Affection in relationships: why is it difficult to feel it?

Insecurity and the difficulty to feel affection fully and without fear affect many people.

He loves me, he doesn't love me... this childish or almost adolescent game becomes an unconscious routine over the years and can become part of your daily life. over the years and can become part of your daily life as an adult.

In relationships, especially in romantic or couple relationships (the closest ones and the ones in which we feel most vulnerable) we often find this source of insecurity. We doubt the affection of the other, we analyze it, and we try to check it out as if we were emotional and sentimental detectives.

This difficulty, in reality, does not indicate that we are validating a specific relationship (as this happens with any type of relationship) but that we are trying to validate our own emotions and personal security. As relationships are such an important part of our lives, the problem ends up becoming entrenched and affects all areas. Why does it happen? How can it be solved?

Why do you find it hard to feel affection and you are conquered by insecurity?

Although when we think of a process of change we tend to imagine anxiety, sadness, discouragement, or perhaps a more practical or professional approach, the vast majority of difficulties we have in our day to day are emotional and sentimental. This, above all, is what moves us the most, makes us learn, makes us vulnerable and also scares us. For this reason, a change in the way you deal with relationships changes your whole life.. Living relationships with constant doubts, insecurities, conflicts and even coercion ends up being exhausting.

The first step to resolve a difficulty is to recognize it. Yes, the vast majority of difficulties we have in relation to our personal development are associated with how you relate to yourself and others. In personal and sentimental relationships we find many of the greatest benefits of our life, but, at the same time, the greatest difficulties.Why is this so?

In an intimate relationship we experience a special dissolution in the encounter with the other. Later, a struggle of egos arises, in which we try to coerce the other and accommodate him or her to our particular vision of life. That is where reluctance appears, expectations are not met, we value the affection of the other and we always end up feeling that this affection does not exist (even though we will never have a real way of knowing it... so much as just trusting it).

The origin of the problem, the emotions involved, and above all how to take the first steps to solve it, I tell you in this video where we go much deeper and take a first step towards the solution. Press play!

The emotional root of the problem

In relationships, whether sentimental or not, we experience affection, unity, understanding. This benefit and learning is so indispensable to us that, over time, we try to control and validate it. That is when conflicts, disappointments and the desire to control or, in the case that we do not succeed, to break with the dissatisfaction that this relationship produces in us appear.

The origin of the problem is always fear. We think that our wellbeing depends on an external factor that we cannot control.. Trying to inquire into the affection that the other person has for us is a form of expectation that we always build in relation to fear. Why does this happen?

An expectation, in short, implies that you want things to happen in a certain way (it can be in relation to you or to the behavior of the other). Through the expectation we try to check whether these external factors are in accordance with your needs..

However, expectations are not usually fulfilled. Why? Because if we want things to happen in a certain way (instead of trusting that what happens is the right thing, just as we trust the affection of the most important attachment figures in our life, such as the father or mother) it is because we are actually afraid that they will not happen. Expectation is built on fear, and that implies that we are living our relationship conditioned by fear and insecurity.

The vast majority of people who have this difficulty (all people have experienced it at some time) believe that the problem is in the other person or in the way they deal with the relationship. However, there is a deeper origin, which is the way you understand and manage your emotions, there is a deeper origin, which is the way in which you understand and manage your emotions, which in turn is the major conditioning factor in building your relationships in one way or another.This, in turn, is the major conditioning factor in building your relationships in one way or another.

It is a matter of making a decision: to have emotions against you or for you. Choosing between fear and trust. This is the most complex and at the same time the most transformative learning we can do in our lives.

In the last 10 years I have accompanied as a psychologist and coach people in their change processes, and this problem was very common (not only in a relationship, but in several relationships and over the years). The solution lies in your own personal learning. In empoderamientohumano.com you have options to take the first steps in your personal change process, with expert and constant company (not only with sessions but in a daily and totally personalized way).

Your relationships change when you change the way you think about them.. Everything changes through your own change. That is the most transcendent decision you can make.