Is There Something Wrong with Me?

Everyone on Facebook is getting engaged, posting wedding pictures or making a birth announcement and I’m over here still single!-  Is there something wrong with me? 

How many times have thoughts like this crossed your mind? Do you compare yourself to your friends and their relationships and start to feel inadequate?  It’s human to start to wonder, “what is it about me?” Maybe you’ve had relationships that lasted for a year or two but never became anything more serious and you’re left wondering if you are the common thread.

So often young people start to feel left behind as friends start the next chapter of their lives.  The future can start to look scary and lonely.  It is always important to remember that you’re human and will set your own pace in life, but it is also important to reflect on the role you have played in your relationships or lack there of.  It is normal to experience moments of insecurity, and if you’re thinking that you have some room for relationship improvement and want to start seriously reflecting on yourself and why your relationships may not be leading you down the alter, the following questions are a great place to start:

1. When conflict in your relationships arise how do you typically respond? 

Many of us suffer from insecure attachments- negative expectations about our relationships.   This insecure attachment may take different forms.  Do you fear rejection and abandonment when faced with conflict?  Do you inadvertently drive people away even though you crave to be in a close relationship?  If so your insecure attachment may cause you to have an anxious- attachment style.  Anxiously-attached people often over-rely on their close relationships for reassurance.  On the opposite end, an avoidant attachment style is characterized by feeling uncomfortable with closeness in relationships and a desire to maintain emotional distance.  Self-protective strategies such as defensiveness and withdrawal are common ways avoidantly-attached people usually respond to relationship stressors and conflict.

2. How do you give love and how do you want to receive love in your relationships?

A popular relationship book, The Five Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman offers a simple idea- Take the mystery out of what your significant other really wants and expects from you and vice versa.  He speaks of five universal ways that all people express and interpret love.  Each person has one primary and one secondary love language.  Dr. Chapman's theory is that most people give love in the way they prefer to receive love.  However, we all don't have the same preferences so when our partner's preference doesn't match our own things can start to get complicated.  So, what can we do?  If we identify and understand our partner's love language we can change the way we show them love to coincide to their language and they can do the same for us!  By doing this we can start to mend the miscommunication in our romantic lives. 

(You can take a quiz on Dr. Chapman's website to identify your love language.)

If these questions and ideas leave you feeling like you may have more to learn and discover about yourself reach out to Key Counseling Group.  We want to work with you and help you find your way to more satisfying relationships.