Dating is a process that requires a lot of effort, time, and energy as it is. So if you feel like you need constant reassurance from your date or in a romantic relationship, it may become another hurdle in your quest for love.
If you feel you require a lot of reassurance and promises to stay secure and feel safe in a relationship, then you could be self-sabotaging. It’s not easy to find the right person and when you do, they could not understand why you need them to prove themselves over and over again.
You will rarely find someone who has enough patience to reassure you every time. It may be difficult to find someone that will go out of their way to make you trust that they are still interested and engaged, every minute of every day.
So why is it that you need constant reassurance in a relationship, or when dating? Today, we list 5 possible reasons to help you find the root cause for this and work on it.
5 possible reasons why you need constant reassurance in a relationship:
1. Trust issues or abandonment issues:
Many people have trust issues and are afraid that their partner might do something wrong behind their backs or hurt their feelings, in some way. But this is not the only reason why someone might need constant reassurance when dating. They may also be afraid of being abandoned or feel like they need to know that their partner is committed to them, at all times.
A need for constant reassurance can often be a sign of insecurity or distrust in a relationship and it can cause more problems than it solves. That’s why if you have trust issues or abandonment issues, it is important that you work on them.
Also, try making your partner or date understand that it has nothing to do with them or the relationship. Clarify that you just need a bit of time to trust them fully and this is only due to your nature, character, and personality and has nothing to do with who they are.
The most important thing about trust is that it can be built over time. It’s not something that you can see right away, but rather something that has to be worked on continuously. That’s why we recommend that you take the time to rebuild trust in a relationship if you feel it is not there anymore or that it has never been.
2. You have been betrayed before, and didn’t see it coming:
You have been hurt before, by a friend, a family member or a close loved one and we’re not talking about cheating here.
You have simply been betrayed to some extent, or hurt in a way that you didn’t see coming. And, because of this unfortunate event, you now anticipate or expect a betrayal or bad life event to come and stain your relationship or happiness.
That’s why you feel the need to keep checking on your partner and questioning their loyalty and love. You’re trying to sense any bad intentions they might have for you. In other words, you don’t believe that they will have your best interest at heart in all scenarios of life and without fail. Again, we’re not talking about cheating here.
3. You have been cheated on, and didn’t heal from it yet:
It is no secret that getting cheated on changes you forever later, to get a clear idea of what we’re saying. In fact, let us clarify a little more: If you have been cheated on in the past then chances are you won’t ever forget. You will be wondering how and why your ex-partner did that and you will find something to blame yourself for.
Maybe you’ll think that you were too naive or too oblivious to pick up the first hints they dropped. You may even think that you could have prevented it all, if only you knew when exactly their feelings for you have changed or taken a turn.
So now, in your new relationships, you try not to repeat the same mistakes by trying to keep your partner or date in check and verify that they still care for you at all times. This will just annoy, irritate and frustrate them. It will backfire on you, you know it, but you cannot help yourself.
You need to internalize that a cheater would cheat in all scenarios of life and once they get an opportunity. It’s not your fault in any way that they did, and nothing you can do can prevent a new cheater from showing up in your life, playing nice and polite, and then cheating on you too.
So the best thing you can do here is to select a good person that has morals and values from the start, and just give it your all! Whatever happens, let it be and we will cross that bridge when we get to it!
4. You have stayed in relationships after having lost interest:
If none of the reasons listed above applies to you, then one possibility that remains is that you have stayed before with someone after having lost interest. If you need constant reassurance that the person you’re with still loves you, or is truly still interested; then this may be because you’ve stayed in a relationship for the wrong reasons before.
You may have stayed out of pity for an ex-partner, or because you thought you weren’t ready to be single again, etc. Whatever the reason was, for why you stayed for longer than you should, you clearly didn’t want or like being there. You have lost interest and probably were thinking the worst of your partner, but you have stayed regardless.
So now that you yourself have gone through this and saw how bad it was on that partner that you were with but thought the worse off, you worry the same will happen to you. You worry that the person you’re with, will get bored, lose interest or secretly start despising you and every detail about you; but not say a word about it.
You worry that the person you’re with will start seeing your flaws ten times more emphasized and think horrible things about you, but stay out of convenience or whatever other wrong reason. That’s why you keep asking them for reassurance and trying to see what they think of you and how they feel about you, at all times.
5. You had a breakup, you didn’t see coming:
If you were in a relationship before where someone broke up with you, out of the blue and suddenly, then you may start to require constant reassurance that all is going great. You simply want to check that you’re on the same page as your partner. You don’t want to get bad surprises that you didn’t see coming.
So for this reason, you keep asking for reassurance in a relationship or feeling the need to check on your partner and see where they’re at. So what you can do is discreetly ask your partner if everything is ok in the relationship. Again, that’s only because you were a bad judge of things in the past, couldn’t read the relationship, and didn’t see that break-up coming.
So you try to be on top of things now and see when a bad cloud is coming. You want to be in control, or at least be aware of what’s going on in your own relationship.
However, you have to understand that this type of behavior also falls under sabotaging a good relationship, which you could be doing just to prevent it from going wrong. So in order to protect your feelings, you may be the one indeed destroying the relationship, to begin with, because you feel it’s too good to be true or will end up falling apart anyway and hurting more.