Why is it so terrifying to put both feet into a relationship?

There is a particular kind of loneliness when you exist half in and half out of a relationship. Rarely is it because you don’t care or love the person, but it’s because there is some part of you that is always standing by the door.

You’re there, but you’re also watching yourself from afar.

You’re having a nice time, but you examine each moment in case you’re missing something.

You’re looking at them, but you position your seat just so that the doorway is also always in view.

It is a particular kind of loneliness, but there is also a particular kind of safety here to keep one foot inching towards the door. You can tell yourself that if it ends, you saw it coming and that you won’t be blindsided. That it’ll minimise the damage or that it wasn’t a big deal anyway.

I wonder what it costs us to live and love like this.

It can be a long-term lover or a first date, but often it was never really about the other person at all. We say, “they don’t text back quickly enough”, “if they wanted to, they would”, or “shouldn’t they just know?”. We fixate on the minutiae of what they did or didn’t say, replaying each interaction as though it contains the evidence we need to decide whether we’re in the clear.

We perform psychological autopsies on our relationships, picking apart every detail in search of an explanation for this feeling. Then come the mental gymnastics: A + B + C must mean this relationship is going to end, so perhaps it’s best if we get out before we’re the one who gets hurt.

We do all this without daring, or maybe without knowing to look underneath the surface and into the mirror it holds up for us about our own relationship to control, to vulnerability and to being witnessed. Call it emotional unavailability, call it perfectionism or trauma, call it whatever you like as long as you don’t forget it’s real name: fear.

Depending on where you identify on the attachment style spectrum, most folks will tend to fall on one side more than the other: fear of losing themself (avoidant) or fear of losing the relationship (anxious).

Within these attachment style strategies, we will do almost anything to avoid falling flat on our face for love. When we approach love with the goal of saving face, it inevitably skews our experience of it. Every hard conversation is a chance to be exposed and every move we make carries the weight of proving our worst fears, so we will push back and protect ourselves in whatever way we know how.

We will wrestle with ourselves. We manufacture distance or test our partners to see whether our fears are founded. We pull back and say we need space because distance can feel safer than uncertainty.

What adds to this internal tug-of-war is that there is no objective measure for how our relationships are supposed to feel. There are, of course, important lines around abuse and coercion, though beyond those, relationships are entirely and frustratingly subjective.

There is no universal benchmark for how much conflict is normal, how often you should want sex or what being in love should feel like on a random Tuesday afternoon. We are only left with our own internal experience to reckon with and that can be terrifying when you feel like your own unreliable narrator.

We’re surrounded by images of what love is supposed to look like from the outside through films, social media, and family or friends’ relationships. We have far fewer reference points for what love is supposed to feel like from the inside, especially when it’s complex, uncertain or simply ordinary.

It is both funny and infuriating the ways in which we will get in our own way. We can say how deeply we want to be loved, but will refuse to let our messy parts be known. We can say how much we yearn to be desired or looked after, but will not let the other person lead. These are the ways we love with one hand holding the door open.

The vulnerability of going all in requires us to make the repeated decision to stay. This is not the same as enduring or tolerating a relationship because you’re afraid to leave. The decision to stay in this way is about letting ourselves be loved as we are and finding ways to keep choosing each other long after the honeymoon period magic has worn off.

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Author and grief therapist, Francis Weller writes, “Our ability to receive love is proportional to our capacity to welcome all of who we are”. It asks us to stop hovering over the emergency exit and to instead look around, unpack your suitcase and get comfortable here.

It doesn’t mean that you’ll never change your mind or that you’ll have certainty that the relationship will last forever because life gives us no such guarantee. It means making decisions from within the relationship, instead of evaluating and testing it from the outside. It’s allowing yourself to be affected by the relationship and accepting the risk of it not going to plan, knowing that the decision to love and be loved is never a loss.

To loosen our grip on control is to trust ourselves and our partners, and to give ourselves the opportunity to learn what both love and trust feel like on the inside. It takes what is intellectual and hypothetical, and makes it experiential and relational.

We can grieve the illusion of certainty because it reminds us that the beauty of relationships lies not in the guarantees and knowing how they will end, but it’s in the possibilities of what we might create together.

What might become possible if we dared to stay and lean in?

Is that not part of the big and glorious mystery?

Is that not the whole point?

We miss out on so much when we try to outsmart love by fixating on hypotheticals, rehearsing endings and perpetually bracing ourselves for impact. There is only so much of a relationship we can experience when we’re always preparing for its loss.

And so maybe the courage to stay is simply putting both feet in and allowing ourselves to find out what happens when we do.

Selina is a clinical sex and relationship therapist based in Sydney, Australia where she works with individuals and relationships on all things sex and intimacy. Come Back to Bed is where you’ll find her for sessions, workshops and projects.