People Who Grow up Without Love Spend Their Lives Looking for Security

Insecure people in love, like the friend with "affectation" behavior, may have ambivalent attachment from childhood. They test partners, fear showing the real self, and crave unconditional love but don't believe it exists. To have a better relationship, one should reflect on psychological needs, sincerely express them, and build love on self-love. Self-acceptance is crucial as it helps reduce anxiety and enables one to embrace love more bravely.

In the film Chungking Express, Faye, played by Faye Wong, falls in love with policeman 663, played by Tony Leung.

663 had just fallen out of love and his ex-girlfriend left the key to his house at the fast food restaurant where Faye works.

Faye steals the key and every afternoon, when 663 is not at home, she sneaks into his house to help him clean up. In this process, she gradually replaced his goldfish, towels, toothbrushes, shirts, dolls, and CDs, subtly changing 663's life.

663, who was originally immersed in his lost love and lifeless, gradually regained his vitality.

When 663 bumps into Faye at his house, he finally realises Faye's feelings for him. So he asks Faye to come out and meet him, but the panicked Faye, leaving only a letter she thought she would never open, flees.

It is not uncommon for people like Faye to be both eager and ambivalent about love.

Salinger also wrote in his The Heart of a Broken Story, "Love is wanting to touch and withdrawing one's hand."

Why do you push someone away when you plainly love them?

Why is it that when you want to say I love you, what comes out is I don't love you?

Why do we long for love, but at the same time be full of anxiety and anxiety in our heart?

I. How Do Insecure People Fall in Love?

I have a friend who describes herself as an "affectation" in her relationship:

Two o'clock in the morning, she will let her boyfriend go to the convenience store to buy snacks. If her boyfriend did not pick up the phone, she would make a chain of calls. She always checks her boyfriend's mobile phone. When they quarrel to the extent of breaking up, she will delete all the contact information of the other person .......

She said she knows that this is "way too far" to do in a relationship, but she can't help herself.

She said she seems to use these ways to "test" her boyfriend whether he really loves her and whether he will leave her.

Only if he passes the test will she feel more at ease. However, all kinds of new tests are constantly thrown at her boyfriend, making him very exhausted.

Why is my friend so insecure in love? Why does she show "affectation" while longing for her partner to love her?

This may go back to our attachment relationships.

The intimate relationship we have with our lover now is actually a copy and continuation of the attachment relationship we had with our mother in childhood.

The American psychologist Ellsworth discovered three types of attachment relationships through his experiments with "unfamiliar situations". One of them is called ambivalent attachment. This type of attachment is reflected in:

Infants appear wary before their mothers leave, and when their mothers leave, they show drowning sadness.

But when the mother returns, they are ambivalent towards her, both seeking contact with her and rebelling against contact with her.

The not-so-pleasant reunion with their mother neither relieves the grief that contradicts them nor ends their constant worry about her whereabouts. Even when the mother was present at the time, they seemed to be constantly searching for a missing mother.

Mothers of such infants are not sensitive to the emotional or physiological needs of their children, and their giving is usually unpredictable or irregular. The mother's own instability and insensitivity also prevented the development of emotional stability in the infant.

Children in this category become emotionally unstable as they grow up, with over-activated emotions that make them feel that in one moment intimacy is promising and in the next intimacy is lost; they have a strong sense of abandonment, and often seem anxious and hysterical in their intimate relationships.

II. Love Is Wanting to Touch, But Withdrawing Your Hand.

I'm Afraid You Don't Like the "Real Me".

In the TV series "Let's Go Watch the Meteor Shower", the main characters, Zheng Shuang and Zhang Han, bond together for the sake of the drama, but not long before, the media found that the originally beautiful star, Zheng Shuang, did plastic surgery. Flooded with a series of questions, Zheng Shuang finally admitted that, in the relationship with Zhang Han, she often feel inferior and unconfident, so she went to plastic surgery.

Maybe we often doubt ourselves or doubt each other in the relationship and worry that as soon as we are no longer "beautiful", no longer "good", our partner will leave us.

There are some other people who always find the other person's "fault" in the relationship, and even first made the decision to give up the relationship, deliberately push the other person away.

Because the closer the distance, the more a person's weaknesses will be exposed. Perhaps, we do not want to let the other person see our imperfect self. We are afraid that no one will like our real self.

People Who Lack Love Inside Crave Unconditional Love.

People with ambivalent attachment are used to pushing the other person away with emotions such as anger, detachment, anxiety, and indifference, and they try to appear assertive, independent, and controlling in their intimate relationships.

But on the contrary, they internally feel that love is out of control, and what they really crave is actually the companionship of their partner, without leaving them.

What they crave is unconditional love.

But they don't tell their partner because they don't believe there is unconditional love in this world, they long to believe it but deep down they don't.

They may test the other person in every possible way, torturing and pushing them away in irrational ways to see if the other person will actually leave them.

If the other person leaves, they seem to prove that the other person "does not love me" as a result, they will go back to the rational part and say, "See, you really do not love me.

The partner is also disturbed by their confusing moods and behaviours, and finds it difficult to discover their true needs, but only finds them erratic and unpredictable.

III. Security Is about Loving Others as Well as Yourself

Knowing What You "Want" Is the Only Way to Have What You Want.

When we are immersed in emotions of anger or anxiety, or when we "abuse", push away or reject the other person, we are not aware of the psychological needs behind our emotions and behaviours.

Perhaps, the next time you are in a similar situation, you could try to reflect on it:

Why do you have these emotions and why do you want to push him or her away? Go and see what psychological needs are behind these behaviours of yours? What are you afraid of? What do you crave?

Try to detach yourself from your emotions and think about what "I desire" and what "I want" instead of what "I don't want".

Sincerely Express Your Inner Needs

When we were babies, we didn't know how to express ourselves verbally, so we cried to express our needs.

However, when we grow up, we need to use words to express our needs. Especially after you are aware of the psychological needs behind your emotions and behaviours, you can be sincere in communicating with the other person.

You can try using sentences like this:

I (do this) because I feel (some inner feeling or emotion) and I want to (express a longing or desire).

For example: I smashed the cup because I felt ignored by you, I felt bad, and I wanted you to focus on our conversation when you're with me, instead of playing on your phone with your head down.

Express your inner needs instead of blaming and attacking the other person.

The good thing about this is that you give the other person a chance to understand you, and only then can you agree to understand each other better and improve your relationship without you falling into doubt and denial about your relationship alone.

Good Love Is Built on the Basis of Love Yourself

When you do not believe that your partner will accept the imperfect you, in fact, it is you who do not accept the imperfect yourself. You always know that you are not good enough and not perfect enough, so you do not deserve to be loved. But these actually have nothing to do with whether you are good or not and perfect or not.

The essence is that you do not like yourself.

Good love is first and foremost based on loving yourself. Only by loving ourselves first can we love others and feel loved by them.

So, although self-acceptance is really hard to fully realise, it is still a subject that we, in this life, need to keep practising.

When you really learn how to love yourself, really feel that you are worthy of being loved, you will not be so anxious, will not "withdraw the hand that longs to touch", but will be brave enough to reach out and give the other person a warm hug.