Are you afraid of being abandoned?

Not abandoned, but, alone, yes.

I worry about losing my family.

Edited to add. Yep, this is me right here:

“Being close to someone and then them leaving you, whether dying, or choosing other friends or activities like drugs and alcohol over you, hurts, but I’m not really afraid of it.
It’s just affected how close I allow myself to get to people and how long it may take me to trust someone.”

Also, having been sexually abused, I have a difficult time trusting others and letting them in. Ah, what I am discovering through therapy.

Not necessarily, but I am afraid of making attachments to people.
Being close to someone and then them leaving you, whether dying, or choosing other friends or activities like drugs and alcohol over you, hurts, but I’m not really afraid of it.
It’s just affected how close I allow myself to get to people and how long it may take me to trust someone.

No.I am not afraid of being abandoned and am certainly not afraid of being alone.Never.

Yes, I am terrified.

Stems from Mothers that abandoned me and then girlfriends that have done the same.

Doesn’t do much for any feeling of self-worth.

My aunt was in this position. she was afraid of being left alone in life. in order to prevent her fears of abandonment, she not only married one drunk, but three. she always told me that she did not care if her three husbands were alcoholics, as long as there was a car in the driveway and a body asleep in the bed. i did not agree with her then and i do not agree with her 30 years later. to be honest, i do not understand this fear and i do not understand your fear. i wish you good luck, though.

I use to have abandonment issues because of past abusive relationships, but I have found that if you let go of your baggage and trust in someone or something that wont abandon you. You’ll be a stronger person for it.

I have been abandoned in major ways. I live alone, I am completely self sufficient. So much so that I think I have turned my fear of abandonment into becoming an “island unto myself”.

Nah. It’s not so bad. You can get used to it, get over it (and definitely get over “the fear of it”) and start a new life.

It ain’ no thang.

@MorenoMelissa1 I’m just making this up, but I think it’s a good metaphor.

Let’s say you love race car driving. You have to do it in order to feel like your life is worth anything. But you also need your wife and children to feel ok. Your wife hates your racing. She’s afraid you’ll kill yourself, and sometimes she says she can’t stand it; maybe even talks about divorce. So you stop racing for fear she will leave you. But you are miserable because you can’t race. Misery either way.

No.
But I suppose if one lives long enough, one might have to face being alone after friends and family die or move away or something. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I was abandoned and I survived, but it took me a long time to realize that I had survived it and that I did go on with my life, even though I was very young when the abandonment occurred.

I’m not afraid of abandonment, but I had to remind me to stop repeating the same things about it that I’d told myself at 4, as I am no longer 4 and no longer in the same situation.

@aprilsimnel good for you…

Learning to wash clothes separately was my single biggest challenge towards independence…everything else fell into place after that.

No I don’t fear abandonment. But I suppose one day we will all have to face being alone, when members of our family die, or our husband/wife dies. I try not to think about it.

I’m alone. I have fleeting wishes for someone in my life, but not enough to go out and find one!

I fear it every day. Being the youngest. One day I will be all alone.

I’ve never had this fear. They’d be damn fools.

@ChazMaz never mind it ain’t so bad!

I was abandoned – by a sibling’s death – when I was very young so the trauma is certainly part of my make-up. I’m not consciously afraid of it in my life right now but I am insecure at times in relationships and this is, no doubt, part of the reason.

Yes. I think about it all the time. I’m very insecure that people do not like/love me as much as I do them. So I always feel like I’m going to annoy or bother someone to the point of leaving…I really have no idea why I’m like this, but I am.

It’s inevitable.

I’m sort of afraid of being in a position to be abandoned.

Nope. Never.

my mother left (it’s complicated, i helped to “force” her out but i really had no other healthy choice) when i was about 17. it was a rough time in my life and her leaving instead of getting her shit straight made it total abandonment. i’ve noticed since then that i am worried about losing things that mean something to me, or help make me feel whole. i have also found that i cling to things (or people) that i don’t necessarily need… especially when i am feeling vulnerable.

i am not sure how to go over this other than to deal with it, just like getting over any other fear. you’re not the only one out there though.

what do you think triggered this? when did it start? did anyone leave you when you were younger?

bottom line, for me, is that you do what you have to do to survive… and if that means being alone and adapting, you will do what you’re supposed to do. hope this helps :)

Yes, though I am not sure why. I have always lived in fear that someone will leave me in the dust, and yes, it has happened in some cases. I have also done the abandoning, and it felt much the same as having it happen to me. I’m not sure why I have this fear, but I try to do something everyday independently to know that yes, I can do it myself. Yes, I can be by myself, and there is nothing wrong with it.

I get abandoned all the time. Try finding a problem in China and all of the information is in the U.S and it’s midnight on Saturday. That is about as abandoned as you can get.

This is one problem I had in spades, that I ended up kicking it’s everloving ASS all over the place.I obliterated it (it bothers me to no end that a problem I have gets the better of me, so I try hard not to let it happen).

Okay, so…..I got hurt (tons of times, actually, but who is counting?). But what does that mean, exactly? What does it mean to get hurt? I didn’t sit on the sidelines, or cheer from the stand. To be hurt, you have to have been in the game. Thatt got me to thinking…..so what, if someone leaves me? They have the right to go where they please, don’t they? And I have the right not to interfere with it. In fact, I am spiritually directed not to interfere.

But I looked around after being hurt and it dawns on me…....the sun is still shining. The grass and trees are still green. Birds are still chirping like crazy and going about the business of foraging for food, and…...nothing has changed. Nothing! The world is still turning. So, it must not be that bad, that I got hurt, because lookit – the world is moving on. Maybe I should, too. I mean, I can feel bad AND still live for the next great thing, right?

@phillis very impressed with your answers tonight. thanks

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Thank you for that :)

@phillis I love that answer. It articulates better than I ever tried, something that I have gone through recently… and for the first time in decades.

“Heartbreak ain’t fatal”, is my snide and quick way to put it.

CW! I have missed you! It’s not as snide as it is true, right? You keep on saying that, because it’s working for you, and that’s all I want for you :)

When i was born, i was put into a cardboard box and left in a bus station. i was totally abandoned.
some 30 years later though past life regression i went back to that box and re experienced that whole affair…,
that was a fear i never want to experience again.
i know there are a lot of levels to one’s experience of being abandoned,
and also i know that it can go very deep as well.

It’s interesting, for years I lived in mortal fear of it happening and it did happen, more than once. And I was miserable, but I lived through it. And despite the inherent cliche in this, it must have made me stronger because until I read this question, I hadn’t thought about it in years. And I am living on the other side of the world from where I grew up and spent most of my life which seems as if it would make it even more of an issue instead of less. I think I simply learned that I can take care of myself, I don’t need anyone else to take care of me. It is nice to have someone else care about me, but I can live very well without it.

I have long had an irrational fear of abandonment.
Even now when I have a truly loving wife, I still fear that she will leave me.

This is an irrational fear so I know how to deal with it and prevent it from ruining my life and relationship with my wife.

It’s happened in my life several times so I dread it but kind of look on it as inevitable given the odds in having human interactions. It turns out some people I have given the most trust over to and believed in the most (assumption) are the ones who let me down the worst. It sucks, it affects any romantic relationships I have but I am aware of myself and try to keep my anxiety and trust issues in check, try to communicate them better instead of pretending they don’t exist. Every little bit helps to speak up and be heard, better yet understood and empathized with by the people most important to me.

Fear is a terrible thing, it makes you do terrible things. You’re standing on a ledge holding on for dear life because you’re afraid you’ll fall and that fear slowly eats away at your strength. You get the almost irresistible urge to just let go, to push yourself off just to end the suspense. Alone and lonely are two very different things, fear stands in the way of learning to appreciate the small but significant difference.

Bravery isn’t an absences of fear, it’s a refusal to be cowed by it.

Do I fear being abandoned. No. Is the pain of being abandoned excruciating. Yes. It’s not something I would look forward to or project as desirable into my future. The last excruciating loss of this nature was a lover. I don’t think I recovered for several years enough not to have to hold back tears on occasion. But the thing I fear most of all is abject impoverishment. To be without resources is to really have limited choices in life. I have been there. I could end up there again. As I age I recognize it could affect my longevity and the kind of health care I have access to, the kind of housing I my be subjected to, and cut me off from doing things that I love.

I’m an orphan. I mean, yeah, okay, it happened after I was fifty years old, but still…