Relationship Anxiety: Your relationship’s Third-Wheel
“She feels a little off lately, doesn’t she love me anymore?
“Does she find me boring?”
“We seem more and more like strangers.”
Have you ever had this voice at the back of your head troubling you with these thoughts? To the point that you question everything about your partner — their actions, their words, even the sweet gestures they do out of love.
It’s frustrating and confusing.
Because every time you go out together or do something together, these thoughts are also still with you. It turns out, friends aren’t the only possible third-wheel in your relationship, it could also be this little, bothersome voice in your head.
What is it?
Basically, it’s you worrying about your relationship without an actual, reasonable cause.
Relationship anxiety is a common occurrence throughout the relationship, but most especially during the earlier stages. This type of anxiety isn’t a medically recognized condition. However, it is a common problem affecting many couples.
It encompasses different signs or symptoms from a number of different anxiety disorders. It’s the voice that pushes you to doubt your partner’s true feelings; how they might have already lost the spark, or thinking you aren’t worthy of her and that your relationship is going to end soon.
Why do people get anxious in their relationship?
Everyone experiences anxiety.
It’s technically our body’s way of warning us that something is wrong and that you either need to face it or avoid it in order to protect yourself — the basic fight or flight response. You may experience it whenever you’re walking alone in a secluded alleyway, or when you’re working on a tight deadline.
But for relationship anxiety, what you’re anxious about isn’t obvious. In fact, your relationship could be happy while you still get to experience this. It’s when fears, which you might have developed in your past relationship, resurface and affect your relationship.
Common examples of these fears are:
- Fear of being rejected or abandoned
- Fear that their partner will be unfaithful
How does it show in relationships?
Anxiety comes in different forms. For others, it shows itself through nervous ticks or habits, such as biting their nails, tapping their feet — while for some, it shows itself through aggression. And such is also the case when it comes to anxiety over your relationship.
1. You overanalyze
She’s not answering your calls? She could be cheating.
She forgot to cook your favorite meal? She might not love you anymore.
Every mistake your partner makes will be blown out of proportion. Small incidents will become big issues for you, as you create scenarios in your head based on things that never actually happened — things only you believe and in fact, only you know will happen.
You’re on edge about her possibly leaving you, or not being in love with you anymore that you consciously misinterpret her actions to match your anxious narrative.
2. You get too needy
You wish to be with her all the time.
Your mind is too busy creating these negative narratives about your relationship, that it’s also trying to convince yourself that none of those are true by constantly asking for her reassurance. You become needy because your mind craves this assurance that she won’t leave or cheat on you.
This isn’t to say being needy is bad, and asking for reassurance is normal for everyone. But when you overly do it and do it out of being paranoid, that’s when things can go south.
3. You want to be in control
You may want to keep tabs on your partner’s whereabouts in fear that they are cheating on you. You may start controlling where they go, what time they should leave, even taking note about who they call.
How do people get past this?
It isn’t going to be easy getting past anxiety. Especially once it has “grown” into your mind. But with little tweaks in your mind, and doing things a little differently, you will overcome this. So hang on there, and you might want to follow this advice:
1. Communicate your expectations
Absolutely everything can be solved with communication, most especially when it comes to relationships. This kind of anxiety often springs up when your needs aren’t met, and you mistakenly translate it to your partner not caring about you.
So, communicate. Tell each other what you want in the relationship; what you’re not comfortable with, and what you wish they’d do more often with you. Trust us, a simple opening up will go a long way.
2. Practice vulnerability
Let her in on your weaknesses and strengths. Let your partner in the messy, fragile and sometimes frustrating parts of you and only then will you realize that they really do love you for who you are.
Vulnerability is a huge part of intimacy, but most of the time we always like to appear as if we’re strong enough to conquer anything or that we’re perfect, when in fact, we aren’t.
That’s why relationships exist. To have someone who can help you overcome or go through things you can’t overcome yourself — and this anxiety you’re feeling now? It can be one of them. So, tell them how you truly feel.
3. Rewire your brain
A huge part of why anxiety happens is because our brain has learned to focus more on negative thoughts and has learned to ignore anything positive.
Rewiring your brain means you force your brain to put in effort to consider the positive things in life as well. You may do this by physically writing down good things about your relationship, so when things get kind of shaky, you can simply go back to this list.
Someone said: anxiety is literally just conspiracy theories about yourself. Don’t let your negative thoughts sabotage your relationship.
Most of the time, everything’s just in your mind. Relationship anxiety is a normal, usual thing to feel and you don’t have to be ashamed about experiencing it. It is even a telling point that you do value your relationship for you to overanalyze and be worried about it.
But then again, do everything in moderation. And when you start to become more aware of your behavior, in time, you will overcome this.
