How to Feel Secure in a Relationship with Your Partner
How to Feel Secure in a Relationship with Your Partner
We all want love because it's human nature. But insecurity in your relationship can completely undermine your ability to give and receive that love from your partner. As a therapist, I take an approach of looking at both what's happening in reality and what's happening in your mind based on your past.
Sometimes your insecurity comes from something real, and your partner is giving you legitimate reasons to feel unsafe. But often, learning how to feel secure in a relationship means understanding how your early attachment patterns shape your security and when it's your past playing out in the present.
What makes you feel secure in a relationship?
Before we get into insecurity, let's establish what emotional safety looks like in a healthy relationship.
Security is not never having conflict or always feeling certain. It's more about the presence of certain patterns in your relationship that create a general foundation of trust.
In practice, feeling secure in a relationship looks like:
You can express needs or concerns without fearing abandonment or retaliation
Your partner is consistent, and their words match their actions over time
Conflict doesn't threaten the relationship's existence
You feel seen and valued for who you are, not who your partner wants you to be
There's space for both closeness and independence without panic
You can be vulnerable without it being used against you later
It's perfectly natural to still have conflict and misunderstandings in a secure relationship. You and your partner will mess up, you'll have hard conversations, and things won't always feel stable. But the overall pattern creates a sense that the relationship can hold both of you, even during difficult moments.
What are the signs of insecurity in a relationship?
Here are a few common patterns that signal you're struggling to feel safe in your relationship:
You constantly need reassurance but never feel satisfied by it
You monitor their social media or feel anxious when they're not immediately available
You read into small things (AKA, a delayed text means they're losing interest)
You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, convinced the relationship will end
You walk on eggshells and modify yourself to avoid conflict or abandonment
You stay hypervigilant, scanning for signs that your partner is pulling away, cheating, or losing feelings for you
The irony is that we desperately want love.
A recent survey found that 73% of singles believe romantic love can last forever, 69% believe in destiny, and 51% think there's one perfect match out there for them. We long for connection, yet so many of us feel chronically insecure and can't stop worrying.
What triggers insecurity in relationships?
Sometimes, there is relationship insecurity because your partner is giving you legitimate reasons to feel unsafe. They might be inconsistent, dismissive, or cross boundaries.
But in my practice, I more often see insecurity that comes from your own mind.
Our relationships with parents and siblings create a lens for all future relationships. These early experiences teach us what to expect from others and how to feel about ourselves.
Romantic relationships activate these early relational wounds because they're the closest thing to those primary attachments we experienced as children.
Let's take a closer look at this:
A deeper look at insecure attachment
If you have early relational wounds (and many of us do), two common patterns emerge in adulthood.
We either unconsciously recreate familiar dynamics from childhood, OR we project those past experiences onto partners who are nothing like our family.
Recreating patterns
We often seek relationships that mirror our childhood experiences, even when we consciously try to avoid them. The 'classic' example is a woman with an alcoholic father who ends up with an alcoholic partner despite desperately trying not to repeat that pattern.
Unfortunately, we often get attracted to people who neglect us, who are emotionally unavailable, or who mistreat us because those dynamics feel familiar.
This happens unconsciously.
Most often, you're trying to rewrite the story with your parents and change the outcome this time. It's essentially your brain telling you that if you can get this person to be different/to choose you/to stop drinking, maybe it means you were lovable all along.
Naturally, seeking external healing this way doesn't work. You end up stuck in the same painful cycle, but just with different people. To get out, you need to re-parent and heal yourself rather than try to fix someone else.
Learn more about codependency and how to build better boundaries.
Projecting past experiences
The other scenario is with a healthy partner in a workable relationship, but you still feel insecure because of past experiences in your life. For example, maybe you had a critical father, so when your partner doesn't text back right away, you assume they're angry with you.
Projection creates problems that don't exist in the relationship.
Essentially, your brain is applying an old template to a new person. When this happens, it becomes very hard to stop feeling insecure and distinguish between what's real and what's your past playing out in the present.
How to tell if a relationship is one-sided?
It's important to look at what's happening in your mind when it comes to figuring out why you're feeling insecure in a relationship, but sometimes it's genuinely not you.
Here are a few signs that it's your partner creating insecurity:
They're inconsistent, saying one thing and doing another
They're emotionally unavailable or dismissive of your feelings
They refuse to work on the relationship or acknowledge problems
There are boundary violations, secrecy, or patterns of lying
They're checked out and refuse to communicate
They make you feel like you're always the problem
They threaten your physical safety
If you're experiencing these patterns, feeling insecure makes sense.
These dynamics would need to change, or it may be best to go your separate ways, depending on the depth of the problem.
This often happens when we unconsciously recreate unhealthy patterns from our families. We end up with partners who treat us the way we were treated growing up, even when we tried to avoid it.
Understanding reality vs. your mind
The hard part is separating what's actually happening from what you fear is happening.
Usually, it's a mix of both. There are issues in every relationship, and they're often made worse by what's going on in our minds. For example, your partner might have done something that hurt you, but your reaction is disproportionate because it's touching an old wound.
How to create emotional safety and a secure relationship
The first step is understanding how your early relationships impact your current ones. People treat us the way we treat ourselves. If you don't believe you're worthy of love, you'll either choose partners who confirm that belief or sabotage relationships with people who treat you well.
This is why it's important to learn about yourself first, regardless of which pattern you fall into.
Should you see a therapist?
Yes! If you wonder how to feel safe and secure in a relationship, it's something you can work through in therapy. It'll give you space to untangle what's yours to work on versus what's genuinely problematic in the relationship and how to move forward from there.
As a therapist, I often help people navigate relationship insecurity and attachment wounds. My weekly sessions are available in Arlington, VA, and Washington, DC.
Learn more about codependency therapy, anxiety therapy, or book a free consult!
