Here’s What It’s Like To Love With Anxiety

It feels like drowning. It feels like the rug is being pulled out from under you each and everyday. It feels like you’re about to get a call from your significant other saying that they want to end things. Even if things are absolutely fine.

So you constantly check your phone to see if they texted you back yet. Wondering why they haven’t. Why don’t they want to talk to you? Did you say something wrong? You think back to every word you said and move you’ve made the last few times you saw them.

Then it makes you feel crazy. Because when they answer you and reassure you that everything’s fine, you wonder why you questioned it in the first place. You blame yourself for doubting the person you love, doubting the way they promise they feel about you.

You tell yourself that you’re not good enough for them, and that they deserve better than someone who is upset all the time.

And the cycle begins again. Your significant other makes plans with their friends and you wonder why they don’t want to see you that night. You wonder where you went wrong, and why they don’t love you anymore. That sinking feeling hits you and everything is so wrong.

There’s no other possible explanation: they just don’t love you anymore. You’re aware that your brain is tricking you, and that what you’re feeling isn’t real, but it’s impossible to talk yourself out of it.

Then all is well again, and you realize that you were foolish to ever think there was a problem. That it didn’t make sense, you had no reason to be so upset. But in that moment, everything was falling apart. You think back and you wonder what it was that made you feel that way. Why you’re so different than everyone else. Why you can’t just be normal in a relationship.

And then you get so scared that you start to push them away.

You get so anxious that you’re incredibly defensive, and you come across as not trusting your significant other.

As soon as you see it start to hurt them, that’s when it’s the worst. When you know you’re hurting the person you love and you feel like there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

You feel pathetic and you feel weak. You feel helpless because anxiety has a way of overcoming you like nothing you’ve ever felt before. But it’s not you. It never was, and it never will be.

It’s nearly impossible to believe that they would still want to be with you despite your constant doubts and nerves. But they do.

Believe them when they say that they do.