Relationship anxiety or gut feeling? A turmoil that will always hit you somewhere in your life.
You seemed to start your relationship with butterflies in your stomach, imagining yourself to be the luckiest person alive only to end up in this mess. Now, you can’t feel that beat again and have doubts about your relationship.
You may acquire doubts if your husband seeks female attention or your wife is a covert narcissist. What makes it even worse is you just can’t seem to decide whether you are having relationship anxiety or it’s a gut feeling.
Well, you don’t have to worry as you’ll know it all within the next few minutes. You’ll know exactly what you are feeling and easily tell them apart. Don’t forget to check the case study in the end to fully equip the idea.
So, without further ado, let’s dig!
Relationship Anxiety or Gut Feeling
Relationship anxiety and gut feeling are sometimes confused with each other but are miles apart.
Relationship anxiety, in simple terms, is feeling concerned about the relationship in general. It’s like whenever the topic goes to relationships or it comes across you, your mind directly jumps to negative speculations and gets anxious.
Meanwhile, gut feeling simply means you have a sixth sense of something that might be going to happen. Gut feeling is always about something; it always needs a subject.
For example, if you are worried about your spouse cheating on you, it’s a gut feeling as you are speculating your spouse is cheating on you.
On the other hand, if you had a bitter experience with relationships in general and had numerous failed ones, you will adopt a pessimistic attitude towards it.
Now, whenever you think about getting into a relationship again, you’ll have the concern jump over like “What if I got cheated on again?” This will be called relationship anxiety.
Key Difference
One prominent distinction between the two is that gut feeling will always have a real person with whom you’ll be associating your worries. In the case of relationship anxiety, it will be general and won’t be directed towards a particular person.
You would now have a good idea of whether it is relationship anxiety or gut feeling. You can get further clarification by the signs of each given below.
3 Signs Of Relationship Anxiety
Look for the following telltale signs of relationship anxiety:
1. You Always Feel Anxious Whenever the Term ‘Relationship’ Is Mentioned
This one is a big one. A person who’s suffering from relationship anxiety will always feel anxious if he comes across it in any form.
For example, when friends bring up the topic of relationships in the discussion, there will be an immediate thought of the worst-case scenarios associated with relationships.
And relationship anxiety can hit you even if you are not in a relationship with anyone since it is independent of it. It’s like this expectation of failure in a relationship is embedded in you and you just speculate it to happen.
An Analogy
You can understand it with an analogy of social anxiety. A person with social anxiety will always feel a rush if someone mentions that he has to deliver a presentation to the manager. Even without being in that situation, he will start worrying that the manager will judge him.
The same goes for relationship anxiety where you already have a mindset that the relationship is bound to fail or have cheating.
2. You Had Bad Past Experiences with Relationships
The real question is why a person feels relationship anxiety in the first place.
Just like all forms of anxiety where your past bad experiences can alter your mindset, relationship anxiety stems from past bad experiences regarding relationships. Your past partners have played you or hurt you; that’s why you associate bad things with the relationship.
If you are in confusion whether it’s relationship anxiety or gut feeling, look at your past. If you have suffered from relationships in the past, chances are you are suffering from relationship anxiety in the present.
3. There Is No Concrete Reason to Worry About
This is as clear as it can get.
One strong characteristic of relationship anxiety is that you will begin to expect negative things and overthink your situation despite no clear reason for you to do so. It’s like everything is going well with your partner, and then you suddenly begin to doubt him or her out of the blue without any concrete reason.
Just like a socially anxious person expecting everyone to judge him and secretly mocking him without that actually being the case.
3 Signs Of Gut Feeling
The following are good indicators of gut feeling when faced with a situation in your relationship:
1. It Kicks Off Due to The Suspicious Behavior of Your Partner
Gut feeling is your intuition and sixth sense ticking you about something and alerting you of potential danger to save you from negative consequences.
Unlike relationship anxiety, which can kick in without any real reason, gut feeling comes into play when there is some suspicious behavior on the part of your partner.
Now it doesn’t have to be true, and your gut feeling can be wrong, but it exists because you noticed something odd about your partner.
Key Difference
Where a relationship-anxious person will suspect his partner of cheating just because of using the mobile phone (nothing odd), the gut feeling one will suspect his partner of cheating if he begins to be overly protective of his phone or goes to another room to answer the call (some suspicious activity to base his suspicion upon).
2. It Is Specific to A Person
This is the principal difference between relationship anxiety and gut feeling.
The gut feeling will always be directed towards your partner since it depends upon the suspicious activity on his part. Because it’s about the actual person indulging in a suspicious activity, unlike relationship anxiety which is like your default mindset and attitude towards the relationship in general.
So, if you wonder if it’s relationship anxiety or gut feeling, try to dig down the actual root cause.
Do you suspect your partner to cheat because you expect partners to cheat in a relationship or because you found something odd about him that makes you think so?
If it’s the former, there are good chances of it being relationship anxiety.
3. You Don’t Have a Pessimistic Attitude Towards Relationships in General
This is a big sign but needs a good amount of self-awareness on your part.
If you suspect your partner of cheating, then you should ask yourself about your views on relationship dynamics without any biases.
Do you consider relationships as a means to just buy trouble and wait until your partner cheats on you?
This thought-provoking question will tell you about your mental conditioning regarding relationships and make you aware of the root cause of your suspicion.
If your answer is that a relationship in itself isn’t capable of being any potential source of being hurtful rather it’s the people who do wrong, that means what you’re feeling about your partner right now is a gut feeling.
Case Study: Relationship Anxiety or Gut Feeling
Case A
A couple has been living together for 3 years, and everything between them seems to be right. Suddenly, one day, when the wife entered the room, she saw her husband engrossed in his mobile phone. As soon as he spotted her, he immediately put the phone away, appearing slightly flustered. He swiftly left the room with his mobile.
Later that day, they both sat together in the living room, but the husband was once again absorbed in his phone. He made a conscious effort to position himself so that his wife couldn’t see the screen. Additionally, he would excuse himself and go to another room to answer phone calls.
Case B
Another couple has been living together for a while. While most aspects of their relationship seem fine, they do face a significant challenge. The husband harbors trust issues concerning his wife. He occasionally attempts to read his wife’s messages through notifications when she’s not around, and he overhears her conversations.
He can’t shake off the worries that his wife might be deceiving him without any evident reason. Then, one day, when his wife left for the office, he began to experience negative thoughts. He tried calling her, but she didn’t answer. Overwhelmed by apprehension, he decided to rush to her office to confront her and reveal what he believed to be true.
Upon reaching her office, he created a scene, becoming nearly convinced that his wife wasn’t faithful. However, it turned out that she was in a meeting, and her phone’s battery had died, preventing her from attending his call.
Were these cases of relationship anxiety or gut feeling? Let us know in the comments.
Conclusion
Great! You’ve made it to the end of the article. Whether it’s relationship anxiety or gut feeling, you would’ve no trouble telling them apart.
As a recap, you could first see what exactly is relationship anxiety and gut feeling and how are they different from each other.
Then you could see key differences between the both supported by examples that will further clarify your concept regarding it.
Whatever the case, it can be challenging to deal with such a situation if you come across such a thing in your life. And dealing with such a situation requires you to proceed with strategy but let’s save it for another day.
Till then, tell us what’s your take on this.
Have you ever come across such a situation? Let us know in the comments below!
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