Strong Abandonment Fear

@SummerL

Hi there, I can definitely understand how you are feeling, it's really hard to manage and it can be extremely hard to deal with the fear of abandonment, you are free to message me if you would like some extra support.

@SummerL I'm sorry that you've been struggling for so long. I hope that your therapist is someone who understands your needs and is able to help you come up with an effective treatment plan. I have been in treatment for nearly a year and do a lot of self care (books, articles online, videos) to help navigate recovery. I'm not sure how long I will be in treatment, as I have another diagnosis, but I think that treatment saved my life. I have more of what I think is called "quiet" borderline: I very much direct my emotional distress inwards and try not to let anyone else know. I used to have a lot of self destructive habits I hid from people, and surrounded myself with dangerous people because I thought that's "where I belonged". Treatment has been helping me rediscover myself and meet people with values that line up with mine. So while I never really manipulated others, I tended to isolate myself and cut people off after being really close to them. I've learned healthy ways to set boundaries and to have people who aren't healthy for me be removed from my life.

@SummerL

The fear of abandonment is a big one, and everyone experiences this to varying degrees. I'm sorry to hear just how much you struggle with this symptom. Therapy can help with this, and I'm glad that you're seeking it out. Holding thumbs that you'll get a therapist soon.

@SummerL I'm not sure if you will see this but I'm writing this for anyone who relates because I have been in similar situations as the controlling person.

It sounds like you're afraid that by giving him more freedom, you'd be giving him more opportunities to run away from you and leave you alone. It seems you're afraid that he will find other people more attractive in some way and choose options other than you should he be offered them. You're afraid that he wouldn't choose to be with you if you didn't control him to make that choice.

His perspective seems like he wants you to be happy. He has stayed with you for many years and forgiven or maybe even accepted much of your behavior for many years as a way to try to prove his love for you and dedication for you.

The problem is that if you love him, you need to let him be in control of himself as his own person and face your own fears. He has sacrificed for you by limiting opportunities for himself so that you would get to keep your comfort zone. If he genuinely loves you, then he would love you regardless of what other people he's close to and cares for.

Love isn't a limited resource. It multiplies and it thrives when we can be free to make our own choices.

What makes you afraid of him having a phone? I assume it's paranoia of imagining him liking other girls or damaging your trust in some way. The problem with that is that trust needs to come from repeated experience of seeing how someone has options, feels free, but does the honorable thing anyway. Trust requires you facing your fears and letting him decide things for himself because it'll show you respect him.

You need to give yourself some tough love by reminding yourself that you're in an unhealthy cycle because the actions that follow the fear of abandonment are actually what's going to lead to incentive to leave. You are not entitled to telling him what to do, you can only try to see the best in him as he does what is according to his character. He deserves to create his own boundaries from you because it's important to follow those as much as following boundaries that would show he respects the relationship.

A person requires some sort of privacy to be happy. He deserves to have his own friends so that he can bond with them and be able to come home and share more with you, miss you because he got time away to think things through. You deserve to have space to yourself so you can dedicate your time to hobbies, make other connections, and have fun things to do that you can tell him about later. You are two separate people and your identity needs to be about you, not your control over him.

Do you think you're possibly using your control over him as a way to compensate for the lack of control you feel you have over yourself?

Do you try to use the love and attention he would give you as a way to compensate the love and attention you do not give yourself enough?

How can you focus more on yourself and leave him to be free?

Remember that love is about freedom, getting to face your fears and being honest about your feelings but being self aware so as to understand where the line is drawn between you and anyone else. You need to face yourself, be alone with yourself and examine things in order to understand how to take care of yourself more independently.

You could try to ask him what he genuinely wants and be prepared to respect and accept it no matter how much it hurts. If he wants to talk to friends on a phone, it is within his rights to do so. You can try to see what are reasonable expectations you could have of what topics you'd rather he stay away from discussing like sex or romance but if he wants to ever vent about you to friends, it would be within his rights to do so. He deserves to express his feelings to people and analyze what he wants because it's by thinking about what he wants that you'll salvage your relationship.

You are afraid because you are focused on yourself and what you are lacking. What you can try to do is change your mindset to be more empathetic about his wants/needs/rights/values and give him space to explore things alone. If having a phone would make him happy, then he deserves to have that because he can only strengthen your trust in him by choosing to be loyal on his own.

Also, pain is inevitable in a relationship. It's very possible that the reason a partner would leave would be because of controlling behavior and its additionally controlling sometimes to ask them not to. What you can do is just try to listen to their perspective and repeatedly remind yourself to try to be empathetic with them, try to be understanding, hear them out.

This way, you can show him how much you love him by slowly working through your fears. You can remind him you love him by showing him how much you're building up respect for him; researching how to be respectful of someone. You can show him you love him by researching more about healthy boundaries, reminding yourself about his boundaries whenever you feel tempted to do anything impulsive.

You can also ask yourself if any action you have done/feel tempted to do is more out of fear or love? Fear is limiting, confining, and trapping which is understandable to some degree but it's important to analyze when you're going overboard. Love is limitless, freeing, wholesome, understanding and you can justify something being out of love if you hear him out and try to look beyond your fear.

Ask yourself what relationship you would want if you weren't afraid of being betrayed. What would you do if you knew your partner would be loyal absolutely?

You can also go through and analyze a plan for how to handle betrayal in a healthy way should it ever happen. You can try to see how you could be a good person by continuing to choose to show your love, be selfless, be mindful, be considerate of all opinions, and careful before you act. Giving yourself time, reading other peoples stories on reddit or forums here goes a long way.

I can't say I have all the answers but these are just some things that I believe will help you to think about as they help me get better about learning how to love someone.