Have you ever had the fear of failing your spouse in your marriage? Have ever had the desire to overcome fear in marriage. It doesn’t matter what type of relationship you are in, married or not, fear of failing the ones we love can negatively impact us in so many ways. Because of our need to please let’s say a parent, for example, we may choose the wrong person for marriage, pursue a career we were never in love with, developed dysfunctional eating habits and ideas about our weight that has caused us stress and grief. As a result of these interactions, we may hoard anger and resentment in the relationship because of the decisions that we made that were influenced by our parents.
It’s not just parents that can have this type of pull on our lives, but many times our parents have laid the foundation that determines whom we choose to become intimate with and bring into our circle. Our current relationships and marriages can be a wreck because we are so concerned about acceptance that we don’t know what to do with ourselves. There is no coincidence that those whom we choose to love, date or marry often remind us of key figures such as our parents.
In this article, I want to discuss 4 tips you can use to avoid and overcome the fear of failing others in your relationships.
Identify Who Is Truly Your Worst Critic?
One question to ask is who really is my worst critic. Many times we make decisions outside of our first choice because of fear. We create a narrative in our minds that persuades us to believe things that haven’t been proven true. So before we start believing things that we have created in our minds about what someone else thinks, we must first ask a few questions.
We should ask questions like who is it that told me that you would view me in a negative light if I sometimes choose not to take your advice in this relationship or marriage. Who told me that you would not accept me, that you would think less of me, that you would perceive that I was dumb or stupid. Who told me that I was a failure and can’t make good decisions. Who said that I was a disappointment not just in this relationship, but that there was no hope for marriage or a happy life outside of this relationship. Who told me that I was not good enough.
After these questions have been asked, the question that also needs to be considered is the question of who is really my worst critic. The reality is that we truly cannot know the thoughts of someone else who has not spoken their thoughts. The thoughts that we develop are many times solely our own creation. Therefore it is often “I” who has become my worst critic.
Unconditional Acceptance In Marriage
Love for God paired with unconditional acceptance of self is the only true way to love and discover intimacy in a marriage and other relationships. This means that no matter what you do you must accept yourself unconditionally and without judgment. Unconditional acceptance of self is an indicator that you are working on strengthening core beliefs about self like, “I am loveable, I am a good person, I am enough.” Its the type of love that most mothers might have for their children. They believe that no matter how wrong that child is, and no matter what they have done, “that’s still my baby.” This is the type of love and acceptance we should have in our relationship with self.
Once we have unconditional love for self, failing others is not a mortal fear. We understand that a perfect love cast away all fears. When we have an unconditional love for ourselves we look at marriage and relationships differently. We accept that all mistakes in the marriage are not my mistakes in the marriage. We take accountability but also leave room for others to have fault. Love for self makes us accepting of our unsuccessful outcomes. It studies the heart, pats us on the back and says, “it’s ok, you tried.”
Fill Your Own Void First In Your Marriage
When we don’t have unconditional love for self we often seek relationships to fill a void. This internal void will often lead us to be impostures in our relationships. We will do things in our marriages and relationships that we feel are necessary to fulfill intimacy even when these actions are unhealthy and lead to resentment. So basically instead of being ourselves in a marriage or relationship, we fake it. We bend over backward when we don’t want to, we accept behaviors that we don’t need to, we become less authentic about our true feelings of hurt pain as well as pleasure in order to protect ourselves from failure. We protect from failure that we have created in our minds that connect to our fear for lack of acceptance of self. We should seek to fill our own emotional void first, then we will be better suited to serve others in our relationships.
You Have Freedom to Fail
Ok, we are not looking to fail in our marriages. But often we do fail in relationships. Freedom to fail allows us to accept who we are unconditionally, and stop being scared. Many times we can not move into a healthy marriage because of fear from jamming up other relationships in the past or choosing the wrong profile of partners in the past, so we fear jamming up the marriage right now. If we fear failing someone in a relationship it produces paralysis, it may cause you to often cling or withdraw in unhealthy ways. Fear should not be the motivation of a marriage. This fear may have implications and it may even push someone away and sabotage the relationship. Allowing ourselves the freedom to fail and still be confident creates a message to self that says we are better than our actions. Once the fear of failure has been removed, then we can start being who we truly are, and move into situations with others who respect and accept who we are.
Make your best efforts to do good and preserve your relationships. But when we fail, or if we have failed we must recognize that in order to move forward and produce good, we must recognize that our actions do not define our character or heart. Acceptance of failure keeps us in the present. So instead of focusing on what we did or did not do in the past, we now can accept unfavorable outcomes as being less than ideal outcomes rather than failures. We choose to do better next time in our relationships. We don’t allow fear or anxiety to block our success, but we change the narrative of our performance in life, relationships, and marriage, to something that honors us and God.
If you are having problems with accepting what is perceived failure it is time to let those things go, understanding that the reality of failure is that it is in the past. It is in the past! Who are you in your relationship today? Let me break this down. If I lost my job because I continue to show up late, in my mind this was a failure. So anytime I think of failure it is past tense. This action has already occurred. Many times our problem is our minds process failure as being present tense. The mind says that because you lost your job you are failure. So we unconsciously say things like I am a failure because I lost my job. But this is not true. There is a difference in having bad actions verses bad identity.
The power of renewed thinking and living in the present will rescue you from the thoughts of failure that plague you from the past. Remember to make failure past tense both literally and figuratively. Work on understanding the difference in separating your identity.
About Choya
Choya Wise, LICSW, PIP is the owner of Aspire Counseling and Consulting Services a mental health clinic in the Huntsville, Al area. As a licensed mental health professional Choya specializes in individual counseling, couples therapy, and depression counseling. He also offers Social Work Supervision in Alabama and Anger Management Classes.
