lacroix
Member
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2020
Any tips on handling situations where you hurt the others' feelings or are afraid the other is upset with you?
I've gotten out of two extremely unhealthy relationships. I don't think I've ever been in a healthy one. In both of them whenever I felt the other person was unhappy with me or upset with me I just couldn't take it AT ALL. My heart would sink. I would jump straight in and try and fix it and just couldn't think about anything else until the situation was resolved. With my recent ex we would sometimes stay up until 6:30am (not exaggerating) trying to "resolve" some sort of argument (normally we went to sleep around midnight). This happened actually a lot of times and I always felt like shit the next day.
I bring this up because right now I have a girl that I regularly see 2-3 times a week. We do a bunch of couply stuff, but she knows I see other girls too. (She doesn't really like it, but I've told her, and she accepts it. Story for another time I guess). Anyway something happened and I realized I hurt her feelings over text and I realized I had no idea how to handle it. The same old really panicked and fearful sensation rose up again. Ultimately I tried honesty. I called her, tried to tell her everything in my head, and also said I was sorry. In the end she seems ok and we still agreed to meet up later this week but I'm still really anxious. I don't know what she's thinking or what's going to happen.
Something similar happened yesterday when we were hanging out in person. I did something I thought she didn't like and immediately got fearful she was upset with me. I resolved it by telling her I was very anxious she was upset at me, and it's not her fault, I just have a dumb brain. She said she wasn't upset and then it was ok. But sometimes people are actually going to be upset. Then I don't know what to do.
I think this is probably some sort of weird / maladaptive attachment strategy, maybe stemming from childhood. Made worse by my generalized anxiety disorder. It's a really unhealthy dynamic but I really have no idea what to call it, or how to replace it, or what to do about it.
I've gotten out of two extremely unhealthy relationships. I don't think I've ever been in a healthy one. In both of them whenever I felt the other person was unhappy with me or upset with me I just couldn't take it AT ALL. My heart would sink. I would jump straight in and try and fix it and just couldn't think about anything else until the situation was resolved. With my recent ex we would sometimes stay up until 6:30am (not exaggerating) trying to "resolve" some sort of argument (normally we went to sleep around midnight). This happened actually a lot of times and I always felt like shit the next day.
I bring this up because right now I have a girl that I regularly see 2-3 times a week. We do a bunch of couply stuff, but she knows I see other girls too. (She doesn't really like it, but I've told her, and she accepts it. Story for another time I guess). Anyway something happened and I realized I hurt her feelings over text and I realized I had no idea how to handle it. The same old really panicked and fearful sensation rose up again. Ultimately I tried honesty. I called her, tried to tell her everything in my head, and also said I was sorry. In the end she seems ok and we still agreed to meet up later this week but I'm still really anxious. I don't know what she's thinking or what's going to happen.
Something similar happened yesterday when we were hanging out in person. I did something I thought she didn't like and immediately got fearful she was upset with me. I resolved it by telling her I was very anxious she was upset at me, and it's not her fault, I just have a dumb brain. She said she wasn't upset and then it was ok. But sometimes people are actually going to be upset. Then I don't know what to do.
I think this is probably some sort of weird / maladaptive attachment strategy, maybe stemming from childhood. Made worse by my generalized anxiety disorder. It's a really unhealthy dynamic but I really have no idea what to call it, or how to replace it, or what to do about it.