Do you ever get scared in relationships?

Yes! I’m terrified of letting someone close to me and then having my heart ripped to pieces. I applaud you for being able to let someone close to you. I’m still working on my intimacy issues.

Well good for you. It does take awhile to trust someone fully that they won’t hurt you. Just enjoy and awesome feeling of being in love . Don’t think about what could happen but live for the day. That is what I do. Hell, if I end up with a broken heart, I can say I have some good memories and broken hearts do heal. Maybe you have found the one your going to spend the rest of your life with.

I know exactly how you feel!

For a long time, I have been very guarded and afraid to open up to people and get involved in romantic relationships. This tends to happen to people who have been conditioned to think that all relationships are destined to end in failure (like myself).

It’s awesome that you have found someone you can be completely open with. That’s how it should be, and it’s totally okay to be scared as well. Be sure and talk about those issues with your partner and it will all be alright.

I’ve been scared sometimes of people cheating on me (in some cases, it was happening)...I wasn’t ever scared to open up…in my current relationship, nothing except losing him to some freak accident scares me.

Not really, if it is going to end, I’m not going to hold her hostage, we’ll both find different people.

Putting yourself out there is always scary, but it’s thrilling at the same time. Being hurt is just the chance you have to take in order to experience unparalleled happiness. I don’t let that fear prevent me from getting close to someone, because we all inevitably face loss and we all eventually heal. To know that we had something so good that we never wanted to let it go, no matter how brief it was, makes it all worth it. I’d consider myself fortunate to even experience that kind of love. It gives our lives purpose. I’ve had my heart broken but before that happened, I was so happy. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.

That being said, I do enjoy the security of having the “upper hand.” I feel that way about my current relationship; I feel safe. The second I feel like I’m losing that upper hand, I panic a bit. But I’d rather love deeply than struggle to keep my head above the water.

Scared No. Concerned, Yes. But I am older and look at things differently. I would be scared if the person in the relationship was not stable. Been there once with a really attractive person but it was really a scary situation.

good for you @jjmah ! I’m not there yet…may never be there. I’m totally serious. Too much pain.

@le_inferno wonderful answer.

My heart is full.

I think the fear of putting yourself out there is a fear that you have not judged this person’s character correctly. Why wouldn’t we put everything out there? What is the point of love if you don’t become an open book?

Well, if you are an open book to the wrong person, they can start manipulating you. They know your fears and desires, and they can use that information to get you to do things for them without having to do much back.

I look at it this way. If I do make a mistake about someone’s character, I can leave the relationship. There is no way I’m going to let them manipulate me into doing stuff I don’t want to do. You would only be afraid of being manipulated if you didn’t trust your ability to get out if the relationship turned toxic.

So, if you are afraid of opening up to someone else, I think you are saying that you are afraid you won’t be able to take care of yourself. If you can’t take care of yourself, then you really will have a tough time in a relationship. You will be giving up a lot of your power to the other person.

This is not a disaster, because you can learn to reclaim your own power and your own responsibility for taking care of yourself. You will learn you don’t have to give it up.

However, it is a sign that you may be right to be afraid of opening up completely. It is a sign that a codependent relationship is a real danger. Sometimes people, with the best of intentions, can end up taking more from you than they give simply because they are falling into a power vacuum.

I would look at my fear, and then look at myself to see if I really think I can take care of myself. If I don’t think I can, then I’d have to try to pull back from the relationship, although it may be too late for that. I would spend as much energy as I could on learning to take care of myself and of not giving my partner too much of my power.

I would be comforted by this: even if you have made a mistake in opening up so completely to this person, it’s all right. You will survive and you will learn. Eventually you will recognized you have made a mistake and pull out. You may suffer during this time, but you will get past it.

Looking on the bright side, you may well learn “on the job” so to speak, and your fears will turn out to be baseless. Good luck.

when i dont really think about it, no im not scared because im so comfortable and happy. and then i think that if he wanted to, he could really really really hurt me and that scares me to death but theres too much trust to think about that for longer than a few seconds.

The scariest part for me is asking her out. But my former ex scared the shit out of me when she said she was pregnant, although it was a lie, she was trying to keep me tied to her since she thought i was such “a catch” dumb girl.

No. I’ve never been in one.

Generally not. I think it’s because I don’t mind being alone, so I don’t fear that. That’s not to say I haven’t had my heart broken. I definitely have, and it was damn awful. I think it made me a better person, honestly. It kind of knocked me off my high horse and gave me a view from the ‘other side’. It gave me a lot more empathy, I think.

I’m glad you’re allowing yourself to be fully open in spite of your fear!

I had bullies most of my schooling, so I find it hard. Terrifying, really. It’s made me very self suffcient and I have a hard time letting other people do stuff for me.

Focus on how you want to feel, rather than on your fears and on being hurt. Focus on what you like in the relationship and what you would like. Often we create the situations and experiences that we fear simply because we worry about them so much and focus on that in stead on the joy and all the wonderful experiences we are having,

I have been there and done that, and for me the more I focused on fears or what I wasn’t getting, the more pressure and strain I created in the relationship, and the greater my fear… and it spiraled downward from there.

Fear is a natural response when we step into the unknown… It is a sign that you are now going beyond your previous boundaries, and that is good. It is saying wake-up, be wide awake, there are new experiences to be had here. Acknowledge it, and focus on the good and wonderful that you are experiencing with this person and that which you want to experience and on how you want to be, the person you want to be…

Ultimately, every relationship we have is a mirror of our relationship with ourselves, we can only love another to the degree that we love our self. And our own happiness and joy is the greatest gift we can offer another… So be happy, feel good and have fun and enjoy the ride!

Hope this is useful.
B

@BasilR wow that was really insightful and helpful, Im going to refer back to this for guidance if I get off track, cause that was perfect

@jjmah Your question brings Faulkner’s writing to me. “If I have to choose between grief and nothing, I will choose grief”. I’m pretty sure I mangled it, but that’s the drift. You have to let them in and take your chances, or you don’t really live life.

In response to BasilR’s response:

I am having trouble with that right now- focusing my whole life in general towards the positive things going on rather than the negative. I was in a relationship last year in which I was less and less able to take care of myself- also because I’m a sophomore in college and I was getting busy towards the end of the semester. But nonetheless, I felt strained- I wasn’t getting enough sleep, so I felt panicky and out of it, and I would spend a lot of time with my significant other and end up not being myself and doing things that I didn’t want to do with him- basically falling out of myself and hoping someone else would pick me up.

I realized that this was happening, and I saw no other way but to pull out of the relationship. I could have just started taking care of myself, but I didn’t work against my habits, and I just felt trapped. I explained this to him- that I needed to take care of myself- and also that I was really embarrassed that this was happening. I felt like I was ten years old, dating a 20-year-old. I liked him, but I had no stability in my feelings.

When I suggested we take a break- he was really hurt. He ended up heart-broken during Christmas- the end of the semester- and now because his parents saw him like this at home, they don’t like me.

All of this I could put guilt upon myself- but then I try to take responsibility for myself, and myself only. I believe that I told him everything about what I needed to do to take care of myself.

When I was breaking up with him, he told me that everyone has problems and why not be with someone while you have them anyways? However, I was so focused on the relationship that I couldn’t have a relationship. Ironically, I wasn’t REALLY focusing on the relationship at all, but my own survival- because my primary needs of sleep and emotional space and expression were not being met.

I see a lot of potential to have love in my life- and whenever I get close, there is a RUSH of emotion that I am not used to feeling: happiness, anger, sadness, guilt, pain, joy, the “negative” ones because of the LACK of love I have had in the rest of my life. It’s almost as if I am scared to enjoy life and be happy- because of fear that it will not happen again.