When you have a bit of time to catch up with your environment, you realize that news is coming at you with undue speed. You can choose from a menu including an international epidemic, a new war starting, persistent rumors coming from a permanent crisis in the background... Perhaps if you look around your home, you can feel also a bit uneasy. Are you surrounded by communication gaps, errors, and mistakes? do you feel compelled to check twice to be sure something important got done? How can you trust each other in such a way that inside your home you feel supported and contained? Because now the need to feel at home much more protected than outside, in the wild world around us is much more crucial.
Today is the moment in which we need to clarify some ideas in our brain. If you grew up with an anxious mother, with problems of her own that made her sometimes unavailable, you already have an anxious mindset. You will need to go back and check twice the house locks and verify for the third time that you have everything you will need in your bag.
This mindset makes a person even more prone to double-check the situation with a partner: where are we going as a couple? how well is the relationship doing? If your partner is not anxious, he or she will appreciate the questions as undue pressure and retreat. Becoming more closed, or more silent...because afraid of some evaluation of them is coming. Here you have the basis for an insecure marriage...if any of those questions are popped, it means that such person doesn't trust the marriage he is in...and this is deeply offensive for the other person, who will deliver not more attention and proximity, but more distance. Even passive-aggressive resistance, including silent treatment, she or he can develop.
And all this is happening under the radar, the distancing and taking sides and choosing to preserve oneself and not trust the other. You can tell yourself: "I'm only asking!" But the long time consequences will appear...If this is happening to you, a hole on the road is widening and will swallow your relationship. More than ever, you need to face yourself and ask: how can I face my fears, contain them, and not use them as weapons to discourage my partner?
Perhaps a simple exercise can help you refocus. Ask this question to the person looking at you from the mirror:
- How can I contain my old anxiety, act calmer, and offer words of trust and confidence?
- How can I watch the impact of my insecurity on others, and mitigate it?
Perhaps walking around with a funny disclaimer can nail the point? "I'm always prone to worry a lot, because when a child, I felt insecure of my parents loving me all the time...now that I'm not a child, could you wake me up if and when I begin to worry a lot about us, and about the projects we have in common?"
Trust allows you to reveal who you really are, anxiety and all....With this disclosure, you can build a stronger relationship, based on honesty and trust. Honesty and trust create a safe environment for intimacy to grow. If your relationship is going to work you need to be able to trust your partner with your past, your present and your future. So, here you have your childhood anxiety shared and accepted and done with...
Some extra help here:
The Silent Marriage: How Passive Aggression Steals Your Happiness