Feeling “chosen” is something people often cite as crucial to relationship security.
For couples whose interest is or ever has been lopsided, the person who did the pursuing is likely to be in a more anxious position, while the person who was pursued gets the comforting luxury of feeling chosen from the start.
When the pursuer takes on an anxious position, the pursuit can feel like a matter of proving themselves more than an expression of love or desire.
In popular dating advice, if someone is not sure about us, the self-respecting choice is often said to be leaving. This advice is one solution to pursuer anxiety, but it is not the only one.
Self-respect does not follow a universal rule. Discovering the self-respecting path requires us to decipher what another person’s uncertainty means to us, what we are willing to tolerate, and what we are not. Letting go of the idea that universal rules can make our choices for us opens up the possibility to assess the situation for what it is and make the individual choice of where to challenge our capacity for discomfort.
There is a strong cultural message, directed especially toward women, that strength lies in refusing to tolerate anything less than immediate, unconditional commitment, and that accepting an ambivalent partner is a failure of self-respect, an act of weakness.
Women have historically been expected to tolerate mistreatment from their partners, to accommodate their needs, and to organize their lives around relationships. So it’s a sign of progress that we are now being empowered to advocate for ourselves and draw boundaries.
But empowerment to advocate for ourselves is different from assuming that this dynamic always calls for the same response. In fact, there are contexts where this advice can be disempowering.
For example, in cases where a partner’s uncertainty is more indicative of their way of processing the world rather than the relationship specifically. In such cases, expressions of uncertainty may be an attempt at honest connection. If we can recognize another person as having their own internal world outside of their relationship with us, their uncertainty does not have to feel like a reflection of our worth.
Relational insecurity carries layers, including each individual’s relationship to uncertainty and choice. It is not necessarily leaving an insecure situation that allows us to maintain dignity, but shifting focus off the other person’s approval and onto our own choices; choices made based on what we want for ourselves in the present as well as how we hope to develop.
