Last week I talked about toxic people and how engaging with them regularly can take a toll on your self-esteem. People who consistently try to make you feel like you are hard to love, are toxic, too. When you love someone, you want to lift them up, encourage them and be their biggest cheerleader – not tear them down and constantly assault their character.
When you love someone, you choose to take on the responsibility of keeping their heart safe. Last month I wrote about about the 10 components of a healthy relationship. I went into depth about what each component looks like, which you can read here. But the truth is, if someone makes you feel like you are hard to love, the relationship is unhealthy. It can be fixed, if that person wants to change and they take consistent action to change it, but honestly, it isn’t easy, and it can take a long time to fix.
So, if we are in a relationship where we feel like we are hard to love, why don’t we just leave it? There can be so many reasons why we stay stuck in this dynamic, but what I have noticed most, is that people who tend to have an anxious attachment style tend to stay stuck in relationships like this.
Someone with an anxious attachment style is already coming from a place of lack – where they don’t feel like they are enough. They are preoccupied with getting reassurance from their partner. So, when you have a partner who acts like a person with this attachment style is hard to love, it activates their anxiety about whether or not they are loved, or if they will be abandoned. Then they start running on their hamster wheel trying to prove their worth to them.
The danger in this dynamic is that the person who is communicating to the other that they are hard to love is also sprinkling in morsels of praise and love. A person with an anxious attachment style craves that the most – so they stay in the relationship, attempting to win over the other person. It becomes toxic fast and a vicious cycle. In a sense, they become addicted to the inconsistent praise and love they get every once in a while, and that keeps them engaged in the dynamic.
How you break the cycle is rediscovering your self-worth and developing more a secure attachment style in your relationships. Below are some tips on how you can start breaking patterns of an anxious attachment style.
- Identify your own vulnerabilities in your relationships.
- Work with a therapist who is educated about attachment theory in adult relationships. This will help you heal and work through the insecurities you are having.
- Get to really know yourself and what kinds of things soothe you when you feel distressed.
- Practice communicating your feelings clearly.
- Learn how to identify your boundaries and express them clearly.
- Be realistic and know that one person cannot possible met every need that you have all of the time.
- Be mindful of jumping to conclusions about your partner or over-reacting. Learn to discern when your insecurities are influencing what has happened and try to stick to the facts rather than just going off your feelings.
- Try to find a partner with a secure attachment style. Experts say that 50% of us have secure attachment styles. It is much easier to confront your own attachment style issues when in a relationship if you are with someone more neutral in their attachment style. There is more intensity and drama with people who are together when one is anxious, and one is avoidant.
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