When women suffer from low self esteem, it has a direct impact on their lives as well as romantic relationships. Having low self esteem makes women settle for the wrong and sometimes even harmful things in relationships.
Nothing interferes with the ability to have an authentic, reciprocal relationship like lowย self esteem. If you canโt believe youโre good enough, how can you believe a loving partner could choose you? Low self esteem can make you test or sabotage relationships that have potential, or settle for relationships in which youโre treated in a way that matches your beliefs about yourself.
That said, low self esteem doesnโt always look the same way in relationships. The following are 10 of the many ways that low self esteem can manifest in yourย romantic relationship.
(Note that adult manifestations of earlier emotional, physical, or sexual abuses are too complex to be characterized in this post. Trying to do so would not do service to people seeking help, so those pathways to low self esteem will be omitted from this article.)
10 Ways Low Self Esteem Affects Women In Relationships
1. Bring The Bling
You feel wretched andย fantasizeย that a knight in shining armor will take you out of your circumstances and make everything better. This longing may have formed from falling in love with the fantasy of a father. Maybe yours was unavailable enough that you could idealize him without ever testing his fallibility.
You may think you know why your father never โsavedโ you: It was your fault, not his. Or maybe he did, over and over and your relationship has to make you feel just like that again. Therefore, you may feel compelled to hold tight to the fantasy of perfection as the bar you set for your romantic partners to live up to.
Of course, they canโt. Even if your partner turns out to be solid, consistent, and loving, you may disqualify the efforts, and find ways to sabotage the relationship.
Related: How Self-Esteem Makes Or Breaks Relationships
2. Testing
How could he really love me? He doesnโt really love me, does he?ย Below the surface, these insecurities guide your emotions and actions. You canโt believe you could be truly loved and so you test your partner every chance you get so that he can demonstrate his value (which you donโt believe or trust anyway).
You may even sabotage the relationship because you know your partner will inevitably leave anyway. The end of every relationship allows you to say, โSee, I told you so. Iโm unlovable.โ More often than not, there is intense regret in the aftermath when you lose a partner this way.
3. Guarded
If your parents experienced a painfulย divorceย or betrayed each other, you might feel unable to trust a partner now, whether you are conscious of your guardedness or not. You may be hesitant and afraid of allowing yourself to love so that you either abandon your partner before you can be abandoned or you wonโt allow yourself to get fully into a relationship in the first place.
Without trusting that maybe you wonโt be betrayed, you are deeply afraid of exposing yourself to the possibility of being hurt.
4. Resilientย
Despite circumstances that could contribute to low self esteem, some women are just built to be resilient. Theyโre born that way or work really hard to acquire the ability โ despite negative experiences โ to engage in a positive, substantive relationship as they mature.
Maybe there was a figure somewhere in her life that provided guidance and support and helped her to offset her low self esteem withย resilience. Resilience enables women to be more measured in their approach to men, rather than being hysterical about it.
5. Boy-Crazy
With low self esteem, it can seem as if nothing comes easily or naturally to you. Instead, because you donโt see yourself as naturally lovable, you feel like you have to fight and claw and strive for a mate. Itโs as if unless you go a million extra miles for something, youโre not going to get it.
Unfortunately, this can make you obsessed, consumed, and infatuated with your object of affection in a way that ruins the ability to have a viable trajectory. Youโre already so far ahead. When the relationship doesnโt develop easily or on your timeline, itโs hard to tolerate. Instead, this is your cue to work even harder.
Just know that it is hard for the man to sustain that level of intensity right along with you, and it may be a more intense experience than he is ready for.
Related: 5 Steps To Change the Way You Perceive Yourself
6. Seeking Financial Safety
Are you willing to surrender your hopes for an authentic connection with a partner to guarantee wealth and financial safety? This category manifests as the need to trap a mate with looks orย sexย or other physical resources while hiding what you see as a shameful inner part of yourself.
This also allows the emotional safety of control: youโre in control of your ability to please a man without having to give away your heart. This is different than the rescue fantasy in that you donโt expect to be swept off your feet by a fantasy but to guaranteed financial safety at the expense of other feelings, you may have.
7. Seeking Insecurity
Because you are familiar with situations that create low self esteem โ being left, being cheated on, etc. โ you gravitate toward relationships in which youโre able to feel this familiar insecurity. When itโs not there, you may even create it. If the relationship becomes too secure, you may become disinterested and bored and you may stray.
Youโre so used to having to work to save an insecure relationship that these types of relationships become the only ones you gravitate toward. But, at the same time, a deeper part of you tries to push your relationship to the brink and then back again so you can artificially create an experience of insecurity. ย
8. Settlers
Youโre willing to commit yourself to the person who expresses interest in you. You become much less discriminating about who you choose. You may even be willing to put up with behavior that doesnโt satisfy you because you feel lucky to have anyone at all, even though you are aware you are not happy.ย
9. Scared Of Intimacy
Were intimacy and connection in your repertoire growing up? If not, these experiences may feel uncomfortable now. You may get really scared as the relationship progresses because an authentic connection feels so foreign and fake. Instead of allowing this connection, you may back away and become more distant emotionally, and shut down sexually.
Related: 12 Things A Self-Respecting Woman Should Never Settle For In A Relationship
10. Disbelief
It can be hard to imagine and even harder to believe that you can create and sustain authentic connections. As a means of protecting yourself, you assume dishonesty even from an honest partner, which in turn sours the relationship as it goes on.
Then, as you disbelieve your partner so often, maybe even relentlessly that he may begin to considerย lyingย a viable option โ he is already โdoing the timeโ so why not commit theย crime? This, in turn, reaffirms your belief that no one can be trusted.ย
We all know there are far more ways women express low selfesteem in relationships. But sometimes the self-knowledge gained by evaluating a list like this can help you understand not just pieces of who you are, but also pieces of who you are not.
Self-knowledge can help you steer away from some of these patterns of low self esteem in relationships toward understanding, accepting, and integrating your emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. Appreciating how your actions have been impacted by your history can help you create an authentic connection here and now.
Check out Dr. Lachmannโs personal website for more informative articles.
Written By Suzanne Lachmann Originally Appeared In Psychology Today
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