481 - Can You "Fix" Your Partner's Insecurities?
What is an insecurity?
An insecurity is broadly defined as “uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence.” For our purposes, we’re going to specify this as a personal insecurity. Everyone has personal insecurities! Some areas that are common to have personal insecurity in are things like:
Appearance.
Social status.
Finances.
Living situation.
Job performance.
Ability.
Age.
Gender or sexuality performance.
Sexual performance.
If we’re not careful, sometimes these personal insecurities can drive our behavior, perhaps by:
Withdrawing and avoiding situations that may trigger the insecurity.
Negative self-talk.
Overcompensation.
Constantly seeking external validation or approval from others.
Minimizing, dismissing, or putting down the accomplishments or appearance of others.
At the more extreme, they can encourage self-harming behaviors.
Another kind of insecurity
There is also another definition of insecurity: “the state of being open to danger or threat; lack of protection.” This is where we might distinguish relationship insecurity from personal insecurity. Relationship insecurities manifest as a lack of confidence and fear or anxiety about the relationship, such as:
Whether or not partner has reciprocal feelings.
Being abandoned or rejected.
Uncomfortable change.
Excessive reassurance-seeking.
Self-silencing or self-shrinking.
Go along to get along, or being a doormat.
It’s important to remember that lots of factors can affect our insecurities and they rarely just pop up out of nowhere. Attachment style could be a part of why we’re insecure about relationships, but they can also stem from things like:
Prior trauma or PTSD.
A history of broken trust or betrayal in the relationship.
Feeling unheard or dismissed.
Frequent conflict.
Being criticized by a partner or compared to someone else by a partner.
A mismatch in life goals, desired relationship format, values, spiritual belief, political conviction, etc.
When a signal of insecurity is fired, that’s when we see attachment styles come out in full force, either by being avoidant and pushing away or anxious and clinging/grasping/shutting down. These insecurities can also drive our behavior in other undesirable ways, like:
Desperate attempts at controlling a partner.
Difficulty trusting a partner.
Keeping tabs on the other person’s whereabouts and behavior.
Whose responsibility is it?
It’s easy to say that personal insecurities are the individual’s responsibility and relationship insecurities are a shared responsibility, but the reality is a little more complicated. These two things often influence each other and get tangled up with each other, even though they’re two separate and distinct issues.
For example:
Feeling less certain about my body feeds into the anxiety that maybe my partner won’t be attracted to me any more and will leave me.
Experiencing conflict with my partner makes me feel like a fraud who can’t really be helping other people with their relationships
If a partner has some particularly harmful or abusive influence, their behavior and what they say about me could lead me to believe that what they say about me is true: that I’m too needy, too emotional, broken, disappointing, etc.
Insecurity about the relationship can lead to behaviors such as demands, ultimatums, criticisms, or control that can push a partner away or end the relationship, thereby affirming existing personal insecurities about being unlovable or about their partner being someone who couldn’t be trusted.
It can be extremely difficult to detangle these insecurities and hard to discern how much of your partner’s insecurities are your responsibility to help alleviate.
So what can we do to make it easier?
First, remember that insecurity is trying to point to something. Do I need to ask for something? Is this better to tell my partner or to tell my therapist? Do I need some better scripts for talking about this particular part of myself?
Don’t rely on a metamour to solve your insecurities.
HEARTS - if you’re non-monogamous, try using Polysecure’s HEARTS framework for giving very clear areas to look at for building and supporting relationship security (Here, Expressed Delight, Attunement, Rituals and Routine, Turning Towards After Conflict, Secure Attachment with Self).
Do an influence detox. If you or your partner are experiencing personal insecurities, take an inventory of what factors may be influencing and fueling these insecurities. Some may be impossible to escape from.
Change what’s changeable. This works for both personal insecurities and relationship insecurities. Make two lists of the aspects of yourself or the situation that can be changed vs those that cannot.
For example, let’s say you are feeling insecure about being in a room of people who are much older and more experienced than you are in a career setting.
Unchangeable: your age, your past experience
Changeable: how you dress, which people you choose to talk to, deciding which connections are worth your time
You’re struggling with anxiety and insecurity because your partner is going on a first date with someone new.
Unchangeable: your partner being away
Changeable: who you reach out to for support, how you self-soothe, how you and your partner communicate
Go get a therapist, either solo or together.
Hold but don’t take from @lavitalocasawyers. While it is true that our partner’s insecurities are not our responsibility to fix, it is also true that they are there for a reason that isn’t neatly packaged as simply their personal problem. Acknowledging the validity of their insecurities isn’t the same as taking ownership of them and is a caring way you can hold space for their humanity.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about insecurity, and whose responsibility it is to deal with them. If you're feeling insecure about yourself or about your relationship, is that just personal work, or is that something you and your partner need to work on together? Today, we'll be talking about the difference between personal insecurities and relationship insecurities, looking about what the science says about trying to manage a partner's insecurities, and how to create a sense of greater security both in yourself and in your relationship.
If you're interested in learning more about our communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or get it wherever books are sold. Alternatively, you can check out the first nine episodes of this podcast where we also cover some of our most widely used and discussed episodes and tools.
Dedeker: I suppose the main question that I'm asking in this episode is, whose problem is it to fix an insecurity? Let me clarify what I mean by that. First of all, I see a lot of people particularly people in non-monogamous relationships struggle with this because non-monogamy can really drag all your insecurities into the light and force you to have to deal with them or sometimes they can catch you off guard.
I can share an example from my personal life that after I'd already been non-monogamous, I want to say four or five years or so, and felt like I'd done a lot of personal work and didn't have necessarily a lot of petty jealousies or things like that, there was one evening, this is when I was still living in Los Angeles and I was still working as a professional belly dancer. For those of you that don't know, I worked as a professional belly dancer for several years when I was in my early 20s.
Emily: So cool.
Dedeker: There was a Hookah Lounge in the valley that I had been wanting to scope and maybe audition for to see if they would hire me to perform. What my tactic often was, was to go on a busy night or to go on a night where they had another dancer there and just see what the competition was like and to see, can I offer something different from this person. I went with my partner at the time on a night when they had another dancer there and the dancer came out and she was all right.
Then she came by and as belly dancers often do, sometimes they'll try to coerce the audience or an audience member into dancing with them. I realized, "Oh, this dancer may come and try to get my partner to dance with her." Immediately, I leaned over to my partner and I said in his ear, "You're not allowed to dance with his belly dancer. You're not allowed to dance with a belly dancer that's not me." It just came up and it was so strong and I just put my foot down and that was very out of character for me to be that directive and that limiting of a partner.
Jase: I'm honestly very surprised to hear that.
Dedeker: I was surprised too.
Jase: I wouldn't have expected that.
Dedeker: I was surprised too but there was something there where I was like, "Whoa, no, this is too much." Now, I would categorize this as there was something about that situation that sparked some sort of insecurity in me which I then immediately made my partner's problem to fix. The fix was, you don't dance with another belly dancer. Now, there's a flip side to this, however, in that all the time, I will have clients who come to me and they will say, "I'm really struggling in my non-monogamous relationship. I have a lot of insecurities. I really need help healing my insecurities and I need your help making this feel better for me.
I think I just have a lot of personal work to do and a lot of my own insecurities that I want to work through." Then what they will do is over the course of a couple of sessions, I will essentially get a laundry list of their partner's bad behavior. Their partner lying to them, cheating on them, manipulating them, blaming them, completely disregarding their feelings but then this person has totally internalized, "Oh, no, this is a me issue that I'm feeling unsafe, insecure in this relationship, jealous.
Clearly, that's just a me issue." Where then I would categorize like, "No, those are issues with your partner. Those are issues the two of you need to work out. It's not about you learning to become so secure in yourself necessarily." I think that there's a subtleness and a confusing nature to this question. That's what I wanted to dive into but I wanted to ask the two of you, have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was or acted really insecure or have you ever been the really insecure person in a relationship?
Emily: Yes, and yes, in the same relationship.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: In the same relationship?
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: Wow. Really?
Emily: Oh, yes. Absolutely. In my last relationship, yes, I was insecure I think because I felt constantly like I wasn't giving what my partner needed or wanted in the relationship and that made me feel really insecure about the relationship. I think anytime things came up that were challenging for him that showed a lot of insecurity on his part, anytime things came up that would be challenging for him in regards to my relationships with other people or I guess the things that I did that were maybe adjacent to non-monogamy that were challenging for him, that clearly showed a lot of insecurity I think on his part and that definitely was challenging for the relationship on a whole.
I think it became this really unfortunate dance of both of us being insecure about different things and not really knowing how to heal one another's insecurities or necessarily our own. How about you, Jase?
Jase: I feel like I'm honestly having trouble coming up with a particular example. Maybe just because I haven't dated in a while but just in general, I'm like, "Yes, definitely." I've been in relationships where there's that feeling of my partner always asking for some kind of validation or some kind of-- I don't know. For me to convince them that I like them, even though I feel like I'm doing everything I can to do that, which then in turn, can make me feel like, "What am I doing that's not enough?" I think like Emily saying, I guess ending up on both sides of that.
Then I can also think of relationships, especially where I just felt like the other person was just a lot cooler or hotter than me that then more of that insecurity of myself would come up. I feel like for me, it wouldn't--
Emily: For me, it's smarter. Yes. For sure.
Jase: Maybe more experienced than me would be something where I would tend to feel more insecure.
Emily: At non-monogamy or relationships in general?
Jase: Whatever it was. It could be at different phases in my life. Maybe they're more experienced just as a professional adult or maybe it's sex, or maybe it's non-monogamy. It's been various things. I think, for me, that usually hasn't manifested in the repeated asking them to affirm me or whatever but maybe in more subtle ways of trying to do things to get their approval or to get them to be impressed with me or something, or maybe just suffered a lot more because of that insecurity.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: I want to start by laying out some definitions of insecurity because as I've already teased, there's a little bit of some definition creep and a couple of different definitions that get collapsed into each other. I want to start out by-- first of all, something that was really fascinating when I was doing research for this episode was I typed insecurity into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which basically looks at usage of particular words over time in a very large set of data from books in particular. The word insecurity, you see, it starts to peak around 1914 and then it skyrockets really quickly until about 1945. This could be me making connections where connections don't exist, but I was like, maybe that makes sense considering that during that time period between 1914 and 1945, we see World War I, we see the Great Depression, we see World War II, a time of general global-
Emily: Insecurity.
Dedeker: -insecurity. Yes. Then the usage falls after 1945. It falls, it falls, it falls, it falls. Then in 1981, it picks up again. Then it has just been up, up, up, up, up, baby, since then. Now, 1981 was, I don't know, I guess when Reagan-
Emily: Reagan. Yes.
Dedeker: -got elected. That there makes some step tracks about maybe some policies put in place that could have encouraged more insecurity in general.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Interesting. I also feel like the '80s is when we saw the rise of more pop psychology. I could see-
Dedeker: Oh. Yes. That too.
Jase: -the term coming around more then too.
Dedeker: Yes. That too.
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: There is a primary definition of insecurity, which essentially is uncertainty or anxiety about oneself, a lack of confidence. I would agree with that definition.
Jase: It's interesting, Dedeker, where you were talking about insecurity about a relationship, and we'll get to that in a bit, but how sometimes someone thinks, "Oh, I just need to get over my insecurity," when it's like, "No, maybe there are reasons for this." The fact this is associated with confidence, it reminds me of-- I don't even remember where this came from, but on the topic of confidence, a lot of people say, "I just want to be more confident. I wish I was more confident." Their counter-argument being, if you were confident all the time, that would actually be really bad because you'd be like, "Yes. I'm super confident that I could climb this mountain right now. I'm confident."
Thinking that you can do stuff that you can't. I'm just thinking about this. It's interesting where it's not to say that you want to do away with any sense of, "I'm not confident enough to do a thing," but it sounds like insecurity is where it crosses that line into, "I'm not confident even in things that I should be more confident about or to the point where it's then stopping me from even trying to get better at a thing," or something like that.
Emily: For the purposes of this episode, we're going to refer to what we just said in terms of insecurity as personal insecurity. Everybody out there has personal insecurities. My goodness, I certainly do. I'm sure all three of us do, even though Dedeker, for instance, sometimes I feel like you're one of the least insecure people I've ever known.
Dedeker: Really?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: I have so many insecurities. Are you kidding me? I think I'm just good at hiding it.
Emily: You are. You're really good at hiding it. Which is impressive. That's nice for you. I'm glad. A roundup of some personal insecurities may include things like appearance, social status, finances, that's a big one, one's living situation. Also, things like job performance, or just having a certain job at all, wanting a better job, maybe not having a job, and that makes you really insecure. Ability, in a variety of ways. Age, I think for women especially, that's a big one. As we age, it's like our social clout goes down over time, which is extremely unfortunate, and that's just a societal thing.
Also, things like gender or sexuality performance. For instance, like maybe, "Am I bisexual enough? Am I gay enough? Am I whatever enough, based on the identity that I hold and the things that I do to present that identity?" I know that some people worry, "Am I polyamorous enough because maybe I'm not dating people at this particular moment in time?" Then, finally, something like sexual performance. Jase, you just talked about that a little bit. Worrying potentially that, "Oh, am I going to be seen as somebody who knows what they're doing in bed?" That may be a thing that I'm really insecure about.
Jase: Now, let's talk about how these personal insecurities drive our behavior, how they actually affect our behavior. First, is that withholding and avoiding situations could be a way to avoid triggering that insecurity. It could be like, "I feel insecure about my body, so I will never have sex with the lights on." Or, "I will not enter into a situation where it might show, like I don't want to go to the beach, or the pool, or an onsen, or a spa, or something like that."
Another way it shows up is just in our negative self-talk. I think this is the one that is the worst for me, is just this constant feed running through your head, reminding you of all the ways that you aren't good enough, or didn't do something well enough, or how you might screw something up that's coming up. Then just focusing a lot on whatever the thing is you're insecure about, like in that list that Emily just gave there.
Dedeker: I think my strategy is the opposite of that. I've definitely met some people or been in relationships with people where they're very open about a particular thing about their appearance they're very insecure about. They're just obsessed with, I don't know, how their stomach looks, how their butt looks, how their hair looks. They're just constantly obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. I think I tend to take the opposite tack of never showing anybody that I'm that obsessed with it, just obsessed on the inside.
Jase: No, I feel like I tend to obsess more on the inside, but will instead try to hide that from them. I guess like that example about not going to the beach, pool, or whatever. It's not specifically that, but just whatever particular part of me or thing that I do, it's trying to hide that or just don't bring attention to it so no one pays attention to this thing that's bad about me.
Then we also though, see the other side, which is overcompensation. That's that acting overly confident or being arrogant as a way to compensate for actually not feeling that or being super competitive. Maybe it's that I feel bad about this part of myself, so any time I can put down someone else for that same thing, that's a way that I'll try to compensate and make myself feel a little bit better, or it could be trying to overcompensate in a different area, where maybe I feel insecure about my sexual performance, and so I'm going to try to find something else to make up for that, like giving lots of gifts, or making money, or having some kind of status or something like that.
It can also show up as just exaggerating accomplishments. I see this one a lot in people's behavior in online dating. You get a whiff of-- feels like you're overcompensating for something by talking about how great you are. Generally, men do this more than women, I've noticed. It could also just be extreme behaviors like extreme dieting, or extreme amounts of exercise, or spending a lot of money on cosmetic procedures, or things like that.
Emily: I see people who are maybe raised as men or people who are raised as women falling into two potentially different camps of insecurity. Like you just talked about some of the ones that may be men feel as though they have to up their status, or look like they make a lot of money, or talk about their accomplishments in certain ways, whereas women potentially would try to do things to make themselves appear more youthful or more attractive to someone from that standpoint. I do wonder if those insecurities change when you are a person who's not necessarily bogged down by those particular labels.
I'm sure that we all have insecurities, but I am curious to know if they change based on whether or not you're not necessarily bogged down by the label of man or woman, for instance.
Jase: It's interesting because I feel like you can never ever fully escape the effect of gender because it's just so entrenched in our cultures. I do think it's like you can ironically get caught on the other side of it. I know this is a thing that's come up a lot for me where maybe I'll have some insecurities based around, "Well, as a man, I'm attractive if I possess these qualities," and that could be something like being tall, being strong, being rich, being successful, powerful, things like that. Then there might be other areas where I'm taught, "Oh, men just aren't good at these things because they don't care about them."
Then I can sometimes hold myself to a high standard on those things because I don't want to be a typical man and then get myself in a situation where I feel insecure about those. I feel like even if you're intentionally going against what you were taught about your gender, you can get caught in the same cycle though, of, "Well, now, I've been taught to prioritize this because it's what I was told not to prioritize before."
Emily: Sure.
Jase: It's a little bit damned if you do, damned if you don't. Just to round out this list of some things people can do, it can also be constantly seeking external validation or approval from others. I mentioned that about someone constantly wanting you to affirm them, or like Dedeker said about a partner who constantly brings up the thing they don't like about themselves, maybe looking for you to try to help them feel better about it, potentially. It could be putting down accomplishments or appearance of others. Maybe not directly attacking or insulting them, but just dismissing or minimizing those things. Then, at the more extreme, this can become overtly self-harming or other-harming.
Dedeker: That's in the camp of personal insecurities. If you just look up the word insecurity in a dictionary, there's also this second definition, which is the state of being open to danger or threat, a lack of protection. This is where I think we can look at relationship insecurities as being distinct from personal insecurities. Relationship insecurities manifest as a lack of confidence and a sense of fear or anxiety about the relationship itself. Having a sense of fear about whether or not your partner has reciprocal feelings for you, or being afraid of being abandoned or rejected, or having to go through some sort of uncomfortable change. When there's a relationship insecurity, that may also manifest as excessive reassurance-seeking like, "Please tell me like you're not going to leave me. Right? You're not going to leave me. Right? You're not going to leave me. Right? It's going to be okay," or it could result in self-silencing or self-shrinking.
This idea that if I ask for what I want or if I bring up a complaint about my partner's behavior, then the relationship is going to go away or I'm going to be punished in some way, and so, because I feel like the relationship is not secure, I think I need to shrink myself or silence myself and not speak up. Which often overlaps with, I guess what I would call going along to get along, being a doormat, this sense that it's not safe enough for me to speak up and be my own person, and so I need to just be a doormat and just capitulate to whatever it is that my partner wants, because I think that if I push back against that, then the relationship is not going to be robust enough to withstand that.
Jase: A lot of these are tough to tell where they're coming from.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Absolutely. I think relationship insecurities drive our behavior in our relationships so much. When there is that first signal that insecurities are there, that's when we see things like our attachment styles really coming out in full force. And that may mean we're really avoidant with a partner or we push them away, or maybe if we're super anxious, we want to cling to our partner and grasp them, or maybe we shut down and just stonewall a partner or stonewall the situation. This also may lead to behaviors like desperate attempts at controlling a partner.
You can see that in a variety of ways, like controlling finances, controlling who it is that they hang out with, their family or friends or other partners in various ways, things like that. Also, you may have difficulty trusting a partner. You may question everything that they're doing, or even just internally question and wonder to yourself, "Wait a minute, are they doing the things that they say that they are, or do I have to feel like maybe I can't trust them and trust what they're saying?" That may lead to things like keeping tabs on the other person's whereabouts, keeping tabs on their behavior in general.
You can go back to our episode 291 on attachment theory in polyamory, where we talked to Jessica Fern about these things and about her book Polysecure. I think that's a really great resource. Just in general, reading that book and thinking about the ways in which we manifest our own insecurities in our relationships, and also internally because if you're keeping your insecurities to yourself, the way that Dedeker was talking about, about being a doormat or self-shrinking, self-silencing, that just makes for a lot of internal strife that really is going to ultimately make you extremely unhappy in the relationship.
Even if it's not necessarily manifesting outwardly, it still is going to be really awful and challenging inwardly.
Jase: Yes. Almost like the things that we do to try to maintain the relationship, make it so that we don't get to enjoy the relationship or actually have a good time in it. This is an important time to acknowledge the fact that these relationship insecurities rarely just come out of nowhere. Now, there could be attachment styles that are part of it, but often, even then, there has to be something that causes it, that then makes our attachment stuff come up. That there's usually, "This is coming from somewhere. It's not just coming from nowhere."
That could be anything from a prior trauma that you've had, even just a bad breakup or someplace where you got hurt in the past, or it could be more serious PTSD or complex PTSD, could be a history of broken trust in this relationship as well, or betrayals, or even small breaches of trust that can add up over time. It could be feeling unheard or feeling dismissed. Based on some of those behaviors, that can get caught in a cycle of then silencing yourself and then continuing to feel unheard. It could also be frequent conflict in this relationship, would make you understandably feel less secure in it. Being criticized by a partner or compared to other people by a partner.
I would even throw in that this could come from external sources to the relationship as well. That maybe it's a friend or a family member who compares you unfavorably to other people saying you should be more like them, or, "Oh, they're going to leave you because other people are better than you in this way," or just, "You should watch out because you can't trust whoever. Can't trust women, can't trust men, can't trust whatever it is." This could also be coming externally as well.
Then I guess a last one here might be a mismatch in goals or a desired relationship format. This could be values, it could be spiritual beliefs or political conviction that perhaps a mismatch might mean the relationship is not a great fit. Can understandably lead to a feeling that this relationship might not last and that could trigger those insecurities and attachment behaviors to then try to maintain it possibly to the detriment of both of you. Let's get into the the in-between and some research, and try to get into the nitty gritty of this.
First, we want to take a quick break to say thank you to those of you who support this show on our Patreon. If you would like to support this show and keep this content coming for free to everyone in the world every week, go to multiamory.com/join. Become a patreon there. Then also get access to our amazing private communities, ad-free episodes, our discussion groups, all those sorts of things. It's really fantastic. Then of course, take a moment, check out our sponsors in this episode. If they seem interesting to you, use our promo codes or our links in the description, because that does directly help support our show.
Emily: Now, if we're splitting insecurities in general into these two camps where it's more about your personal insecurity or more insecurity from your relationships, it seems like there could be an obvious answer that personal insecurities mean that you have to deal with them yourself, and relationship insecurities mean that you need to work them out with a partner. While, yes, these are two distinct things, the challenge lies in the fact that they really often tangle up with each other. They may influence each other, and they sometimes even happen just because we are in relationships with people and those insecurities may come of those relationships or our own personal insecurities may make insecurity within the relationship. It's this unfortunate cyclical battle thing.
Dedeker: It's like an ecosystem. I think it is hard to completely hermetically seal off the two from each other.
Emily: It's true, absolutely. They may tangle up with each other, influence each other, and sometimes even create each other. Some examples of how one may influence the other can include things like feeling less certain about your body may feed into this anxiety that maybe your partner won't be as attracted to you anymore and will ultimately leave you. This first one is how a personal insecurity then leads into a relationship insecurity. An opposite one may be, "I'm experiencing conflict with my partner and that makes me feel like a fraud who can't really be helping other people in their relationships."
I felt this a lot in my last relationship. I felt like I had just a variety of different tools at my disposal, and no matter what I threw at the relationship, it was like none of them particularly helped. That really, really made me insecure about the work that I do on this show and just talking to people about relationships in general. It was like, "If I can't fix my own, what am I doing out here talking about my relationship and other relationships and trying to help people?"
Dedeker: I want to validate that because I've gone through that a number of times. I've had a couple of breakups in particular over the past 10 years of us running this show and of me working with clients. For me, it's really easy to not pay attention to, and maybe even discount how much my own tools and knowledge have helped my relationships and supported my relationships, but it's really easy to see when it's not working and then to feel like, "Oh my God, maybe I don't know anything. Maybe this is all BS."
Emily: 100%. If a partner has some particularly harmful or abusive influence, their behavior and what they say about you could lead you to believe that what they say about you is true. That I'm too needy, I'm too emotional, I'm too broken, I'm too disappointing. That's a really interesting one because sometimes it gets into these moments of questioning yourself constantly and wondering, "Wait a minute, am I really as bad as they're making me out to be? It's sounds like I am when they say this thing out loud."
I've had this happen too, and it's really, really destabilizing and can just make the problems of the relationship or as you said, Dedeker the ecosystem of the relationship into an insecurity and into this constant worry that maybe I'm not a good person, maybe I'm not a worthy person of love, and maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with me.
Dedeker: I think this is why it can be really tricky for people to heal from any kind of abuse but there's something particularly tricky about people who have gone through verbal abuse I think, because over time, if it's repeated over a long enough period of time, and especially if it comes from a channel that is very significant to you, so someone like a parent or a romantic partner where their opinion matters a lot, it is really hard to resist the influence of internalizing that.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: Honestly all of us, I think, end up having to do the work of the things that our parents said about us, positive, negative, intentionally, unintentionally, sometimes having to undo some of that because that's the script that got installed in us, so that's a case where there was a relationship insecurity that then got internalized into a personal insecurity and then becomes self-perpetuating.
Jase: Then, of course, we can get into the inception side of things where insecurities, maybe personal insecurities, could lead to insecurities about the relationship, which could lead to behaviors like demands, ultimatums, criticism, control that push a partner away, cause the relationship to end, which thereby affirms those personal insecurities about being unlovable or about, "Oh, I ruin everything that's important to me," and then that feeds back into the cycle that can happen again.
It's also pretty well known that our attachment style is influenced by our experiences, particularly those in childhood, but also those that we have later on as adults. Usually, a long time before the current relationship that you're in and yet that insecure behavior can persist regardless of how much our partner might try to affirm us or fix that because it's been in there from a lot more years of our history as a human than this relationship that we're in right now.
Things like that instinct to keep a partner at arm's length or the opposite to escalate super quickly with a new partner to have more of that anxious attachment, got to cling to them really hard. Because there is this interplay between our relational insecurities and our personal insecurities, it can get tricky if you have a partner who's expressing feelings of insecurity or anxiety to you. It brings up that question of it's not so easy to say which ones are my responsibility and which ones are just theirs, or if they're your own, which ones are mine to deal with on my own and which ones are the ones that I need their help in working through this?
Dedeker: In diving into looking at research studies, it was a little bit tricky to find because there is this weird mix-up between when we talk about insecurities about is it relational, is it personal necessarily. I did find this really interesting study. This was done in 2011 by LeMay and Dudley. It's titled Caution Fragile: Regulating the Interpersonal Security of Chronically Insecure Partners. This was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
There were three studies in this paper. What was super interesting about this paper was that even though the studies did fall into the usual traps, sample size of mostly white college students, they had participants bring a "relationship partner" to the study. It was a combination of of interviews, I think. Interviews and surveys and things like that. In studies one and two, the majority of people, 70% of the people brought someone they would describe as a friend rather than as a romantic partner. Study three focused mainly on romantic partners.
We don't get this very often that we're looking at the ways this shows up not just in a romantic relationship, but also in friendships because, hey, guess what? You can have an attachment style to your friends as well. That might be a news flash for some people. That was a news flash for me for sure, but it's still there. It's not just for your romantic partners and you could feel insecure in your friendships as well.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: What they found is that people who could tell or who already knew that their partner-- and when I say partner, I mean their romantic partner or their friend in this case. If they already knew that their partner had chronic insecurities, this study defined that as having attachment anxiety, having low self-esteem, and having a high proneness for hurt feelings.
If the participant knew that about their partner, they would display a hypervigilance about upsetting them, which would then lead them to behavior changes like concealing any negative sentiments they had about the other person or choosing to exaggerate the amount of affection that they displayed to this person. These behaviors did help the chronically insecure person feel more valued and loved but it came at the cost of reducing relationship satisfaction for the other person, the person who is now hypervigilant and having to overcompensate to try to fix the other person's sense of insecurity.
That it was helpful for the insecure person, and it was not good for the other person's sense of how satisfied they were in the relationship. Now in the paper, the researchers do note that these kind of behaviors, for instance, I'm not going to express my negative sentiments to you, I'm going to play up my sense of affection for you, they're not bad behaviors. It may be helpful when a partner is feeling insecure to do those things. If your partner's feeling insecure, it's probably not a good idea to then complain about how much they suck to their face.
They clarified that if this is chronic, if this is the behavior pattern that plays out all the time, it may lead to overall a reduction in relationship satisfaction and just disingenuous relationship communication in general.
Jase: Wow. I'm just thinking about how we might, in certain circumstances, do that modulating. I would look at that and say, "Yes, that's a healthy way to have a relationship." If you have a friend who just lost their job, you might amp up how much you affirm them and downplay the fact that you're annoyed that they keep complaining about how they lost their job or something like that, or if they went through a breakup or if something challenging is going on.
I do think it's really interesting to distinguish that from chronic, where it's like this partner, I'm always a little afraid they're going to overreact to any small criticism or suggestion I make, and so I'm just not going to do them anymore. That definitely I could see contributing to being less satisfied in that relationship. I definitely have had that happen with friends or romantic partners.
Dedeker: I find this so interesting. I think, specifically, in the non-monogamous community for years, there has been this tension and this push-pull that there's this particular school of thought that if your partner is feeling insecure at all, that's their shit to deal with. That's their personal work, it's all on them, and it has nothing to do with what you are doing or your behavior.
Then there's the other school of thought of-- maybe this comes more from traditional relationships, but it's like if you're feeling insecure, you're feeling jealous. That is your partner's problem to solve. They need to stop whatever it is they're doing that is causing you to feel insecure. I think the reality is that it lies somewhere in this in-between space where I do think both partners have a responsibility to shore up the sense of security in the relationship, and there's a certain point where you cannot fix a partner's personal insecurities necessarily. It's really tricky to figure out where that line lies sometimes.
Jase: Absolutely. We're going to move on to looking at what are some ways that we can apply this? What are some existing tools that we can use here to help improve this in our own personal insecurities as well as our interpersonal relationships? We're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors that we think you might like. If you do, be sure to use our promo codes and links from our description. That does directly help support our show.
If you want to support us in the most direct way possible, become one of our patrons at patreon.com/multiamory. Then you get access to our amazing private Discord server, our private Facebook group, ad-free episodes, our monthly video processing groups, and so much more. You can do that at multiamory.com/join.
Dedeker: We've compiled a small collection of tools that might be helpful if this is an area that you're struggling with, either your own insecurities, your relationship insecurities, insecurities that a partner is expressing. The first tool I want to give people is, I've titled it Fire Up the X-ray, Doctor. I have held for a long time that insecurity, jealousy, attachment panic, it's trying to point something out.
It is trying to highlight something that is important for you to know. It's helpful to think about it like an X-ray. You got the X-ray, and it's like the doctor's hand is coming in to point out, "Oh, here it is. This might be the source of your pain, or this might be why you're having the breathing issue." That these moments of extreme distress that come up, it can be helpful to think about it like that. "What is this trying to point out to me? Is it pointing out that I need to ask for something in my relationship?
That I need to ask for my partner to add a behavior or subtract a behavior? I'm noticing a particular insecurity, is it better to tell my partner about this, or is it better to tell my therapist about this?" Because sometimes personal insecurities, that's between you and your therapist. That's some of your personal work, and your partner may be limited in how much they actually can reassure you and affirm you and make this feel better for you, or "Do I need some better scripts in general for talking about this particular part of myself." I think that it's just important to do that work of figuring out, "Where do I take this issue?" While we're at it, just a quick side note that I do see a lot of people doing this misplaced thing of making their personal insecurities their partner's issues or taking on relationship insecurities as something that's entirely on them as an individual to fix.
What I see a lot within the non-monogamous community is sometimes people relying on a metamour to solve their insecurities, relational or personal. Sometimes where someone feels insecure about their relationship and they decide that they're going to reach out to their metamour to be like, "Hey, I want to get to know you and I want to make sure--" Often this happens at an inappropriately early time I find, that after the first date, they're suddenly reaching out to this person to make them feel better about what's going on.
That happens a lot, and I think that's definitely a case of you got to take a step back because probably it's either a relational insecurity that's between you and your partner, or it's a personal insecurity that is not your meta's problem. Sorry, that was my tiny soapbox I just had to get off. I'm stepping to the side of the soapbox.
Emily: It's a good soapbox.
Dedeker:
Jase: Something I just wanted to throw in about this is that question of, "Do I bring this up to my partner or do I bring this up to my therapist?" I'd say, when in doubt, pick therapist because they might help you decide if this is something you should bring up with your partner. When I say therapist here, this could also be a trusted friend or someone whose opinion you trust. The key here is that you do have to do a little work to identify whether they're a therapist or not, "Do I think they're making the right call when I ask this sort of question?"
There is still a little bit of work of, "Do I really trust this person's judgment about it?" Maybe this is a friend who always is going to blame everything on me, or maybe this is a friend who's always going to say, "Oh, that's your partner's responsibility to fix because I know that they don't take responsibility for their own insecurities." You do have to make sure this is a good source you're trusting.
If you can get that, it can be so valuable because when you're in it, you might not be a good judge of which it is. You might find that you have a therapist or a partner who's telling you it's one thing and you keep resisting it and saying, "No, it's the other." This might take some time, but if you've established this person does have a good sense of this and this is someone whose judgment I trust and you keep disagreeing with them suddenly and you didn't use to, that can be a good wake-up call to realize, "Okay, maybe I'm too deep in this that I'm just not seeing it."
Just to throw that out there, that you need to use some judgment in who you pick, but then also if you have those people in your life, they can be incredibly helpful for the times when you're just not able to see it yourself.
Emily: If you're non-monogamous, we highly recommend Jessica Fern's HEARTS framework from Polysecure because it really gives very clear areas to look at for building and supporting relationship security. Again, HEARTS stands for here, expressed delight, attunement, rituals, and routine turning towards after conflict and secure attachment with self. You can find more about that in our episode with Jessica, which again was 291 on attachment theory and polyamory. Then go check out Polysecure because it really, really is an incredible, invaluable resource.
Another thing to do is influence detox. If you and your partner are experiencing personal insecurities, you can take an inventory of what factors may be influencing and fueling those insecurities. Sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's society at large and that's probably pretty impossible to escape from. Society and culture and the crushing weight of our history of various things that have happened throughout the world's history. All of that, that can be really difficult to escape from.
If you find that you are in relationships either romantic or platonic or familial with people that are really just getting you down, that are hard to be around, that are causing major insecurity within you, then maybe have a detox from them. I think even if that is a couple of weeks or a month or you realize maybe I shouldn't be with this person, that's probably a good thing to do from time to time at the very least.
Dedeker: If you're in the situation where your partner has a lot of personal insecurities that they're really struggling with, it's going to be harder and probably impossible to prescribe them, "Hey, you need to stop hanging around this shitty person who tells you all these bad things or you need to break up with this person who tells you all these bad things," but if you have an insight into that, it can, at the very least, help you drum up some compassion.
If you've gotten close enough to someone to see the way their parents talk to them, see the things that their parents point out and are critical of, that will probably help you connect the dots to some of the stuff that your partner is feeling insecure about, or if you're close enough to another relationship that they have. Again, you can't really sit there and dictate which relationships they should or shouldn't have necessarily, but it can offer some insight which maybe will help you feel more of a sense of empathy.
Emily: Absolutely. Media or social media that encourages comparisons to unrealistic standards, that's a really good one to do a detox of. I see people all the time being like, "I'm taking a 30-day break from social media." That sounds pretty incredible and just will hopefully enable you to get away from the fact that there are so many things out there on the internet to be insecure about and so many people to constantly compare ourselves to, or relationships to compare ourselves to. If you need a break from all that, then give yourself the gift of that. It's really important.
Jase: Sorry, I just was so into that one.
Dedeker:
Jase: I just want to say it 10 more times.
Dedeker: I think it's also important that if you're not feeling ready for a full-on, "I'm going to throw my phone in the garbage for 30 days or throw social media in the garbage for 30 days," you can very carefully curate who you follow, for instance. Honestly, for me, it really did change my relationship when I started following accounts that were dedicated to more body-positive and a wider variety of body types for showcasing the makeup trends I'm into or fashion trends that I'm into. That did change the way that I would feel after scrolling.
Jase: That's great. I would say the same thing with YouTube channels that you subscribe to or even shows you watch. Maybe there are certain ones you just realize, "I think this one might be one of those influences that's making me feel bad about myself in some way." That could be anything. It could be a podcast you listen to about finance that just always makes you feel insecure about your financial situation rather than making you feel encouraged and better or could be a TV show that's just very glamorizing these hot successful people that makes you feel bad versus other ones where it might be more uplifting to you.
Just becoming aware that everything you consume influences you in some way and then curating that, being more intentional about that. Another way to look at this is to make a list. Make two lists actually, because I love writing stuff down, and see what there is that you can change. Change what is changeable. This works for both personal insecurities and relationship insecurities. For example, let's say that you're feeling insecure about being in a room of people who are much older and more experienced than you are in a career-type setting.
Things you can't change are things like your age and how much experience you have, but the things that you can change might be how you dress when you go into that room, the people that you choose to talk to, which connections are worth your time, how much time you spend listening versus trying to impress and talking. Just look at, "What are things that I could change, what are in my power to change and how might those make me feel better? How might those make this situation better?"
Another example could be you're struggling with anxiety and insecurities because your partner is going on a first date with somebody new. What you can't change, or at least I would say probably shouldn't try to change, is the fact that your partner's going on this date. Things you can change is, "What do you do? Who do you reach out to for support? How do you self-soothe? How do you and your partner communicate?" If it's, "I self-soothe while they're out on a date by drinking heavily," that might then contribute to you actually ending up feeling worse in the long run and that's not going to be helpful.
Whereas, maybe there is a way you could discover an activity that you just don't give yourself time to do and you can finally do that and now, "Oh, this is amazing." Well, maybe it won't be amazing for you yet. I like to say that you'll get there. I do think with partners going on dates, it can become a time where it's like, "Yes, sweet. I get my time to do whatever it is." A show that you watching by yourself or a workout that you like to do that's too embarrassing to do in front of your partner. I don't know. Anything like that. Just think about what are the things that you can change, that you can have an effect on.
Dedeker: This next tool I call go get a therapist.
Jase: Wow, that's a cool name.
Dedeker: I know.
Jase: That's clever.
Emily: It's a good tool.
Dedeker: I worked on that one really hard. It's just like it says on the tin, really insecurities, whether it's personal or relational or where they meet in the middle, it's prime personal work territory. Whether you're seeing a therapist or a counselor one-on-one or you're going to get help together with a partner, this is what they're therefore really is to identify these things and to give you tools to help work through them and see what needs to be healed and how it can be healed. What I want leave us with, I called this one hold but don't take, and I'm quoting a post from Levitaloca Sawyers that really stuck with me and I saw it as I was writing this episode, and it really inspired me. She writes, "While it is true that our partners insecurities are not our responsibility to fix, it is also true that they're there for a reason that isn't neatly packaged as simply their personal problem.
Acknowledging the validity of their insecurities isn't the same as taking ownership of them and as a caring way you can hold space for their humanity." I wanted to leave that because I think it really-
Emily: Well done.
Dedeker: -threads the needle and really speaks to the heart of this episode about we live in this in-between space where we all have work that we need to do on ourselves but we also need to see and acknowledge that work and that struggle in the people that we love, and hopefully they can hold that for us as well.
Jase: Yes, I love that.