Rejection sensitivity is linked with low relationship satisfaction…the drag of a partner with anxious attachment…

Saturday September 9, 2023.

Relationship anxiety seems to be an area of fascination for relationship researchers.

It’s no surprise that researchers have found that being a human who is highly sensitive to rejection can be damaging to an intimate relationship.

People who are sensitive to rejection frequently think about their partner leaving them.

They worry that revealing their true self will lead to rejection.

This means that they are constantly on the lookout for any signs of displeasure in their partner.

The continuous questioning of the relationship wears both partners down.

Naturally, then, this thinking style is linked to lower levels of relationship satisfaction, the psychological research reveals.

How the study was conducted

The results come from a study of 217 young people who had been in relationships for at least three weeks.

They were asked about how sensitive they were to rejection with a scenario like:

“Lately you’ve been noticing some distance between yourself and your significant other, and you ask him/her if there is something wrong?

Then they were asked:

“How concerned or anxious would you be over whether or not he/she still loves you and wants to be with you?”

• The more anxious humans are in these sorts of situations, the more their fear of rejection hijacks their nervous system.

One typical reaction of people who fear being rejected is to reject the other person first by initiating a cut-off, or estrangement.

We live in an era of aggressive self-protection. .

But Emotionally cutting off your counterpart, however, is unwise, researchers found.

Humans who engaged in cut-offs were even less satisfied with their relationship.

The researchers elaborated:

“Although individuals are attempting to reduce the potential for rejection, distance also reduces the potential for fulfilling, accepting, and intimate behavior.”

• In other words, when you push your counterpart away, you are hurting yourself… in the middle of an effort to…try and avoid hurting yourself — which clearly makes no sense.

• I tell all my clients, your brain and nervous system are, under pretty ordinary circumstances, capable of breathtaking stupidity.

• Other typical reactions to perceived rejection are coercion and compliance.

The study’s authors explain:

“Coercion involves verbally and/or physically aggressive acts meant to force romantic partners to remain in the relationship.

Similarly, compliance involves giving in to one’s romantic partner’s potentially harmful or unhealthy demands to prevent further rejection.”

Both of these are also piss-poor ways to deal with feelings of insecurity.

How do I manage my sensitivity to rejection?

Instead, the best way to deal with being sensitive to rejection is to cultivate a calm noticing…an emotional situational awareness of when the sensitivity is visiting your nervous system.

Noticing….profound noticing is the first action required toward changing any behavior you wish to extinguish. And noticing is a super power of differentiation.

• Sensitivity to rejection is often correlated with a weak sense of self. Having a squishy sense of self is a common condition among young humans whose identities are not yet strongly formed.

Humans with a more robust and mature sense of self tend to manifest far less reactivity to rejection.

They have an enhanced ability to balance their dependence upon others, with their concurrent desire for situational independence in a healthy manner. We call this call this “differentiation”, or sometimes “self-differentiation.”.

It’s important to note that it’s a fact that you have a feeling… but your feeling is not necessarily a fact. Beware of the meaningless suffering of anxious fretting.

There is far too much to fret about to render that a winning relational strategy. There are pragmatic approaches you can take to rewire your brain to curb your time in meaningless suffering. I can help with that.

We need each other like words need music. Be well and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Norona, J. C., & Welsh, D. P. (2016). Rejection sensitivity and relationship satisfaction in dating relationships: The mediating role of differentiation of self. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 5(2), 124–135. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000056

The study was published in the journal Couple And Family Psychology: Research And Practice (Norona & Welsh, 2016).