Drawing Hope From Your Relationship's Past
Instead of fearing a lost connection with your partner, allow past memories to act as anchors that ground you.
The Flicker of Doubt
The more we experience together, the more I care about losing what we have. With any sign of tension between us, I get worried about our connection shifting. It makes it hard to savor the good times, and even harder to tolerate the moments of tension.
Your relationship is a story that unfolds over time, writing it’s own memoir as you interact with your partner. As the story deepens and becomes more meaningful, the anxiety of disconnection can increase as well.
Stir in a dose of insecure attachment or rejection sensitivity, and we can easily fall into a wave of insecurity, asking ourselves “is the love we once had…lost?”
The Story We Tell Ourselves
When we deeply value our relationships, and also fear (sometimes even catastrophize) about them ending, we can become hypervigilant about keeping the connection alive.
Like a version of hypochondria geared towards the health of our relationship, we can latch onto normal moments of tension as a sign of relationship distress.
I’m the one who notices tension in our relationship, I feel attuned to it. So…I also feel responsible for bringing it up, and making us talk about it, so our relationship can stay on the right path.
The scanning for tension, the pressure to initiate the conversation to smooth out past fights, it can be taxing on you and lead to a feeling of resentment and belief that you’re the only one doing the emotional labor.
But just how some illnesses will resolve on their own without antibiotics, healthy relationships have their own type of immune system that can withstand cloudy connection and imperfect interactions.
Ask yourself: is the tension I’m feeling from an actual interaction with my partner or has it grown inside my own head, fueled by my fear of disconnection?
If you notice you’re adding a lens of anxiety that turns your relationship-mole-hill-moments into mountains, then focusing your energy on regulating your own anxiety is the best medicine for connection.
The Way Forward
The memoir of your relationship offers a rich source of memories that can anchor and ground you in the inherent strengths that exist - even during times of tension.
Let your mind wander back to a cherished memory that you experienced with your partner.
For some, this might be a challenging time in life when their partner showed up for them.
For others, it might be a moment of lightheartedness and playfulness when you both felt free.
Once you’ve identified it, reconnect to as many details as you remember - and let your imagination fill in the rest. Notice your senses in the memory, the spoken and unspoken interactions between you two, and how connection resonated in your body during that moment.
Stay with the memory for as long as it’s supportive, connecting to the sense that this memory serves as an anchor:
In this relationship, connection is possible.
Even if right now, there is tension, this memory reminds me that the ability to connect to my partner is inherent in the relationship we have.
Ground in the belief of your ability to connect, to act as the light at the end of the tunnel.
You might find that the only thing blocking a sense of connection to your partner, was your own fear of disconnection (ironically) foggy up your vision.
An anchor that I return to, when I’m overthinking my own relationship, is the feeling of our hands holding each other’s hands. We have held hands during moments of joy, and also during moments of feeling distant or disconnected.
Sensing into the memory of holding hands supports me to tap back into the belief that our relationships is stronger than any moment of tension or anxiety.
Share your anchor memories in the comments to inspire other Hopeful Partners to remember their anchors as well.
Warmly,
Gwendolyn