Relationship Series: Personal Confidence and Your Partnership
In this post for my Relationship Series on the blog I am going to discuss the importance of personal confidence in your relationship.
Confidence and self-esteem are all about you as an individual, but they also play an enormous role in your relationship. The reason for this is because when you feel secure and confident in who you are as an individual, you won’t be looking to your partner to compensate for the way you feel about yourself.
Sometimes couples come in for therapy and as the clinician I may make the recommendation that one or both of the partners do some individual counseling first because there are some individual problems that need to be addressed for the health of the relationship as a couple. This is not to say that the relationship problems are the fault of one person, but it does mean that sometimes the problems in the relationship may be directly impacted by these individual issues.
Why Is Personal Confidence Important In Relationships?
One area where these individual issues are important is in the area of personal confidence. When you don’t feel confident in yourself this will come out in your relationship in one way or another. You may find yourself feeling irrationally jealous or even possessive at times. You could also experience this problem as needing excessive reassurance or needing to know where your partner is at all times.
This is different than just commonplace partnership practices. It’s totally fine for you to check in with your partner, let each other know your schedules, or want to feel emotionally supported by your partner. All of these are healthy and desirable qualities in your relationship.
When these normal partnership practices become unhealthy is when they become excessive or cause a lot of conflict in the relationship. When one partner is feel so insecure that they need their partner to constantly reassure them that they are loved, wanted, and prioritized, it can put a strain on the relationship.
Sometimes, the partner who is constantly being asked to provide that reassurance feels like it is never enough to their partner. This if often very true, because when you cannot fill yourself up with your own sense of confidence and self-value, you will always need other people to fill you up.
The problem, of course, is that no one can ever give you enough reassurance and support if you don’t love and value yourself first. It will never feel like enough, because you always feel like you are searching for that validation from others, most often from your partner.
There can be a fine line between wanting some normal reassurance and support from your partner, and needing constant validation from your partner. I’ve seen this have negative outcomes, for example, when one partner makes the other person sign up for location apps because they always want to know where their partner is or are constantly worried about infidelity.
How To Know If Low Confidence Is Impacting Your Relationship
It is important to ask yourself if a lack of confidence or feelings of low self-worth are putting a strain on your relationship. Knowing that some of the relationship problems are stemming from individual confidence issues is the first step in learning how to address the root of the problem.
Some questions to ask yourself to help you figure this out are:
• Do I feel rejected when my partner wants to spend time with other friends?
• Do I constantly compare myself to my partner’s ex or feel threatened by people outside the relationship?
• Do we have frequent arguments about where one person is, who they are messaging with, how quickly they respond to messages, et cetera?
• Does one partner feel the other person is trying to have too much control and not enough privacy?
• Does one partner feel threatened by the other person needing privacy?
If any of these themes sound familiar, you might need to thing about whether working on personal confidence would benefit your relationship overall. Note that this is different from having trust issues based on specific issues that have occurred in the relationship. This is about problems that are arising based on personal insecurity, not based on issues of past actual betrayals. Specific betrayals or incidents where trust was compromised is different than having personal insecurity based on other factors.
Personal Resiliency and Partnership
Building confidence and feeling an independent sense of self-worth that is not connected to your partnership is important as a matter of personal resiliency as much as it is for the health of your relationship.
When you feel confident in yourself, you will have an innate knowledge that whatever happens in life, you will be able to handle it and you will be able to count on yourself. Having confidence means that you believe in your own abilities, you believe in your own resiliency, and you believe in your own value. You know that even if you lost your partner for any reason, you would still value yourself enough to work on healing and thriving in your own life.
This is not about denying the need for intimacy or security in your relationship. However, one of the ways that couples can build intimacy and security is by both people feeling confident enough to be vulnerable with one another. When your feel secure with yourself, you are more likely to be able to feel secure with your partner, because your personal sense of worth and value is not solely dependent on the validation of your partner.
Sometimes you may not feel resilient or confident because of past pain from trauma, betrayal, or actual things your partner may have done that upset or hurt you. Being resilient is not about having to just forget these past pains and not let them affect you. This is about having power over your own past pain and not allowing it to infiltrate and negatively affect your relationship now.
How Can I Work On Building Confidence and Resiliency?
If you recognize that your personal feelings of low self-worth, lack of confidence, or struggles with personal resiliency are affecting your relationship, understand that you are not alone and many people have to overcome these feelings to have healthier relationships. Part of being a healthy couple is being healthy individuals. This means that we all sometimes have to do some work on ourselves to make sure we are ready to have the kind of relationship we desire with our partner.
There are several recommendations I have to begin working on building your confidence so that you feel resilient and ready to have a stronger partnership that is fulfilling for both you. Some of these options are:
• Start with positive affirmations
• Practice gratitude
• Do individual counseling if needed to address healing from your past
• Work on recognizing your cognitive distortions
• Understand internal and external validation
• Practice building emotional intimacy
• Journal or do other forms of self-care
• Practice healthy communication with your partner
Building confidence is part of emotional intelligence, and when you are feeling more confident and practicing emotional intelligence, you will have an easier time with conflict resolution and communicating your true needs to your partner. When you feel confident in your own feelings and have a sense of control and power over your own emotional needs, then you will be free to ask for what you need and have reasonable expectations in your relationship that you both agree on. This will help you both to have a stronger partnership, better communication, and improved emotional intimacy.
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For more information about relationships and building a strong partnership, check out my author page for a link to my book for couples “Work It Out: A Survival Guide to the Modern Relationship” and if you want more resources for building a healthy relationship, subscribe here and I’ll send you the free Couples Communication Toolkit that I designed to get you on the right track with your relationship communication.
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For Other Posts In This Series See:
Relationship Series: Emotional Intimacy
Relationship Series: Shared Values
Relationship Series: Couples’ Communication
Relationship Series: How to Stop Past Pain from Damaging Your Relationship
Relationship Series: When Opposites Attract- How to Manage Personality Differences
Relationship Series: Sexual Compatibility and Your Partnership