Our current ~unprecedented times~ has given us all a lot of time to really reflect, for better or for worse. Regardless of our relationship status, we’ve been able to really get to know the exact contours of our insecurities and debilitating deep-seated fears, some of which we will now reveal to you! Woof. You’re welcome. Read something relatable? Feel free to share – don’t leave us hanging out here!
honestly i am very proud of all of us for contributing to this particular round table, whew. <3
One of my biggest relationship fears is losing myself in the relationship – I love to please my partners and giving them what they need no matter what. I grew up learning pretty unhealthy behaviours and never really learned how to handle romantic relationships. I’m still learning to put myself first and stop sacrificing my well being for others – learning to say no.
I fell hard for a person who then got leukemia and died. I saw her as my soulmate and after processing it in therapy, I overcame my I’m-made-to-suffer-and-never-find-happiness and that someone being with me is a death sentence fears. Also my therapist at that time said I idealized her because she was one of the first people who got my weirdness.
But all in all I think my biggest relationship fear is not being able to find someone who understands my weirdness and who I can communicate with easily.
Archie. Wow. Same. My partner is chronically ill, we’ve had a couple of close calls during our relationship and I’m terrified of becoming a young widow. I’m in my early thirties and none of my friends can relate. It is comforting to know that other queers are navigating similar stuff, and surviving, for now. Thank you for sharing.
Lol right!?! My pals fear abandonment… I fear abandonment by death! Similar but a little different! You and your partner are definitely not the only ones going through it 🖤
This is so real and thoughtful. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed!!!
I connect with quite a few of these, thank you all so much for sharing!
My biggest relationship fear is that i’m making the wrong choice/choosing the wrong person. That there’s a “better fit” for both of us out there and we’re holding each other back. And i know, i know, there is no “one right person” and the quest for perfection in anything ends in disappointment because perfection isn’t possible (my therapist reminds me of this often), I just can’t help wondering, is this it? This is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in (3 yrs! the last one was 6ish months) so i’ve never really had to deal with the ups and down, the continual choosing of each other that comes with a monogamous LTR. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my partner, the love just feels… different. The love i feel for her is more romantic than the way I platonically love my friends and while COVID has put a damper on my libido I am still extremely physically/sexually attracted to her, but it’s not the “i’m so obsessed with you” type of love that I felt at the beginning of our (or any) relationship. Does that mean i love her less now? Is this just what happens in LTRs? Or is this what falling ‘out of love’ feels like? Would my feeling of being “ecstatically in love” last longer with a different person or is “ecstatic love” just not sustainable? Maybe what is at the heart of my fear is that I don’t know if the love i have for my partner is enough for me, or if i’m doing the thing i tend to do and projecting unrealistic expectations into what i think love should feel like after 3 years.
Anyway, if you all could do a roundtable on LTRs and how/if romantic love changes (we all agree NRE is a thing that fades perhaps i mistaking that for love?), and maybe also what romantic love feels like in general for you that would be… awesome.
This is my fear also! I do feel like i have ‘found my person’ but I’m still young and there’s so much doubt.
so much doubt! I’m in my early 30s but just came out a few years ago so feel like a baby queer with not enough experience to “know,” glad i’m not the only one.
I feel like (according to hollywood at least) i’m supposed to “just know” if its a “right person” but is that true? and, as someone prone to overthinking…everything, is it reasonable for me to expect to “just know”?
Quarantine mind spirals are a true joy, lol (jk).
Same, though my fear is that I’m not the perfect person for my partner. I’m as wild over her as when we started dating 13 years ago but I often think she should be with someone she feels just as strongly about. But her deeds tell me she loves me even if I don’t feel like she touches me as enthusiastically as I would like. I’m working on it.
Rachel!!!!!
I am going to spend the afternoon trying to decide whether I am more afraid of being a burden, period (a la Heather), or being left to flounder when I am too heavy a burden (a la Rachel), or that people will not communicate with me that I am too much of a burden and instead use it against me (something like the mathematical average of Vanessa and Dani Janae’s answers). What a fun day of quaratine introspection I have ahead.
ahaha wow really excited to hear where you land! you’re so brave!
Man, I really appreciate everyone’s thoughtful answers to this one! I also appreciate the links and context- as someone who recently became an A+ member, I’ve done a lot of reading of older pieces and columns and seeing y’all contextualize that earlier work really satisfies my curiosity (not that I’m owed answers or anything, it’s just cool to have that perspective).
For myself, I think my biggest relationship fear is someone I love falling out of love with me – I think largely because I have been the faller out of love-r in many past relationships and am maybe still dealing with guilt there!
ahh welcome! so grateful to have you here! that’s a really good observation – I do think that we tend to fill in gaps about what we can know about our partners with what we know about ourselves, which definitely leads to what you’re talking about in fearing someone else will do what we habitually do. I know the partners who were always most insecure about me cheating were the ones who cheated most themselves historically!
<3 to valerie anne, because same.
Reading this round-up feels like naming which babysitter in the Babysitter’s Club I am. I’m a Valerie with a touch of Rachel.
Thanks so much for sharing.
Same!
Wow Christina and Drew you stole the words out of my journal. Thanks for sharing with the world (of A+) because it’s always nice to know I’m not alone in my fears. And because so much of the queer scene is around dating and Uhaul jokes (I’m generalizing obvs) and people in general seem to hate being single while I love it and dislike dating, sometimes I feel like I’m broken beyond the fear of letting others into my life. Or at least feeling like an anomaly, while everyone else wonders if they’ll ever not be single I’m over here wondering if it’s worth giving up being single.
And Valerie, I missed your name in my initial comment! Sometimes I think maybe I’m just better at being alone. The only one I have to trust is me when I’m single.
Ahh Rachel some real Enneagram type-2 stuff there! I feel all that hard (that dynamic–self-selecting partner included–was the downfall of a 5-yr relationship for me) and am working on it, but it is tough. Especially when trying to balance that inner work with unlearning the capitalist shame of wanting any interdependence/mutual care.
lmao yes how did you know! feeling for you re: the end of your partnership, happy for you that you’re doing the work <3
Thanks for naming the capitalist shame of wanting mutual care. Really struggling with this and working through this exact issue as my 15 year partnership just ended for the reasons Rachel described and am negotiating what feels like a similar dynamic in another relationship. Finding the balance feels so tricky when it often feels like the options are – codependence or total independence.
Thanks to everyone for sharing these deeply personal fears ♡
I think my deepest darkest fear is that I’ll never be compatible with anyone because my needs and desires seem really inconsistent? Also that I don’t really know how NOT to be single, so I relate very much to those fears.
Thank you all for sharing these deep and hard thoughts with us. My fears (and tendencies) are basically identical to Rachel’s. I’m in a partnership that that has a touch of this dynamic, and we’re negotiating it in therapy and together, but whew, it’s a tough one to undo. I have difficulty functioning at all if I’m not over functioning!
My major fear is not one I saw reflected above! As I read through the responses I hoped more and more to see it, but I didn’t. I realize I was looking for some connection, for some reassurance that my personal relationship fear doesn’t make me a Bad Person.
I am afraid of getting bored. I am afraid that the fact that I do get bored (because I do) means that I’ll never actually be happy. I am afraid of the fact that early on in a relationship I’ll fall head over heels in love, but then over time it fades and I start to feel suffocated by the person I’ve made feel safe, and then I start to panic and realize I just need change. I just need something new. The person I thought was right for me isn’t, not anymore, and I have to move on.
I want kids. I want an easy life where I don’t have to think about dating and love, where I can focus on my work and other things. (I am not good at being single; I get a bit wild.) I just want to commit and stay, but I worry that I’m not capable of it. I’m so afraid of it now that I am looking at my current relationship under a microscope, trying to find the clues that will prove it’s not going to last.
I want to add that I am very happy with my partner right now, but I’m so afraid that it’s temporary, even if it doesn’t feel like it, because I’ve been wrong before. It’s been almost two years, but the last one was six and a half, so… who knows? I feel like I can’t trust myself.
I totally feel this. I think your “getting bored” feeling is related to my deepest fear regarding the underwhelming feeling of, “is this it,” and being worried that the love I feel for my partner is ultimately not enough to keep me interested in investing in the relationship. But, if all LTRs eventually get a little “boring,” maybe that’s just how LTRs are? I’m not sure, I haven’t been in enough to be able to know.
so Mating In Captivity, while focused on straight cis upper class ppl, by esther perel, had some really helpful insights for me about this and ling term relationships. to summarize “intimacy (safety, being known) and the erotic (mystery, a gap to long across) are like inhaling and exhaling – we need both but can only do one at a time. so alternate, and intentionally create distance/mystery in a long term relationship”
My primary takeaway from reading these is that I recognized myself in a lot of them, but it was mostly a past self, because for the first time in my entire life I feel happy and confident in a long-term relationship, where I have both the security (as much as that’s ever possible) of a loving and compatible partner, and the freedom to continue to explore other sides of myself with other partners.
Which leads me to my current biggest fear, which is that, after decades of work to finally undo trauma, let go of shame, and start to get in better touch with what I need and want, now the pandemic has come along to throw an enormous wet blanket over everything, and by the time any semblance of normality returns maybe I will have lost all the momentum it took me so long to work up in the first place.
(I hesitated a bit to share this at all because I know I’m very very lucky to have someone to go through quarantine with, and a lot of people are suffering badly from total isolation right now which is a whole lot worse. I’m grateful for what I have, and don’t take any of it for granted. It’s just that if I’m being honest about my biggest fears, that’s the one that rears up the most.)
Oh this is fun! I’m afraid that my trauma has left me too irreparably fucked up to be capable of a healthy relationship! Wheee!
Thank you so much for sharing everyone. This roundtable made me feel less alone. Heather’s and Rachel’s fears have come true for me; after really taking care of my wife for several years, when I ended up in hospital, she dumped me for another woman. My adandonment issues were not great before that and I haven’t been able to date since and might never be. Wishing everyone luck on this shared quest of ours to find love and partnership. (For the ones that want that.)
Wow Carolyn, my relationship fears are pretty much the same as yours! Thanks for sharing so eloquently 💚
I’m a Valerie with a healthy sprinkle of Christina. I feel S E E N.
Loved this roundtable, thank you for sharing.