RELATIONSHIP ANXIETY

I have social anxiety. I briefly stated that earlier, but I was just recently diagnosed with it. I knew for a while before I actually did anything to help it, but I thought I had it under control. People have just called me shy, told me to put myself out there more and that would make my shyness magically disappear. Others called me stand-offish, said that I looked mean and judgey before getting to know me. All those times were just my social anxiety coming to the surface, not knowing how to react around people I called my friends.

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Having social anxiety and trying to date has been an impossible task for me. The concept of going out on dates with people I barely know, opening up about myself, being vulnerable, and allowing someone to see me entirely makes me sick to my stomach. Dating doesn’t make sense in my anxiety-ridden mind, but the thought of romantically having someone in my life sounds appealing to me. 

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Over the quarantine, though, I reunited with someone I met when I was a freshman in high school and he was a senior in high school. We barely knew each other back then but were attracted to each other at the beginning of the lockdown, so we exchanged Snapchats and started talking. I was wary to open up to him, as my anxiety constantly reminded me of the age difference between the two of us and that because of this difference, he could do so much better than me. However, he always reassured me that he was in it for the long haul with me, that age didn’t matter and he only wanted me. His reassurance calmed my social anxiety, made me feel as though I could trust him with anything. I slowly began to open up to him. I broke down my walls and let him in. I told him about my anxiety, about my family problems, about my body image issues, and he told me about how school wasn’t for him, how he wanted to be different from his brother, how he couldn’t wait to see me after the lockdown. Once I met him in person for the first time since freshman year, my anxiety stilled and I felt at peace. We spent hours together and not once did I worry about if I was good enough or not. It all just felt so natural.

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After a month of hanging out, he finally asked me to be his girlfriend and of course I said yes. This was when my social anxiety came swinging back. Although I was happy to officially be with him, something was telling me that it wasn’t right. At work, I would restock the shelves and just think to myself, “He doesn’t love me. He’s going to break up with me. Why would he ever love me?” It was a never ending intrusive thought spiral. However, my premonitions were right; he broke up with me a week and a half later. The break-up solidified what my anxiety was telling me. He didn’t love me. No one could ever love me. I had daily panic attacks for about a week. I felt that I wasn’t good enough for anything. I realized that this relationship was only a week and a half long and shouldn't have been that big of a deal, but as my first and only real relationship, it hit me hard.

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Lately, I have been seeing Instagram posts like the one above about how it feels to have relationship anxiety or friendship anxiety. While I appreciate that people are trying to spread awareness about how anxiety affects relationships, they are using the wrong phrasing. Relationship anxiety is not a clinical term and, technically speaking, it is not a real thing. People can be anxious about their relationships or people can have anxiety but be in a relationship. The shared language of anxiety and relationships here discredits those who actually suffer from anxiety. It focuses more so on the normal feelings of nervousness while being in a relationship instead of the struggles the people with anxiety or social anxiety face when they are in a relationship. This goes for those who suffer from other mental illnesses as well. There should be more awareness and information about what it is like to suffer with mental health and be in a relationship, but using shared vocabulary will not help spread that awareness.