutual trust is essential for building a healthy relationship. You may not even realize that you actually always check what your partner says to you. You must understand that this will never allow you to open to your partner because it is impossible to do this if you don't trust each other.

2. Your negative thoughts make you act

It is absolutely normal to have negative thoughts sometimes. But be careful because if you have negative thoughts too often, this may change your behavior. This is the case with a self-fulfilling prophecy because your thoughts and fears make you act, and those actions bring all your fears to life.

3. You compare yourself to other people

Even though it is absolutely natural to be curious about other peoples' lives, especially your current partner's exes, but you will never be happy if you compare yourself to other people too often, especially if this makes you believe that you are not good enough for your partner. Just ask yourself, "Who is your partner dating now?"

4. You are stalking people on social media

Stalking people is never a good thing, especially when it comes to stalking your partner exes. Rest assured that you have insecurities if you spend more than 30 minutes every day browsing through accounts of your partner's exes, colleagues, and friends. This is a very clear sign that you doubt yourself.

5. Your partner always has to reassure you

Just as we have said before, sometimes people have problems with self-acceptance because it is not something that can be done in an hour. Yes, your partner plays a huge role in this, but he or she should never be the only source of your confidence. We have already shared the main questions that people ask when they want others to reassure them.

6. You assume too much from your partner’s words

Assuming what your partner is talking about is not okay because it means that you lack a connection in a relationship. It becomes even worse when you always assume the worst. This is one of the clearest signs that you have insecurities in a relationship. Try not to read your partner's words in a way that may reinforce your insecurities.

How to Handle Insecurity in a Relationship

Finally, we have come to the most interesting part of this article. How to be less insecure in a relationship? Dealing with insecurities in romantic relationships is not the easiest thing. What is worse, you may never fully resolve this problem. There is a risk that all those insecurities will be there for the rest of your life. However, this doesn't mean that those will always negatively affect your life because there are ways to reduce their negative effect down to the level when those are not dangerous at all.

To be honest, the question of how to feel secure in a relationship is very personal, and everyone should find their answer. So, today, we are going to share with you three universal ways to handle insecurity in a relationship.

1. Learn to appreciate yourself

You are a person with your ideas, thoughts, and beliefs. Those are neither better nor worse than ideas, thoughts, and beliefs that other people have. You need to learn how to appreciate yourself if you want to deal with insecurity in a relationship. To do this, first of all, you need to change your attitude to yourself, and the best way to do this is to start paying attention to your achievements and deeds. Also, you should forget about comparing yourself to other people because you can't do it objectively. Plus, stop asking your partner to reassure you in something, instead pay attention to his or her activities that make you appreciate yourself more.

2. Work on your self-confidence

In the majority of cases, insecurities arise when a person suffers from low self-confidence. Thus, the most effective way to deal with or prevent insecurities is to work on improving your confidence. The lack of self-confidence is a terrible thing because even the most talented people sometimes can't fully utilize their talents because they are not confident enough. The lack of confidence feels like a heavy iron chain on the neck that drags you down. Never focus only on one way to improve your confidence because it is a very complex problem that requires a complex solution. To begin with, try to find factors that negatively affect it.

3. Never fear to have hard conversations

As we have said before, if you want to have a happy relationship, you should be able to have hard conversations with your partner. First of all, you need to change your attitude on this matter. You see, a hard conversation is not a problem, but a way to resolve this problem. Try to understand that when you start a hard conversation, you don't create a problem. You only show your partner that you want to do something about a matter that bothers you. Your lover deserves to knows what makes you tick and how to make you truly happy.

Relationship insecurities are one of the worst things that two lovers can encounter in their romantic relationships. A person who has insecurities not only always suffers from depressions but also never allows their partner to be happy. It is crucial to understand that the insecurities of one partner affect both of them. When people don't even try to deal with insecurities, their relationships slowly decline, and, sooner or later, they will face a painful breakup. Remember, nobody can happily live in constant fears and doubts. We all deserve to be happy, and if both partners truly love each other, they will deal with all their problems.

Don't expect that this is going to be easy because it won't be. However, there is a way to make this process easier for both of you. You just need to talk about this problem with your partner. If you are the one who has insecurities, you should honestly confess and tell him or her that you need their help in dealing with this problem. In turn, if you've noticed signs that your partner has insecurities in your relationship, you should act very cautiously and gently because there is a risk to make this problem even worse. In any case, be patient, tolerant, and understanding.