We carry so many faulty beliefs and expectations about romantic love.
Thanks to Hollywood and Disney, we carry an expectation that love should be easy.
We think we should meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after.
We think that arguing is a red flag and evidence of incompatibility.
We think that sex should be effortless.
But the truth is that true love is a slow-growing evolution.
It takes several years, if not decades, to unravel the inner knots that create ruptures and learn each other’s maps back to love.
Where does relationship anxiety fit into these faulty beliefs?
When things get hard, the anxious mind is quick to think, “I must be with the wrong partner. If I was with the right person, we wouldn’t be arguing right now.”
This is anxiety’s attempt to keep you safe and protect you from hurt. If you bite the carrot and fall down the rabbit hole of the thought that you’re with the wrong person, you will get stuck in your head, which protects you from the pain in your heart. Busy mind protects the vulnerable heart.
The truth is that it’s impossible to be in a romantic relationship (or any relationship) without hurting each other. You will bump up against each other’s raw spots, and sometimes this bump will be a trauma collision.
The only way to keep the heart protected from hurt is to avoid relationships altogether,
Relationship anxiety says, “I wouldn’t be feeling this way with someone else,”
Correct. You might not be feeling this exact form of hurt, but you would be feeling a different hurt.
Why?
Because there is no way to be in intimate relationship with someone and stay connected every second of every day. And as soon as our defenses show up – as soon as we lash out in blame/anger or withdraw – we disconnect and both people are hurting.
Even if you haven’t encountered these painful moments yet, you know they’re waiting in the wings. We know that love hurts because we’ve either been in other love relationships that caused hurt or we witnessed it in the relationships we grew up in. This is why relationship anxiety can show up on the first date. The heart knows that hurt is inevitable.
And that’s when the mind enters to protect the heart. Intrusive thoughts are nothing more than convincing attempts to stay safe.
This is why my cut-through question for relationship anxiety is, “What is this thought protecting me from feeling?”
It can take years to iron out these rough spots in a relationship. Sometimes it takes decades. This is what people don’t talk about. Because we think that love should be easy and we take distance or arguing as evidence of mismatch, it’s frightfully tempting to fall down the hole of anxiety as soon as the hard stuff shows up.
But, it’s exactly that hard stuff that provides the grist for the mill that widens the capacity of our hearts to love and be loved. If only our culture taught this truth about relationships, we would have a much easier time when fear and loneliness arrive.
For those of you in long-term relationships, how long did it take to find more ease and stride with each other? Not 100% perfect ease; that’s not possible! But a more easeful place between the two of you and within each of you as individuals. In my own marriage, it took about ten years for the first level of ease, and twenty years for deeper ease and longer periods of sustained intimacy. Can’t wait to see what thirty years looks like!
