Anxiety About Your Marriage

Anxiety has many origins, but one topic that elicits anxiety in many people, especially now during COVID, is their marriage and what to do about it when it’s not working for them anymore. Sometimes, anxiety manifests as a result of repressing emotions and not dealing (or knowing how to deal) with marriage problems that you might be confronted with.

Anxiety from Poor Communication and Unhealthy Behaviors

For starters, I would say that anxiety would appear as a result of not communicating what’s on your mind with your relationship partner. Feelings built up will inevitably fester and grow, and without an outlet, they will take the shape of anxiety or depression in people who don’t communicate themselves and the problems that they’re having to their relationship partner.

For example, if you’re bored or unhappy in your marriage, and too afraid to share it with your partner or spouse, it doesn’t go away, but may help inform your anxiety. Over the years, those feelings have nowhere to go, except into problematic behaviors that you may be engaging in that are causing further disruption to your marriage, such as avoidance behaviors like drinking, smoking marijuana, using porn, communicating with other women or dating partners, or sabotaging your marriage in other ways. Coping unhealthily with anxiety is is quite common, and when we’re in avoidance mode and not talking about the issues that affect us, we’re leaving ourselves more susceptible to engaging in these problematic behaviors.

Anxiety and Fear About Confrontation

Anxiety and fear are closely related to each other, and many men that I talk with don’t know how to properly confront, say what’s on their mind, communicate the problems that they’re having in their relationship or marriage, or don’t know how to support their own voice with their marriage partner.

Being afraid of conflict (conflict avoidance) actually keeps us in conflict much longer than we’d like to be, and can exacerbate the problems in a relationship, especially if you have the tendency to withdraw and check out of your relationship. What effect this has is that your spouse or relationship partner will tend to pursue you, and in their conflict cycle, may produce more of the bad types of behaviors that make you react. This cycle will continue to flare up until partners can be self-reflective and stop the cycle by stopping to engage in these destructive and unhealthy patterns.

Assumptions and Lack of Assertiveness Build Anxiety

Anxiety often builds when we make assumptions about what our partner will do or say in response to us confronting them about problems we’re having in the marriage. Although you may have a marital history, and know what your spouse will do and how they’ll react to what you’re saying, we get anxious about the not-knowing and dwelling on the worst case scenario about how they’ll explode or react negatively to us. If communicated in the right ways, using ‘I” language and not blaming, you can learn to minimize the chances of that conflict, when done correctly. You can learn better conflict and communication skills if that will help you, but remembering that we’re not ultimately responsible for other people’s (e.g. our spouse) reactions to our words, when communicated in a non-threatening and conversation-opening way.

Dealing with fear of conflict, and learning to assert yourself, is key to reducing anxiety and dealing directly with the issues at hand. If you’ve never learned how to do this, you’re not alone. Seek out counseling or therapy for your anxiety, and learn what might be underneath that in dealing with your marital issues directly.

Anxiety About Making Marriage Decisions

You may also be anxious about knowing what to do about your marriage situation, especially if you’re unhappy in it, and don’t think it will change (or don’t want it to change). You may be feeling anxious because you want to leave your marriage, but haven’t gotten to those words or have admitted it to yourself yet.

Many anxious people are unhappy in their marriage, but haven’t started taking the steps to do something about their marriage, whether it’s to seek out couples or marriage counseling, decide whether or not they want to continue to be in their marriage anymore, or simply to take the first step of communicating about the problems with their spouse.

Some of the anxiety might be about the future, in terms of “what would happen to me and my family if I did decide to leave my marriage? Would they be okay? Would I be okay?”

This anxiety is normal, and most people deal with this anxiety about taking the huge step towards ending a marriage or relationship that they’re not happy in anymore. They’re also quite anxious about ending their marriage, about being alone, about hurting their spouse or significant other if they end it, or about the lives and well-being of their children after divorce or separation.

Dealing with your unhappy feelings when it comes to your marriage is not easy, but it’s doable, especially if you want something to change in your marriage. How many more weeks, months or years do you want to go by without dealing with the problems at hand? Does your anxiety relate to suppression of those things that you want to say, but feel that you can’t? You can work through the anxiety and come to the outcomes that are right for you, and learn to reduce the anxiety that’s holding you back.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the effects of anxiety on marriage or if anxiety treatment could be right for you, please feel free to contact me or visit my anxiety therapy page.