Are you sabotaging your relationship? — Fear Of Abandonment

Are you secretly sabotaging your relationship? This could happen when you have Fear of abandonment. It is like any other fear, we all face in our lives; however, it could deeply impact your life if not addressed sooner.

We cannot deny being born as humans has its own perks, we have a lot to enjoy whether it is money, love of our family & friends, travelling, romantic relationships and all the other materialistic pleasures in the world. As part of this wonderful experience, we have to face many obstacles, challenges, heartbreaks, rejection, loss etc. And, when we suffer from loss whether bereavement or heartbreak, we feel abandoned. We all dread abandonment however, some of us fear it more than others. It could be because of several reasons, childhood trauma, loss of a parent or beloved person from life, continuous rejection, heartbreaks in romantic relationships, previous abandonment incidents in life and so on.

Wikipedia defines the fear of abandonment as — Emotional abandonment is a subjective emotional state in which people feel undesired, left behind, insecure, or discarded. People experiencing emotional abandonment may feel at a loss, cut off from a crucial source of sustenance that has been withdrawn, either suddenly, or through a process of erosion.

In simple words, it is an irrational belief that the person you love would leave you or replace you with somebody else. I called it irrational because that’s what fear is, most of the time.

When you love someone for a long time (time does not matter) and another person decides on their own to leave you whether to be alone or to be with somebody, it impacts you on a deeper level. You go through a lot of pain and after some time,you get on with your routine life and imagine you have moved on, however, the complication does not arise until you meet someone else and in some cases, people completely close themselves from finding anyone new as they don’t want to feel that pain they went through last time. If you don’t process your feelings wholly your present relationship might get affected by it, now you are clingy, insecure, you need reassurance time to time, or in some cases, you try not to get attached to your partner, whatever the case is you are not in a healthy relationship.

Purpose of talking about this topic is telling you even if you have this fear or you face these issues in your relationships — it is not your mistake. You never wanted this, it found you, all those incidents in your life which lead to the moment of heartache is not your fault. So, don’t feel anything less about yourself rather acknowledge this weak moment or the moments you had in the past and try to find the root cause of it. When somebody is going through heartbreak you might think you know this because you are over and done with it but every heartbreak is unique for every individual. So, you have to find your root cause nobody can help you with this. And, when you discover that incident which made you this co-dependent show yourself some compassion because you have done a great job. Try to talk to someone, a friend, someone from the family or a professional that would ease up your suffering and confusion.

Now try to track your behavior with your present partner and identify what are the things you do which are not you. When you identify your fear-based behavior try to replace it with your higher self, which is you not your fear. The whole purpose of doing this work is to become self-reliant. Too much co-dependency can impact your self-esteem and in turn your relationship.

Before you jump into self-diagnosis and think you have fear of abandonment to the extent that it is creating problems in your life, have a look at the below symptoms.

According to Medical News Today adults who are suffering from this fear can have below symptoms:

• Always wanting to please others
• Giving too much in relationships
• An inability to trust other
• Pushing others away to avoid rejection
• Feeling insecure in romantic relationships and friendships
• Co-dependency
• A need for continual reassurance that others love them and will stay with them
• The need to control others
• The inability to maintain relationships
• Moving quickly from one relationship to another
• Sabotaging relationships
• Lack of emotional intimacy

To never fall into the trap of fear is always good to process the trauma or heartbreak with proper guidance, always talk to someone about your feelings or take professional help if necessary. There are lot of therapies available or if you don’t want to take therapy you can read a book about this topic one of them is — “The Journey from Abandonment to Healing” which might help you. It is always a good idea to heal ourselves before getting on with life if we have suffered from any trauma or loss. Healing gives us perspective and makes us whole again.