Hello,
My name is Noah Elkrief and today I'm gonna talk to you about how to stop living in fear of losing your romantic partner.
So if you're in a relationship you've probably recognized and felt the fear or anxiety or stress of losing your partner.
It doesn't feel good,
It doesn't have a nice impact on us.
When we live in fear of losing our partner it can cause us to be inauthentic,
Trying to adapt to be how we think they want us to be,
Doing things we don't want to do just to keep them.
It can cause us to feel jealous,
It can cause us to just control and manipulate our partner in order to keep them.
It has a whole bunch of unenjoyable ramifications and impacts on our system and on our relationship when we are afraid to lose our partner.
So do you want to lose your fear of losing your partner?
I know I wanted to lose it when I had I've been in a relationship for three and a half years now and in the beginning I was absolutely terrified to lose her.
And when I realized that I thought it was a good thing.
I thought oh this means I really really love her and I really really like the relationship.
We're sort of taught this idea from from romantic movies or Disney movies or whatever else that it's good to need your partner.
I need them.
I can't live without them.
Sometimes people even want to hear that.
They want to hear from their partner.
I need you.
I can't live without you.
As if it's a positive thing.
As if it's a display or a sign of how much you love them.
But I'm sort of here with the message that fear is not an indication of love.
Put differently I can have zero fear of losing my partner and absolutely love her.
And I can have tremendous fear of losing my partner and have no love for them.
Does that make sense?
So when I noticed this fear of losing my partner there was one part of me that thought it was a good thing about how much I love her.
I need her.
I was sort of attached to that idea that I need her.
It's so great like I can't live without her.
But then after I started to let go of that I noticed there was a fear of losing my fear because I thought if I lose my fear then why would I want to stay in the relationship?
Like if I discover I can be happy without her.
I don't need her.
Well then why would I stay?
You understand what I mean?
But I sort of explored that and was like well there I can't keep my fear.
I can't consciously choose to keep fear.
If I lose this fear and then I don't want to stay in the relationship well then that's my truth.
That's my reality.
I don't want to stay in the relationship simply being motivated by fear of the pain that will happen if I leave.
So when I started to explore it I sort of questioned at different times and this has been an ongoing journey throughout the relationship always discovering deeper layers of fear.
So I'm gonna sort of mention a few fears that tend to come up in fear of losing a partner.
So the first one is this fear of abandonment,
Loneliness,
Isolation.
So if I lose her if I lose him I'll feel lonely I'll feel all alone.
I'll feel isolated.
I'll feel abandoned.
I'll feel one of these types of categories.
The second is unworthiness.
That if she doesn't want to be with me if he leaves me it means I'm unworthy,
Inadequate,
Insufficient,
Broken,
Defective.
And the third one is afraid to feel some sort of sadness,
Unhappiness.
I can't be as happy.
I can't be as joyous.
Like one of those types of feelings.
And what if you lost all of that?
So piece by piece in this relationship I've had to stop living in fear and so the way that I do it and the way that I'm gonna invite you to do it is I imagine losing my partner.
Okay I imagine losing my partner.
I imagine her leaving me.
Well first let's say I imagine leaving her.
Yeah and or either one it doesn't matter.
So I imagine losing my partner in a very simple way and see how that makes me feel.
Like how does it feel to not be in a relationship?
And see if that triggers and activates any loneliness,
Any feeling of isolation,
Any feeling of sadness,
Any feeling of unworthiness because I'm single.
And basically I try to activate my pain.
I intentionally move towards the pain that I think may arise if I lose her.
If I end up leaving the relationship.
And one by one I meet the sadness.
I meet the loneliness.
I meet the unworthiness.
Yeah until there's less and less charge in there.
Less and less trigger stored in there so that I just don't have the fear of losing her.
And then once that feels calm there's nothing left.
Then I imagine the next stage which is imagine her leaving me.
Yeah imagine her cheating on me.
Imagine each of the like most terrible situations and until there's just nothing left.
So I intentionally activate the pain.
If I am afraid of her leaving me.
Right not just losing her but her leaving me out of her own choice.
Okay that will put me in a prison.
It did put me in a prison in a relationship.
Right I have to be smart when I'm with her.
I have to be happy because she doesn't want me if I'm sad.
I have to be loving.
I have to be so nice.
I have to do the things she wants me to do.
I have to do all sorts of things to make sure she loves me so she doesn't choose to leave me.
Now that's hell.
That's a prison.
And then I'm a slave trying to make sure she loves me so so I don't end up getting rejected.
Fuck that.
I'm not signing up for that.
So I imagine her leaving me.
Imagine her rejecting me in order to activate my unworthiness,
My insufficiency,
My feeling that if she doesn't love me then I'm like a worthless piece of crap.
Yeah and then I let go of it.
So piece by piece I've let go of these buried loneliness,
These buried fears,
These buried insecurities.
Yeah or letting go of these beliefs and ideas that I need a partner to be happy.
Okay and what I discovered as I let go of these is that when I lose my fear of my partner leaving I can actually enjoy her more.
I can feel more love for her.
Understand?
So I know if my partner leaves me or if I leave her or the relationship ends in whatever way I can be happy.
I can be just as happy.
Yeah if she leaves me maybe it activates some hurt or loneliness or whatever and I'll deal with it whether it's hours or days.
Who cares?
And then I will be just as happy by myself with somebody else.
It doesn't even matter.
So then the question is well why do you want to stay with her?
If you can be just as happy somewhere else with someone else by yourself why would you stay?
Because I like her.
I love what we have together.
I love the time we spend together.
I love our connection.
I love what it brings up in each of us.
It's just really really nice.
But it is uniquely nice.
It's not that it's better than every other possibility.
It's just unique and it's where my energy goes.
I like it.
I intuitively feel a pull towards it.
I intuitively feel it's beautiful.
Yeah?
So you don't need to tell yourself some story.
I can't be as happy without her in order to commit to her.
You don't need to tell yourself some story.
I need her in order to be fully invested in this relationship.
Your fear does not prove you love them.
If we're afraid of losing our partner that means we're using them.
Right?
If I'm afraid of feeling lonely or abandoned if she leaves me well that I'm using her to make sure I never feel my abandonment and my loneliness.
And I don't want to use my partner.
It's not respectful.
It's not kind and it's not love.
Yeah so my invitation to you is to go towards the pain.
Whatever you're afraid of.
Like ask yourself what am I afraid will happen?
What am I afraid?
So basically you're not afraid of losing your partner.
Nobody's afraid to lose their partner.
You're afraid of the pain it might activate in you if you lose your partner.
And notice I said you're afraid of the pain it will activate in you.
Not the pain it will create.
If your partner leaves you it's not gonna create pain.
It's just gonna activate old pain.
So rather than wait for that to happen just activate it yourself.
Right?
Meet what you're afraid of.
Understand?
Nobody's afraid of physical events happening.
We're afraid of pain getting activated in our system.
Bring up that pain.
Let it go.
Disbelieve the thoughts that created it in the first place when this pain was initially created.
And then take it from there.
So I hope that helps.
And if you need more support with it you're welcome to contact me for help.
I'll put a link of my session page somewhere around here.
Okay bye.
