How to Deal with Relationship Anxiety: 5 Steps
How to Deal with Relationship Anxiety: 5 Steps
Even in healthy relationships, you might find yourself worrying about your partner's feelings or scanning for signs of distance. But when these feelings become persistent, how do you deal with relationship anxiety?
In my therapy practice, I often see that most relationship anxiety isn't truly about your partner and the things that they do (or don't do). Many anxious thoughts come from unhealed patterns from your past playing out in the present.
While there are definitely ways that your partner can make you feel unsafe, there's usually a deeper story to it. Let's uncover it.
What is relationship anxiety?
Relationship anxiety means you feel chronically worried or on edge about your relationship, even when things are going well.
It's different from normal relationship concerns. Pretty much everyone wonders sometimes if their partner is losing interest or questions whether they're compatible. These aren't necessarily signs of relationship anxiety.
Relationship anxiety is when these worries take over. You might be experiencing relationship anxiety if you're constantly checking for reassurance but never feel satisfied when you get it. Overall, the anxiety is disproportionate to what's happening.
Note that this isn't about clinically diagnosable conditions like relationship obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), separation anxiety disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder. Those require professional assessment and specialized treatment.
Learn more about anxiety therapy.
Signs of relationship anxiety
Relationship anxiety is often automatic and hard to control. You might notice that you:
Constantly need reassurance but never feel satisfied when you get it
Monitor your partner's social media
Feel anxious when your partner isn't immediately available
Read into small things and assume the worst
Feel convinced that the relationship will end
Can't enjoy the present moment with your partner
Stay hypervigilant, scanning for signs that your partner is pulling away
The irony is that anxiety makes you seek connection and reassurance, but the constant need for it can push your partner away or make you miss the connection that's already there.
Learn more about how to feel secure in a relationship.
What triggers relationship anxiety?
A lot of the time, it's not your partner.
Your relationships with your parents and caregivers shaped how you expect love to work. These early experiences taught you what to anticipate from others, and adult romantic relationships bring these old patterns back to the surface.
If you have early relational wounds, two common patterns often emerge in adulthood:
You either unconsciously recreate familiar dynamics from childhood, OR
You project past experiences onto partners who are nothing like your family
When you recreate patterns, you might find yourself drawn to people who are distant, unpredictable, or unkind. This isn't something you do consciously. Your brain recognizes the dynamic and mistakes familiarity for compatibility.
But unfortunately, you usually just end up stuck in the same painful cycle.
When you project past experiences, you're in a relationship with someone who treats you well, but you develop relationship anxiety because of past experiences. For example, maybe you had someone leave without warning, so now any change in your partner's routine feels like abandonment.
This projection creates problems in the relationship that aren't really there, and it becomes difficult to see your partner clearly instead of through the filter of your past.
When your partner is making you feel unsafe
Not all relationship anxiety comes from your past.
Your anxiety might be pointing to something legitimate when:
Your partner's words don't match their behavior over time
They shut down or minimize your concerns when you try to talk about the relationship
They won't engage in working through issues or pretend problems don't exist
You've caught them in lies or discovered hidden things
Accountability only goes one direction, and you're always the one who needs to change
There's a threat to your physical safety
If this describes your relationship, you may need to take an honest look at it. Maybe your current partner isn't the right person for you.
Now, the deeper problem is that sometimes the reason you end up in relationships with emotionally unavailable or even abusive partners is that you pick people who reinforce your old beliefs about yourself.
For example, if you learned early on that you weren't worth sticking around for, you might gravitate toward people who prove that right.
This does not mean that it's your fault, but it might mean that there's an old wound that keeps pulling you toward familiar pain. If you repeatedly end up with people who make you anxious, there might be something unresolved in your own history. It’s not just bad luck in dating.
In this case, self-esteem therapy can be very helpful.
How to overcome relationship anxiety
1. Take a deeper look inside yourself
To address relationship anxiety, it's very important to first understand where it comes from. What did your relationships with parents or caregivers teach you about love, safety, and your own worth?
These early experiences might have shaped your anxious attachment style, especially if you learned to expect inconsistency or abandonment from the people closest to you.
It's also important to look at your relationship history. Do you keep ending up with the same type of person? Do you feel anxious no matter who you're dating? These patterns might be showing you where there are still active old wounds you need to address.
2. Stop outsourcing your safety
In a healthy relationship, your partner should be reliable and treat you well. But they can't be responsible for making you feel fundamentally safe inside yourself. That has to come from you.
When you rely entirely on your partner for reassurance, you put impossible pressure on the relationship. No one can text back fast enough, be available enough, or say the right things enough to quiet the anxiety that comes from within you.
Your partner can meet your reasonable needs for connection and support, but they can't heal your childhood wounds or fix your self-worth.
To reduce relationship anxiety, think about what YOU can do to make yourself feel good and secure. For example, maybe it's going on a walk, watching your favorite show, or getting yummy takeout.
Building your own sense of safety takes practice, but it'll help you balance what your partner does for you with what you do for yourself for a more fulfilling relationship.
Try these 8 things you can do when feeling paralyzed by anxiety.
3. Identify your unmet needs
Relationship anxiety often points to needs that aren't being met. But before you focus on getting your partner to meet those needs, get clear on what they truly are.
Are you anxious because you need more quality time together? More physical affection? More verbal reassurance? Or is the need deeper than that?
Sometimes what feels like needing your partner to text more often is really about needing to believe you're worthy of attention. And that's not something your partner can fix on their own.
Separate the needs your partner can reasonably meet, like spending time together and communicating openly, from the needs that have to come from within you. For example, making you feel fundamentally lovable isn't a need anyone can meet, so it's unfair to expect your partner to do that.
These self-esteem therapeutic activities can help.
4. Prioritize honest communication
Talk to your partner about what you're experiencing. Not in a way that blames them, but in a way that lets them understand what's happening for you and adjust their behavior if needed.
You might say something like: "I've been feeling really anxious lately, and I'm working on understanding where it comes from. I wanted you to know what's going on with me."
This honesty creates space for your partner to support you without taking responsibility for fixing your anxiety.
5. Seek professional support
A therapist can help you sort out what's happening in your mind versus what's happening in your relationship.
When you're anxious, it's hard to see clearly because everything feels urgent and threatening. A therapist gives you perspective on whether your partner is genuinely unreliable or whether you're reacting to something from your past.
Therapy also helps you stop the cycle of choosing the same type of person or sabotaging good relationships because they feel unfamiliar.
Will relationship anxiety ever go away?
Without taking a closer look at yourself? Probably not.
Even if you get into a new relationship, if you don't understand where these persistent feelings of anxiety come from, you'll likely keep repeating the same patterns.
For example, you might continue choosing emotionally unavailable partners who confirm your fears and keep you feeling unsafe. Or you might keep projecting old relationship wounds onto healthy partners who are treating you well.
Either way, the anxiety follows you from relationship to relationship because the source is inside you, not in who you're dating.
But these patterns CAN change! When you understand how your past shapes your present, you can start making different choices and build security within yourself. It takes work, but relationship anxiety doesn't have to be a permanent part of your life.
Seeing a therapist is very helpful if you want to manage anxiety in your relationship.
FAQs
How to self-regulate relationship anxiety?
"Self-regulation" is finding ways to calm your nervous system without depending on your partner to do it for you. When anxiety hits, try things that ground you in your body, such as taking a walk, making yourself a cup of warm tea, watching an episode of your favorite show, or journaling about what you're feeling. You can tolerate uncomfortable feelings without needing someone else to fix them.
Should I tell my partner I have relationship anxiety?
Yes, open and honest communication matters in any relationship. Let your partner know what's happening for you, but frame it as something you're working on, not something they need to fix. You might say: "I've noticed I get really anxious when I don't hear from you, and I'm learning that it's more about my past than anything you're doing. I wanted you to be aware of it." This is different from saying: "You make me anxious when you don't text back fast enough."
Why am I spiraling about my relationship?
Spiraling usually happens when your anxiety latches onto one small thing and builds an entire story around it. Your partner seems distant, so your mind goes: they're losing interest, they're going to leave, I knew this would happen, I'm unlovable. It's your brain trying to protect you from perceived danger by preparing for the worst. You can tell it thanks but no thanks!
Dr. Ann Krajewski, PSYD.
Should you see a therapist?
Yes, if you're struggling with relationship anxiety, therapy gives you the space to understand where it comes from and what to do about it. You'll learn to work through attachment wounds and build healthier ways of relating to yourself and your partner.
As a therapist, I often work with people navigating relationship anxiety and attachment issues.
My weekly sessions are available virtually in Arlington, VA, and Washington, DC. Book a free consult to get started!
