Dr. Don WoodResolving Your Trauma-Based Challenges So You Can Unlock Peak Performance

Are You Scared Your Partner Will Leave?

9 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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1:29

Dr. Don Wood discusses fearing a partner will leave, explaining that this fear often stems from childhood experiences—notably parental divorce and resulting abandonment issues—which can lead adults to misread relationship signals and change themselves to avoid loss. He warns this people-pleasing harms authenticity and recommends early, honest, non-accusatory communication with one’s partner so they can clarify intentions and reduce misunderstandings.

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Whenever you have an argument with your partner, are you scared that they're going to leave you? When people are afraid their partner is going to leave, most of the time this is coming from previous experiences, a lot of times from childhood. So your parents divorce, especially when you were very young. There's a lot of abandonment issues that come up with that. And it's not uncommon for a child to take responsibility. Had they just been a better child, had they maybe behaved better, had they not argued, all those kinds of things can come back very easily onto the child when it's not true. So if you have those kinds of experiences, you get now into a relationship and you're looking for the signs that your partner is going to leave you because it looks similar to what you saw when your parents divorced, it's going to affect your behaviors because you're going to try to do things to please your partner. You're going to try to do things to make sure they don't get upset. So you're going to change who you really are to try to keep your partner happy. And that's not going to end up the best. Obviously, you want to talk to your partner, get some assurances, be honest and upfront, because they may be not understanding what they're doing is having an effect on you. So definitely communication is the best thing. And certainly try to do it before it gets too bad, because then it becomes harder to communicate. And don't make it accusatory. Don't put it on the other person. Make sure that you say, here's how I'm feeling, and don't say that they've done anything wrong. Let your partner describe to you what you may be misreading.