Surely we all know the case of someone who has a relationship in which he is in distress for fear of loneliness. I’m talking about relationships where habit and affection weigh more than love or marriages that are maintained only by appearance. These people are not happy but they hold on and hold on …

Why are people afraid of loneliness?

What is behind all this? Behind an unhappy relationship there is usually always one of the parties that wants to cut but does not do so because it has very low self-esteem , is not able to imagine itself without the other person and is afraid of not being able to find anyone else who loves it. . It is such a common fear that we have all been able to feel it to a lesser or greater degree throughout our lives.

However, the fear of loneliness only paralyzes us and makes us accept situations in which we are unhappy, believing that what the future holds is much worse … but will being alone really be so terrible? People who want to break up with their partners because they are unhappy but do not dare to do so often have thoughts such as the following: “Where am I going at my age?”, “No one is going to love me”, “I have to put up with my children “,” I cannot break the family now “ , etc. These thoughts may have some reason but they are still justifications for not recognizing what is really in the background: the fear of loneliness. But what are the causes of this thought?

– The society in which we live

Many of the people who are in an unhappy relationship endure because they have been with that person for many years and they cannot see themselves without them , they think that they will not be able to find something better. The culture in which the person has grown up also has a great influence here, for example, in our society unfortunately there is still the label of “spinster” (or now called “the crazy one of the cats”) to refer to women of a certain age without a partner Bequeathing at certain ages without having met the expectations imposed by a patriarchal society makes many women experience singleness as something distressing and endure in their relationships despite all the suffering that it entails.

– Being too demanding

People who are very demanding with themselves may also feel this way because they see the relationship itself as a failure, they think that all the responsibility is theirs because they are not doing enough to make it work, for example they may think “I should have assumed it”, ” I should have tried harder “,” I should have … “. However, we cannot forget that there are two people in a relationship and that we cannot bear all the blame behind our backs.

– Fear of abandonment

The affective style that we develop as children influences the couples we have in the future, we learn a series of beliefs from childhood that modify our way of thinking and that we interpret reality in a certain way, we see being alone as a failure and that drives the person to be dependent on others , wanting to be continuously with someone … They do not know how to enjoy themselves, they do not have hobbies that entertain them, they find a void that their partners used to fill and they become overwhelmed, they despair … That it leads to them unhappily putting up with a relationship or only cutting when they know 100% that they are going to find a substitute, they don’t allow themselves a second of margin and as soon as the couple ceases, the race to hook up with another immediately begins.

What are the consequences of enduring in an empty relationship?

If you yourself have felt reflected in some of the things discussed here, I invite you to reflect on what you are missing by maintaining the ghost of a relationship. To begin with, you are missing the opportunity to meet someone who is worthwhile and who is closer to the expectations that you have of what a fruitful relationship is. On the other hand, many times children use themselves as an excuse to endure, but the truth is that children suffer more living together every day in a relationship in which there is no love (bad faces, arguments, indifference, without intimacy or affection, etc. ). Finally, being in a relationship that is not full for us prevents us from evolving as a person because it stagnates us,preventing self-knowledge and personal development , we would not know what we can really be capable of if not that we stagnate while we let the years go by and that ultimately it becomes more difficult for us to take the step in the future.

Avoid the fear of loneliness

Some tips to remove the fear of loneliness:

– It awakens a critical sense. Reflect on the ideas that surround you, question them and think if it is worth living under a canon that does not bring you anything, only unhappiness. Would it really be so terrible to be single? What’s the worst that could happen? And still … could good things happen to me? What would I say to my best friend if he told me something similar?

– Learn to live with yourself. Being alone allows you to reconnect with yourself again, to learn about your emotions, tastes and things that you enjoy . Only when you really like yourself will you be able to like others as well. Could it be that deep down you are afraid of what you may find with yourself? Being attached to other people and the tasks of daily life distracted you from yourself , when that is no longer there you start talking to yourself and what you have to say you may not like … afraid of yourself? If so, here we have another problem that you can only solve by standing up, because otherwise you will never be happy … or how long do you expect to continue living in fear of yourself?

– Forget about the past. If you stagnate in the past, you will not overcome the resentment and you will only carry an emotional backpack that will delay the trip. The experiences you have had can be painful but they make you grow stronger , that is, you cannot change the past but you can learn from it.