Are You Dealing with a Clingy Partner?
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Wanting to spend time with your partner is normal in a marriage or long-term partnership. When you love someone, it is natural to feel so connected to them that you want their attention and reassurance. A certain level of dependency can be healthy. However, when that dependency becomes too excessive, it might be too clingy and overwhelming for your partner.
Understanding Clinginess in Relationships
"Being clingy" is an anxious attachment style, which is a pattern of behavior in relationships wherein a person is constantly anxious about being rejected, abandoned, or otherwise not having their needs for intimacy and closeness met, and so they engage in frenzied and sometimes controlling behaviors meant to keep their partner from leaving them.
Causes of Clinginess
it’s important to understand that clinginess is the outward symptom of complex inner processes. Clinginess usually comes from a place of anxiety and fear rather than from a place of controlling.
- Past Experiences. Past experiences with family, ex-partners, and even friends can cause a person to develop clingy tendencies. They've probably had experiences in the past where people took advantage of them or broke their trust.
- Low Self-Esteem and Insecurity. Self-worth issues might drive someone to fear that their partner might find someone better. This fear makes them cling to their partner, so they don’t get a change to replace them.
- Fear of Abandonment: Someone who grew up in a household where one or both parents were emotionally unavailable or one parent left the child, make exhibit clingy behaviors in a relationship
How to Recognize Clinginess in Your Relationship
If someone is acting clingy, they are doing so in an attempt at feeling safe by reducing the amount of emotional and physical distance between themselves and their partner. They may do so by:
- Asking for constant reassurance that your partner still loves you
- Expecting constant communication and interaction with your partner
- Feeling anxious if your partner doesn't text back quickly enough
- Panicking and taking it personally if your partner wants some alone time
- Constantly monitoring your partner's social media to see if they're lying or cheating on you
- Snooping on your partner's phone because you don't trust them
- Feeling jealous about other people in your partner's life, especially friends they're close with, attractive co-workers, etc.
- Needing a partner's love and approval to feel worthy, lovable, or desirable
- Still feeling insecure or anxious even when your partner does everything to assure you, they're committed
How to Address Clinginess in a Healthy Way
A partner whose insecurities and fears result in a smothering relationship isn’t healthy for anyone.
For the partner that is the object of clinginess:
While it is not your responsibility to fix your partner’s neediness or insecurities, there are ways you can support your partner as they try to heal.
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Identify behaviors that make you uncomfortable. Reflect on and identify the specific clingy behaviors that your partner exhibits.
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Open and Honest Communication. Communicate what you’ve identified in a clear and supportive way. Focus on how their behavior makes you feel. “When you do this, I feel …..” Make sure you are consistently hones and follow through on your promises.
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Express love and caring. Let them know that you love and care about them and that you both can find a solution together.
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Set Healthy Boundaries: Approach your partner with compassion and understanding but ensure that you’re looking after your own well-being by setting clear and firm boundaries. e.g. when and how often they can call/text you, that you’d like to spend time alone or with friends sometimes, or that you don’t appreciate when they look through your phone or mail.
For the partner that is clingy:
Clinging to your partner and making your whole life revolve around them is not healthy and could drive your partner away. You need to get to the root cause of your insecurity, fear of abandonment and trust issues before and take steps to rebuild your sense of self and ability to trust.
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Recognition and acceptance. The first step to dealing with your clinginess is recognizing that you have a problem and accepting that you can change your behavior.
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Manage your behavior. Counteract your fears of rejection by learning to affirm your own self-worth. Keep av journal
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Set goals for yourself. Improve your mind by taking a class. Get involved in a hobby, craft, or sport.
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Respect your partner’s boundaries. Give your partner space to attend to their own needs, socialize with friends, and do things they enjoy. Once you release your focus on them, your relationship will have time to blossom.
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Make yourself a priority. Stop sacrificing your own needs for your partner’s. Do things to boost your self-confidence and keep yourself busy.
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Develop friendships outside of your relationship. Consciously nurture the important friendships in your life and set aside time to dedicate to them. Friends can be a great source of support and comfort when you’re in need of some reassurance.
Healthy relationships rely on a balance between intimacy and independence. No one person can meet all your needs all the time. It’s perfectly natural and healthy for couples to spend time apart from each other. With open communication and mutual effort, clinginess can be managed and may lead to stronger relationship bonds.
If you feel clinginess is affecting the well-being of your relationship, consider using Marriage In a Box for professional support, helpful suggestions, and guidance. Marriage In a Box provides access to tools and techniques that professionals use to address relationship issues. On the site, you can set goals, earn rewards, and find marriage coaching. Check out the available kit and sources of information online.