Insecurity in Relationships

Insecurity in relationships starts inside yourself and generally shows up in a whole variety of ways in the relationship. Generally that happens because you didn’t speak up about what you wanted or what might be bothering you from the very beginning. Of course on your first date or even 3 months into it, it’s natural for there to be some insecurity. You don’t really know each other yet and relationships unfold over time but looking back at my first major relationship, it didn’t take more then six months for me to see the problems in our relationship. But I was so insecure, I was afraid of speaking up. I might lose the relationship altogether and my precarious self esteem was dependent on the world seeing me as a winner because I felt like such a loser.

I’ve worked with many people as their coach and seen the insecurity in their relationships. But I’m an expert on that insecurity inside my young self and I can now tell you where it came from and how it showed up.

It came from the lack of security I had with my parents. I was yelled at, compared in a losing way to other girls and criticized unmercifully and often - by my mother. I was always afraid my girlfriends would think I was a loser – so insecurity in relationships with peers showed up first.

Then there was the pressure to be popular, date and marry – all, for me, fraught with insecurity and self-doubt. Imagine you were looking at this beautiful young woman who thought she was a loser – who probably tried too hard and took almost any little attention by a male as good enough. She gets asked out by a good looking boy in her freshman history class. She’ll never have to worry about not having a date again. And so it went. And so we married and stayed together in our really lousy relationship for 19 years.

Some of the reasons for insecurity in relationships lay in childhood as they did in mine. Until I began to gain some self esteem and learned that I was important enough to say what was bothering me and how I felt about another’s behavior toward me, I would continuously experience insecurity in relationships. So will you.

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