I have separation anxiety. specifically, it affects me when i dont have at least contact with my girlfriend. i feel like something bad could happen and im not there or something like that. and i want to hear from her/talk to her/see her all the time. every minute of the day i want to be next to her and when i cant be or i havent heard from her in a day or so i start to worry. and when she and i talk again- i feel like im smothering her and i feel really bad about it. ive had problems in relationships in the past. ive been told im too clingy. too needy. that i need to give my partners space. its depressing me that i am this way. what do i do? im pretty upset over this right now and i was wondering if im the only one who has these problems and if anyone else does? what do they do? b|c i dont know how to cope... :help:
generally a good way to approach problems is to acknowledge them verbally with the person/people they effect - which means talking to your girlfriend and saying that you have a problem, explaining how you feel and that you want to solve it and want to change. i'm probably not the best person to answer this any more thoroughly so i'll defer to the wisdom of others on this one for now =) but good luck, stress less!
Well, one important thing you can do is to make sure that you don't expect one person to be everything to you at once. Have other friends and rely on them for things, too. Get your emotional support from more than one place. Also, you can talk to her about what both of your needs are in the relationship. See if you can negotiate something that will work for both of you. Would it help if she let you know when she was going to be out of touch for more than a day? What if she could just try to send you at least one text message a day? Think about what you would need to feel secure. Does she think you are being clingy?
You could try "do you think i'm being clingy?" =) A good rule of thumb an old flame taught me while trying to teach me to be a bit more human is that saying anything with a smile makes it a lot more "all right" for everyone involved. That doesn't mean you just grin while you do it of course, it's not that literal, but if you introduce the topic in a forthright, honest, pressure-free way, it will flow easily. Being afraid of the answer to a question before you ask it won't help. Just remember everything will be fine and it's no big deal whether she says yes or no.
Based on what you've described, and the fact that people have previously told you you're clingy, I think it's safe to say you probably are. Cliniginess comes from an unconscious fear that you don't really deserve this relationship, that you're not good enough for it, and the unconscious message is "When this other person finds out who I really am, they'll leave me." A variation on that is, "Nothing good ever happens to me, so if I'm in a relationship and it's good, I know it's going to end, because I don't deserve anything good." Both of these come from low self esteem. That, in turn, comes from a very deep sense of not being worthy; not belonging, not being enough (good enough, intelligent enough, attractive enough, whatever it may be). All of these are tied in with shame and, with that, a fear of being your true, authentic self. So one of the first steps you can take is to acknowledge that it's going on. Talk to your girlfriend about it. Tell her what your fears are. Acknowledge that you know it's a problem and that you want to work on it. And then... spend some time analyzing the fears. Of course, they're irrational, but they don't seem that way to your unconscious. So if you start analyzing them, and looking at them logically, you start changing the way your unconscious views yourself. And the very act of exploring those things starts the change process. I also strongly recommend reading Brene Brown's "Gifts of Imperfection". It has 10 guideposts to wholehearted living, and deals directly with the issues I've described above. And, I also highly recommend therapy, if that's possible for you.
Except for the underlying low self esteem that will have a really severe effect on one's ability to live a really full and rich life, and the difficulty in finding a relationship with someone that is truly emotionally healthy, since emotionally healthy people will find themselves suffocated by someone who is clingy. Yes, there are relationships that function in a dysfunctional way, but you're a lot better off spending time helping yourself understand and overcome that limitation than simply saying "I give up and I'll take whatever I can get because I don't want to or am afraid to do the work to be the best I can be."
IDK if this is the same thing you are talking about, I just thought asking that: what you are saying is, you have this feeling to protect her all the time as you fear something bad could happen to her, And not being able to be near her to help. is it so?
Surely there are different levels of "clingy"? Or are all people who "cling" automatically doomed to low self esteem and dysfunctional relationships for the rest of eternity?
And this seems to be a recurring issue I have with this website. Not everything is some deep seated dysfunction that requires lots of therapy to have it resolved. I've only been here a few days and what I experienced on my first day as a fun, but meaningful forum is quickly turning into a parody of itself, for me. Sometimes things just are. They aren't some massive issue, they aren't some overwhelming socially crippling event, they are attributes about a certain person that makes them, them. You can be aware of it, perhaps even temper it, but at the end of the day, it is part of what makes you, you, and there are plenty of people who would find that quality attractive in you - the fact, in this case, it's not even the OP's current girlfriend that has said this, actively suggests it's not a problem for her at the moment which itself indicates it's not a dysfunction of who the poster is, so, no, I disagree.
something like that. i've been called overprotective too but i always thought it was a different issue... when im with her i practically snap at anyone who looks at her.
Is that overprotective, or jealous? From the way you've described it above, that would sound to me like jealousy. And that would key back into the same insecurity/self-esteem issue that, blightedsight's views notwithstanding, seems likely to be a genuine possibility worth exploring. If it's overprotectiveness, that too usually stems from a variation of the same issues, but manifesting in a slightly different way. That goes back to the foreboding joy thing, which is a way of attempting to protect from the fear of loss.
I asked whether your girlfriend had mentioned it because I wanted to know if there was an immediate crisis in the relationship that needed addressing. Since it doesn't seem like there is, we can focus on the underlying issue rather than trying to work out relationship problems. The fact that you feel clingy and needy, and that you have this anxiety all the time, is a problem on its own, even if it isn't currently causing a problem in your relationship. It's just that if you were having immediate relationship problems, I would want to address those urgently. I guess I kind of regard it as two different kinds of issues--managing your insecurities within a relationship on the one hand, and actually resolving your underlying problems on the other. But since you don't seem to have an urgent problem in the relationship, we can just talk about the underlying issues. You mention different kinds of fear. I think the first thing you might want to do is try to really examine what it is that you are afraid of. (It really is all different kinds of fear--the jealousy, the overprotectiveness, all of it.) See if you can sit down and really look at each of the different situations, and get very specific about what it is that you are afraid will happen. Once you identify what your fears are, you can start thinking about why you might feel that way, and working on the underlying problems.
Honestly, it probably has a lot to do with your age. As you gain experience, whether with this same girl over time or in relationships with other people, you'll learn more about yourself and others and your attitude may change entirely. Don't fret about it. If she's acting frustrated with you or something then ask her what's wrong.
