Everyone has insecurities, but discovering your partner as a whole is insecure is a rollercoaster of its own. I was reminded of what it feels like when men and women shared the realities of dating someone super insecure and how it actually turned out for them — here’s what these exes of insecure men and women had to get off their chests:
1.
“She needed constant reassurance that I liked her. In the beginning, she constantly complained that I’d probably find someone better and leave her. She asked me if I still loved her every single day. I could make a joke one day and it would be totally okay, but the same joke the next day would be met with tears and accusations. She used to say, ‘I wish I was more girly and liked girly clothes,’ even after I told her I loved the way she dressed, which I really did. Basically, it was a constant need for reassurance. I tried the best I could, but it’s not something someone else can fix. It has to come from the person. It ended when her friend became infatuated with her and blatantly disrespected our relationship time and time again, even after she told him she was happy with me. She confused that ‘persistence’ with love and, probably because of that constant need for reassurance, she left me for him.”
2.
“It felt like she was killing me with her need for constant reassurance. She ended up cheating on me with multiple guys because I was too busy working a normal engineering job. She didn’t work at all, and apparently working nine hours a day to earn money so we could afford our apartment was too much time away before she needed someone else. I’d like to think I did my best to make her feel secure. And I never messed around. Screw her.”
“I’m really not over it.”
3.
“I have unfortunately dated several insecure men. In my experience, they reel you in initially by being ‘vulnerable,’ sharing sad stories about their lives, telling you they really care about you but are not good at expressing their emotions, saying that they can’t believe someone as amazing as you would pick them. As a woman who likes them, you’re obviously going to feel special that they opened up to you like this, and you’ll also try to build them up because you don’t want to see them so unhappy. Then, once they know you’re invested, they’ll do some combination of: negging you, giving you new insecurities (often by talking about other women), playing you hot and cold, and making you feel less important than other people/things in their life. I learned a lot from these relationships, but honestly, I would not recommend it.”
4.
“It is very hard to love someone who doesn’t love themselves. You can only support them and compliment them for so long before it becomes toxic and feels like a chore. If they don’t change, the relationship WILL fail.”
“I’m speaking from experience.”
5.
“I married one. They’re super competitive and only get their fix by trying to stay ‘ahead’ of everyone or getting ‘what they have.’ We lasted nine years and now we’re separated. They were never happy with themselves and made the lives of everyone around them miserable, like a constantly dropping roof over your home.”
6.
“Whatever I did and whoever I talked to, she had to know about it. I had to constantly reassure her when it came to other people that I was being faithful. I prioritized her so much. Unfortunately, for me it wasn’t the same for her. As our relationship went on, I felt like I knew her less and less. In turn, I ended up becoming the insecure one. Then she broke up with me. And the rest is history.”
7.
“My insecure ex once said, in response to me playing music with a female singer, ‘I really just don’t care about things when women do them.’ And somehow, my stupid ass still stayed with him for about seven more years. Once he latched onto Jordan Peterson, it was the quickest spiral I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen someone’s true colors get exposed so quickly, especially since he thought everything he was saying (regurgitating Peterson’s talking points) was so brilliant.”
8.
“I’m so freaking insecure but I feel the honest love of my partner. It helps me manage to not drive her away with my obsessive thoughts. I would rather be alone than with someone I couldn’t trust, it’d bring out the worst in me. Fortunately, that’s not how our relationship is…I think.”
9.
“They see everything as an attack on them. I dated a guy in my 20s who was a photographer/tortured-artist type (couldn’t get enough of them in my 20s) and I was a new lawyer at the time. On one of our dates, I bought us a couple of bottles of water from the bar and he was like, ‘Did you not see the free jugs of water? It’s like you’re trying to flex being a rich lawyer.’ And it was constant shit like that for the entire time we dated.”
10.
“It’s like giving constant reassurance to someone who will never be satisfied. I felt like I was tip-toeing through conversations so as to not to set her off into a bad mood. It’s exhausting and unsustainable. The kicker is she could always tell when I was trying not to upset her when we got into touchy situations, and of course, that would upset her. It was a no-win situation, and she just simply couldn’t recognize that being happy is actually a choice. I feel like you choose to trust your partner, and she just couldn’t seem to do that. How do you talk to someone about that when all they want to do is fight over how I’m not actually interested in them? There was constant gaslighting on that front. Bringing up any issue was evidence in itself that I wasn’t actually interested in the relationship. Eventually, I had to break it off.”
12.
“The two of us both had some deep issues with insecurity, so many of our casual conversations would just devolve into a back-and-forth of us complimenting each other while refusing to accept anything nice the other person said. Neither of us were particularly romantic either, so we didn’t really break up as much as we gradually just…stopped hanging out and being together. We’re still pretty good friends though.”
13.
“Their insecurity led to erratic behavior to test my commitment, which led to me being insecure, which led to the whole house of cards crashing down.”
14.
“I’m in a separation that has all the hallmarks of a prelude to divorce. One element I don’t hear mentioned a lot is the effect it had on our sex life, which created a gulf between us. On more than one occasion, my wife tried to initiate sex purely because she felt insecure, which made me feel like a piece of meat and distinctly un-sexy. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I want to fuck all the time for any reason, and I resented feeling used.”
15.
“Mine was insecure, but not controlling. Basically he was surprised that I was into him, and he thought I could get cold feet any time. He said it sometimes in such a sweet, innocent way, too. And that worked quite well actually because I was insecure myself, so his anxiety soothed my anxiety. It was all going great. Until me dating him gave him this new confidence boost, and he decided to use it to pursue other women.”
16.
“A lot of arrogance and controlling behavior is disguised as insecurity to appear more vulnerable than what someone actually is. I think it depends on what they’re worried about and whether we can help them through a genuine worry. Can they be reassured, or do they not want to be reassured?”
17.
“It was beyond irritating. She needed constant reassurance that I wanted her, physically and emotionally. She needed my attention at all times. She constantly claimed to want threesomes with another woman, but if I so much as looked at another woman, I’d be a bad guy for ‘wanting’ them over her. It was all a constant head game to have me prove that I was invested in her. It got to the point that she would try to instigate fights between me and other guys. She would also shit-talk every woman she knew, and half the guys as well. And, when she didn’t get the emotional-vampiric fix of my acknowledgments, she would find them from some other dude as fast as humanly possible.”
18.
“If you choose to leave an insecure man, they’ll often throw in some big guilt trips like, ‘I knew you were going to do that, all women are the same,’ or force you to explain why and try to argue with you to stay because they don’t accept it. That or some classic ‘I’m going to un-alive myself because nobody cares about me’ crap.”
19.
“My ex handled insecurity very, very badly. His response was destructive and harmful. He could never admit a flaw or be wrong. He was incredibly fragile and angry. My current partner, on the other hand, has been wonderful and healing for both of us. He doesn’t feel worthy of love and thinks he’s too flawed, but he chooses to trust my love. The difference seems to be self-awareness, insight, responsibility, and accountability. My ex had none of those. My partner takes responsibility for his behavior and doesn’t place the burden of making him feel secure onto me. He doesn’t lash out, seek attention elsewhere, need me to be a yes-man, or get defensive when we disagree. If something bothers me, he listens and adjusts. We both experience insecurity, but our relationship is secure because of how we choose to manage our feelings and treat each other.”
20.
“Insecure men are the worst dating experiences ever! Never-ending jealousy, 100 questions where I am or what am I doing, constant excuses to make up for his insecurities in bed and socializing with other people. I dated a guy who wasn’t secure about his body. I also dated a guy who wasn’t secure about himself in general — he wasn’t sure why I was dating him because I was ‘the best looking girl he ever dated’. Both of those two men turned out to be absolute assholes. They made my life so chaotic that it took a mental toll on me. It took me a while to get over their mental abuse. Never again.”
21.
“After two months of dating, I came back from a trip and she broke down. She told me she couldn’t handle it anymore and wanted to fix her own issues. She was determined, so I let her go. It’s too bad she was so insecure about herself. She was a damn good kisser.”
22.
And finally: “Insecure doesn’t necessarily mean they’re jealous or attention-seeking. What it does mean is that deep down, they feel they are not worthy of love. So, they never ever end up fully believing you that you really love them. And due to this disbelief that you actually love them, it can pour out in all sorts of different problems — jealously, seeking attention, sabotaging the relationship in different ways, or never committing because you don’t love them in their head, so why would they commit? The problems can be very varied and very personal/individual to each insecure person. Or it can be healing. I considered myself to be very insecure, but after six years of marriage to my ex-husband, he built me up and convinced me I’m awesome and amazing.”
What’s your own experience dating a really insecure person or being the insecure person? How’d it turn out and what’d you learn from it? Share your story in the comments or anonymous form below.
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
