Compiled by Richard and Vivian Crabbe
Insecure: adjective (of a person) not confident or assured; uncertain and anxious.
People who are insecure in their relationships do irrational things all the time. Texting their partner a several times in a row. Or calling to check in constantly. Maybe they try to keep track of their partner’s whereabouts, even checking their email or Facebook messages when possible. Maybe you’ve experienced this, either as the insecure one, or the person dating the insecure one. Or maybe you’ve even been both, in different relationships.
Even if these are not the signs of healthiest relationships, these behaviors are common to make people feel more secure in a relationship. After getting a response back from the partner over text, Facebook, or an actual call, they feel better.
The problem is that people end up making a habit of these actions, repeat them over and over again to stay secure. These little actions, as innocuous as they are, can damage a relationship. Some might feel annoyed by their partners always checking up on them. Some might feel like there is a deep trust issue that hasn’t been solved. (Adapted from Anna Chui, communication expert, “What you really need to fix insecurity in a relationship forever”)
We all deal with insecurities of varying shapes and sizes.
Include info from Family Life (January 7): He had a skinny mom
What Causes Insecurity?
Internal and external factors
Internal refers to what comes from inside of us, what we can control. External comes from the attitude and behavior of others, including a partner or spouse, towards a person.
- Infidelity
Children who are exposed to parental infidelity are often insecure in their relationships. Experts say children draw their security from the relationship between father and mother as husband and wife. Children who grow up in homes where their parents treated each other poorly or distrusted each other are more likely to do the same to their partners. Children can acquire the behavior of a parent who suspects the spouse of infidelity. Furthermore, infidelity in a relationship, whether before or during a marriage, can create questions in a partner’s mind.
- Effect of conflict and divorce
Research has shown that conflict and divorce cause long term psychological damage to the children involved. Many people also feel insecure about their own ability to have a successful relationship if they have grown up in homes of divorced parents. When a person does not believe that they can create a loving relationship, they often impose their insecurity on their partner, often resulting in distrust and jealousy.
- Competitive sibling relationships
One counsellor says if a child feels that his or her brother or sister is favored, that child may develop believing that he or she is not enough and someone else will be favored. In relationships, these individuals often transfer their jealous feelings from their parents to their partners.
- One’s own lack of self-confidence and self-esteem
By far the most deep-seated cause of insecurity is what lies within ourselves. Without self-confidence, we often create an insecure relationship unintentionally. When we aren’t secure in ourselves and truly love and accept ourselves, we doubt that others can love us and respect us as well. An insecure person cannot understand what another person might see in them.
Unfortunately, over time, the partner will often begin to see and treat his/her partner only as well as the person values him/herself. Jealousy is really the result of one’s insecurity in oneself and one’s disbelief in what others might see in them. We end up attracting and receiving only as much respect and love as we give ourselves.
- Jealous of partner or spouse’s achievements
Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin, co-founder of the Marriage Restoration Project, puts it this way: “Sometimes people are jealous of their partner’s success in work, such as their job, or their achievements. Others could be jealous of their partner’s family.
For example, if you have a bad relationship with your parents or your siblings and your partner has a great one, that might be a cause to feel a little envious. Just about anything your partner is good at can be a source of jealousy if you are insecure about yourself or not feeling fulfilled in life. A person who is happy internally can celebrate their partner’s success instead of feel in competition.”
- Poor early childhood experiences
Poor early childhood attachments such as unresponsive or neglectful or inconsistent parents may contribute to a person to grow to be uncertain and unconfident in their partner’s ability to respond healthfully.
- Traumas
Traumas like major losses of close, supportive people, past incidents of infidelity or other deception may contribute to uncertainty about the behavior, intentions of others.
- A learned behavior
If children grow up in a household where jealousy is part of the norm they may learn to behave in a clingy way or expect this behavior to mean love. In fact, if they believe this is love they may feel very insecure if their partner does not behave this way. We can also learn or develop such behavior from friends or people we know. For example, hearing stories about cheating fiancé(e)s from friends or co-workers can stir or heighten our own fears when we see some of the patterns we have heard or perhaps read about.
- A feeling of inferiority
Insecure and jealous people often believe they are not good enough for their partner. This feeling could be caused by an important social gap between the two such as different backgrounds and education, or perhaps a big difference between the incomes. A person’s insecurity and feelings of inferiority may also be developed in life, either due to an abusive relationship or an abusive domestic environment. Verbal abuse come through direct insults, foul language, shaming body size or shape. Put downs and comments such as What kind of person are you? Can’t you just get one thing right? Or You can’t achieve anything without me should ring alarm bells for us. Without dealing with them right away, these lodge into our minds and cause havoc to our reasoning, leading to the recipient beginning to doubt their self-worth or ability to perform simple or common tasks like driving or singing. Note that this can affect people regardless of educational, economic or social status.
- Bad mouthing by partner and/or the in-laws, friends
Almost always, negative information shared with one person begins to spread. Those who are the subject of the gossip react to what their partner puts out, especially when they sense a change in behavior towards them by people close to them. Whether intentional or not, sometimes the insecurity is real.
- Uncertainty about direction of relationship
Particularly important for those in long term courtship: 3+years without any commitment as to when the marriage will take place.
- Reasons for getting into the relationship or getting married
When we enter into a relationship or marry for some particular reasons such as beauty, money, property or social status, insecurity can set in or be created when those are no longer available or needed. For example, if a person marries mainly to have children, once children are born, that person may start creating problems for the spouse. Again, when one marries for status, even mention of the loss of that status may cause the person to feel insecure.
As you must have realized by now, in any relationship or marriage some of these factors may influence a person’s mindset and, subsequently, how they relate to their partner.
All told, insecurity most often does not come from the current relationship or partner. Instead, it comes from the inner fear of being abandoned, not being loved, and not being valued. This feeling is built up along the way, right from the time we are babies.
Is Insecurity good at all?
Insecurity is good to some extent because it makes you work harder in the relationship and value your partner more. If there’s too much insecurity though, it can create a toxic atmosphere in the relationship and can wreak havoc on your confidence. It can even separate partners who love and care for each other. When people are insecure in relationships, it makes them feel overly sensitive to threats of other people threatening safety in the relationship.
Paul Levin, author of the book, Your Life Sucks No More, summarizes what we have said so far:
We seek relationships to bring us happiness and love. However, we can only bring, into a relationship, who we really are.
If you are confident and secure in yourself, do not allow anything in the relationship to change that. The other person is not there to give you confidence or security, so they can not take those things away from you.
The sad thing is, that when we look to our partner to provide our self-worth, we sabotage the relationship. By its very name, “self-worth” we see that it is not something that someone else can provide. If you are looking to your partner to provide it, you are putting an unrealistic expectation on your partner. It is an expectation they can not possibly meet.
Over time, when you have gotten tired of waiting for them to step up and do their job, meeting your expectations, you will get angry with them. You may not understand why, or even recognize the situation, but this is why.
You are not getting your needs met. And the reason you are not getting your needs meet is because you are looking in the wrong place for them. Self-confidence, self-worth, happiness, joy, and self-love all come from inside. When you experience them on the inside, you will shower other people with them, and then be able to have the healthy relationship you really want.
What about being too secure?
Can one really be too secure? Yes.
How does this play out day-to-day?
Consequences:
- You will not work on the relationship/marriage
- Causes some important things such as changed behaviors or leading statements to go unnoticed or glossed over, sometimes even when others are ringing the alarm bells. (Appianda’s experience).
- May lead you to make assumptions that prove wrong
What Can We Do? What Should We Do?
So, start with yourself. It is the individual who enters the relationship. And any healthy relationship is comprised of two healthy people.
Take responsibility for yourself; thoughts, desires, feelings, actions, and behavior.
Maybe you felt rejected when you were small. Or in your previous relationship(s), others made you feel unimportant or didn’t respect you.
When you feel insecure, you are often focused on something you feel is lacking about you. For example, when you don’t feel good about who you are on the inside, it is totally natural to look outside of yourself for validation.
But it is more important that we take care of ourselves first, instead of expecting others to do what will make us feel better or happy. Take the initiative! For some, it is eating and eating healthier—you need the energy to fight for you! For others, it may be taking care of health—exercising, being active, and sleeping more or perhaps less, for example. Some may have to dress better to feel good about themselves. What do you think you can do now to deal with some of the thigs that make you feel insecure?
Here are some other ideas you can work on.
- Counter with God’s truth about you
Some of the most powerful life-changing truths can be found in the Bible. Here are a few:
- Specially made by God
Psalm 139:14-16
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
- A person of special beauty.
1 Peter 3:4 says,
Instead, your beauty should consist of your true inner self, the ageless beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of the greatest value in God’s sight.
- Love yourself!
In Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 22:37-39 Jesus taught, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The point here is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. If we do not love ourselves, no amount of cosmetic surgery, prayer, acquisition of property or pleasure-seeking will make us feel secure. Nothing will ever be enough. As recorded in Ecclesiastes 1:14, the wise King Solomon said it will “be like chasing after the wind”—you can never catch it.
- Carefully consider (think through) what your partner says or does.
Be alert. 1 Peter 5:8. Is it true?
Observe and note changes in attitude and behavior.
Even when we overcome them, we still have to remain vigilant, fighting off sour thoughts and other things that stir up new feelings of insecurity.
- Do not ignore what you observe or find out (hear, read or see)
Do not think it cannot happen to me: Let him who stands … 1 Corinthians 10:12,13.
Issues involving people do not work out by themselves; the partners/spouse have to do this themselves. Note also that positive declarations are not enough; work at improving the relationship!
- Have the talk
Do not avoid conversations that you may find uncomfortable. Better to find out and deal with what is not working and why. Share equal responsibility to make the relationship work. Discuss what you both can do differently
- Learn new behaviors
Stop living in the past. This includes letting go of the negative relationship experiences of the past. Stop excusing yourself or explaining away your partner’s irresponsible or poor behaviors. To effectively learn and practice new behaviors starts with renewing your mind:
Romans 12:2-3
Replace fear with faith (trust): 1 John 4;18
Learn and practice new skills: how to communicate better; how to express love; how to show that you care; how to receive love; how to show that you appreciate your partner; how to resolve conflicts.
- Learn to trust. Many people feel emotionally insecure due to a lack of trust. This may be because of past relationships or friendships that ended badly, or it could simply be a deep-seated fear of abandonment. Whatever your reason for feeling mistrustful, you need to recognize that you cannot go through life without trusting others. Just because something may have ended badly once (or even multiple times), it does not mean that every relationship or friendship will end the same way.
- Seek help
Get feedback from people you trust:
- For yourself
- For partner/spouse
- For the relationship
Proverbs 26:12, NIV
“Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.”
Proverbs 12:15, NKJV
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.”
The one cutting the path through the forest cannot see that that it is crooked; it’s the one who stands behind.
- Determine your next steps, whether to
Pause and agree on steps/actions to get your relationship back to health.
Luke 14:28, NIV:
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
Press on: Philippians 3:12-14, MSG
12-14 I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
remembering that “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17). It is who or what we love and care for that we can improve or help to improve. That includes ourselves.
- Have Some Independence
Even when you’re in a relationship, it’s crucial to keep some independence. For example, if you think you cannot survive without this relationship, or that life is not worth living without it, you are already in big trouble. When your security depends on someone else, you give away all of your power. This is why when you’re rejected, neglected, or betrayed, you feel insecure.
Communication expert Anna Chui puts it this way: “When you are not dependent on your relationship to fill your needs, you feel more secure about your life. It’s important to maintain a sense of self-identity and take care of your own needs. If you had hobbies and passions prior to your relationship, keep maintaining them. For example, if you’re a runner, continue getting up early and making that a priority in your life. Having your own life outside of a relationship also make you continually interesting and helps you to grow.”
In the same way, it is important to give your spouse some measure of independence. This does not mean doing things unilaterally. Rather, to strengthen your relationship, keep each other informed of what you are involved in, meetings, appointments, etc. to allay suspicions or worry regarding your whereabouts.
- Be yourself.
Stop trying to be someone else. For some people, it means stop spending so much time on social media, comparing yourself or your lifestyle to others. “Comparison”, the saying goes, “is the thief of joy.” Instead, think: How can I become the best positive version of me? If you believe that you deserve the best treatment, then your partner, your spouse, also deserves the best from you.
Above all, remember that your destiny is in God’s hands, not those of your friend fiancé(e) or spouse or anyone else.
References
https://upjourney.com/what-causes-insecurity-and-jealousy-in-a-relationship
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/ultimate-relationship-guide/insecure-in-a-relationship/
https://www.lifehack.org/636850/what-you-really-need-to-fix-insecurity-in-a-relationship-forever