I’ve become too needy in my relationship and I am starting to scare myself, sometimes.

I have a wonderful boyfriend who I’ve been with for just over a year and will soon be moving in with. I met him in the City that I used to live in and when I moved away, just over 18 months ago, we stayed in contact and have been in a long distance relationship ever since. We see each other roughly once a fortnight, sometimes more. He’s amazing – intelligent, funny, a wide range of interests and very sociable. I couldn’t believe it when it turned out that he liked me too! He’s very committed to our relationship and I have no doubt that he loves me as much as I love him.

My problem is that I have very low self-esteem and find it impossible to believe that someone like him would want to be with someone like me – even after all this time, which I know is ridiculous. Whereas he’s also very sociable, I’m naturally an introvert and haven’t met many people since I moved to this new place (partly because I travel back down to see my partner most weekends) so find that sometimes when he’s off doing other things with friends I’m left twiddling my thumbs.

This is where I start to scare myself. When my boyfriend goes out, he has a policy of not texting or using his phone when he’s with other people. This is completely fair enough, and I know it is. He has a life, he’s entitled to space and to spend his time enjoying the company of other people.  When I go out, he extends the same courtesy to me and doesn’t text me/expect me to text. I know all of this, but …sometimes, I find that if he hasn’t text me for a few hours I start feeling really anxious and grumpy about it.

I try not to text him while he’s out, but there have been a couple of occasions where my emotions have overcome me and after he’s returned I’ve told him that I am not happy about him going out and dropping out of contact completely. I KNOW that this is unfair and I know that there is absolutely no reason/nothing that he is doing to make me feel this way. It’s not so much a romantic jealousy thing – I trust him completely. So, I don’t know why I’m like it, and I need to stop before and incident like this happens again and incurs permanent damage to our relationship.

I know this is all my issue, because I don’t believe in myself enough to know that someone loves me and wants to be with me. I just need to learn to fill my time with more ‘me’ things so that I feel like I need him less and am more secure in myself.

I know it all has to come from within – I need to start working to make sure that I feel good about myself – so that I feel like I don’t need or depend on anyway – and then I can make sure that I do put any unfair pressure on my partner and our relationship.

What kind of techniques can I employ to do this? How can I be less needy? This is the only thing we ever fall out about – we’re a great couple other wise and very rarely have any other disagreements or arguments, when we do we’re good at communicating our feelings on things.

Thanks,

Sophie