5 Ways to Overcome Your Abandonment Issues In Relationships

People who have experienced abandonment issues in relationships feel anything but self-assured. They feel lost, undesired, discarded, insignificant, and helpless. Abandonment is a traumatic shock to your emotional system because you are suddenly cut off from a significant relationship. Consequently, life after abandonment involves searching to fill this emotional void.

Relationships become a minefield of rejection triggers. Your fear of abandonment in relationships runs the show and drives your partner away. You are sensitive, clingy, rigid, manipulative, anxious, and obsessive. The more you overreact and need, the more you despise yourself. You feel ashamed of your desperation. To cope with your chronic insecurities, you increasingly become fused to your partner.

Emotional fusion means you depend on people to regulate your self-image and emotions: “I need you to feel good about me so I can feel good about myself. I can’t handle you getting upset with me because that means I am bad and you will desert me.” Because you rely on your partner for stability, you live defensively reacting to whatever your partner does. Basically, life feels out of your control, and you look to your partner to calm the storm.

Without a doubt the trauma of abandonment fragments the soul. The journey to put yourself back together is no small feat. But somewhere along the way, you abandoned yourself. You stopped believing in yourself. You relinquished your strength and gave your power away to someone else to fix you. You depend on someone else’s reassurance to be your source of peace.

Overcoming Abandonment Issues in Relationships

To overcome abandonment issues in relationships, you must reclaim your power and take complete ownership of yourself. Your focus needs to shift from avoiding abandonment to building a strong self. Recovery is a process of letting go of feeling like a victim and accepting the belief that you are a powerful person. This article will offer five areas of responsibility for you to take charge of to break codependency and develop a solid self.

1. Clarify your emotional responsibility

When your abandonment paranoia gets out of control, do you expect your partner to calm your anxiety? If you struggle with abandonment issues in relationships, you probably have an intense desire to feel taken care of. This feeling may be completely legitimate, but it will distort your paradigm of personal responsibility. The deep emotional chasm you feel inside compels you to look to a relationship to be the answer to your problems.

For example, you manage your fear of abandonment by placing the responsibility on someone else to behave a certain way in order to make you feel secure. You panic if that person doesn’t perform perfectly. Your partner becomes your anxiety reliever, and his/her reassurance is the basis of your security. Consequently, when your your partner is having a bad week, you become an emotional wreck.

To stop this emotional reactivity, you must take complete ownership of your feelings. People will trigger your insecurities, but it’s not their job to make you feel better about yourself. You are responsible for cultivating your own mental health. To make your partner emotionally responsible for you is to ask that person to do something outside their power to do. Accept full responsibility for your reactions instead of blaming someone else for your anxiety.

2. Correct idealistic expectations

Do you approach relationships with a consumer mentality? Do you assume it’s your partner’s job to fulfill all your needs? Subconsciously, people with abandonment issues in relationships are continuously looking to compensate for what they lost in childhood. When people are hurt, they feel like they are owed something, which produces unrealistic expectations.

The burden to repay the past emotional debt is often placed on the significant other. That person is put on a pedestal and clutched tightly. The relationship becomes addictive because that person possesses something you “need.”

Fear of abandonment and love addiction go hand in hand. Love addicts search for that constant “fix.” They use people to make them feel whole. They rely on their partner to be their source of well-being. Unfortunately, the relationship “high” only temporarily medicates the pain, putting an immense amount of pressure on one person. You will be disappointed because no human being can ever satisfy every longing of your heart.

To break this toxic dependency and overcome abandonment issues in relationships, you must change the way your needs are met. What would it look like if you took full responsibility for your happiness? You need to invest in yourself and purposely create the life you desire.

Primarily, this means seeking after supreme satisfaction in God, but may also include such things as working with a therapist, joining a small group, traveling, exercising, creating new life goals, learning a new skill, diversifying relationships, or starting a new career.

3. Learn to self-validate

Most people who struggle with fear of abandonment rely heavily on external validation to make them feel confident. They operate from the belief that, “I need constant reinforcement to verify that people love me so I can feel good about myself.”

Abandonment wrecks your self-esteem so naturally, there is a huge appeal to look to other people to be your primary source of validation. Your soul has a deep yearning to be told, “You’re okay.” There is nothing wrong with accepting affirmation. The problem lies when you cannot function without it and continually need people to resuscitate you emotionally.

Do you crumble when your partner disagrees or disapproves of you? Do you spin out of control when you get criticized? The fact is sometimes we don’t receive the positive feedback we desire. What would it be like if your mood was not controlled by people’s words and behaviors? Don’t give people the power to determine your self-worth. Learn to anchor yourself instead of relying on others to prop you up.

Approval seeking is a fruitless endeavor that never satisfies. Besides, no amount of praise will convince you of your significance if you don’t believe it yourself. When you self-validate, it will force you to clarify who you really are instead of defining yourself based on how people treat you. Your sense of self-worth is built largely upon how you conceptualize yourself.

4. Be authentic

In facing your abandonment issues in relationships have you discarded your true self? Do you misrepresent yourself or hold back in relationships? Abandonment can disrupt the development of people’s individuality because they believe the lie that says they are not good enough. As a result, they adopt counterfeit identities, and their sense of self becomes fluid.

They often adjust themselves to fit the desires of people around them. Individuals who struggle with fear of abandonment are afraid to be authentic in relationships because they think their differences will threaten the stability of the connection. They are willing to lose themselves in exchange for approval and attention.

Instead of rooting their identity in Christ, they aim for a watered-down palatable version of themselves to achieve “sameness.” They appease their partner to avoid causing waves. They believe one wrong word or mistake could cause the relationship to end.

People-pleasing results in a lifetime of walking on eggshells and putting up with bad behavior. Don’t compromise your identity. Abandoning yourself is a toxic preservation strategy. Resilient relationships are created when two differentiated people come together. Hold onto your sense of self in close relationships. Clearly define your identity. Commit to valuing yourself enough so you no longer sell out.

This is why it is so crucial to understand who we are before God. Our identities are always (whether we recognize it or not) defined in relation to Him. After all, we were created in His image. This means that to be authentic, any validation of self must respect God’s knowledge of who we are. Only God defines what is truly authentic and He reveals this in His Word (the Bible). As His creatures, our sense of authenticity and validation must be defined and limited by His revelation of what human beings are and must reflect His holy character displayed in obedience to what He requires of us.

5. Practice self-confrontation

Have you sacrificed your integrity to save a relationship? Most of the time, the worst in us comes out in conflict. Hurting people hurt others. Individuals who fear abandonment are masters of control. If they can manipulate people, then they can reduce their abandonment anxiety.

Do you lie and tamper with the facts when your partner finds you at fault? Do you play the victim role to gain sympathy? When your partner confronts you, do you pretend to be confused? Do you shame your partner into spending time with you? Do you attack your partner’s weaknesses to get your way?

It is human nature to turn a blind eye to our depravity and tolerate it rather than acknowledge its existence. It’s much easier to blame your partner (“If only he noticed me. If she would just listen to me.”), but the first person you need to confront is always yourself. Individuals with a strong sense of self will admit when they are wrong.

To heal from abandonment issues in relationships, you need to become a person who daily self-confronts and takes responsibility for how your actions hurt people. Self-confrontation is a time of reflection where you examine where your attitudes and behaviors are out of alignment with your core values. You repent of your sins, correct personal flaws, and take ownership of bad behavior despite the costs.

You change not to get a particular response from your partner but to maintain your integrity. The best in you stands up when you confront the worst in yourself. In return, you will gain self-respect. Resolve to stop dodging responsibility because of your past. Stop blaming, justifying or making excuses for bad behavior to save face. Just own it.

Reflect on how unfairly you treat your partner. Boldly admit your culpability in the toxic relationship dynamic. Don’t accept more responsibility than is due but own your part in the problem. Humbly confess your sins to God and your partner. No doubt this move will disrupt the status quo, but sometimes upheaval is necessary to create traction in areas of relationship gridlock.

Next steps

Will you tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth? Building a strong self will stir up your anxiety. But each time you resist reassurance-seeking and controlling behaviors, you strengthen your emotional muscles. Can you hold the line with yourself? When you start to over-depend on your partner, will you confront yourself and readjust?

Use your relationship insecurity as an opportunity to learn how to transform your pain into personal growth. This abandonment wound is an invitation for you to grow into a resilient person. It is only when we test our capacity that we will discover the strength that resides in us.