Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop In Relationships: A Proven Trap?

So are you waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships? Have you ever noticed that when you are dating or when you are in a relationship, you cannot avoid the anxiety brought about by your fear of the relationship ending or have you ever wondered if you would ever get past the 1-month or 1-year anniversary with this person?

You are not alone because a lot of people who have gone through multiple failures in dating and relationships will eventually find it hard to believe that they are entering into a healthy relationship that is going to last for a lifetime. It feels like a fantasy and a scene straight out of Dreamland movies they just cannot help but think that it is going to end soon. 

However, people who are waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships find it extremely hard to sustain a relationship and also to be exclusively dating someone for a significant period of time.

Let’s look into why it’s bad for singles and even those in relationships, and how to overcome it.

My Experience

I have been single since 2013 and it has been over a decade now that I’m single although I have been actively dating since 2017 both online and offline. Have I been waiting for the other issue to drop in relationships and while I am dating? I have been there and I have been very critical of people when I newly started dating after my breakup. I have always been dubious about how long the relationship or even if the connection is going to sustain because I have always been afraid of not having the person in my life the next week or the next month as soon as I start talking to them.

This is not to say that I have never been excited about new dates. Although I have been really excited about some of the dates that I went on before, I was always afraid of the happiness being a short-term one and I have always wondered how long am I going to be happy like this or will something bad happen to the connection and will I lose this person.

However, even if it wass situationship, random connections, and dates that I went on with people, it was the casual and carefree dates that happened to be most memorable and I was able to learn a few things about myself even though those connections ended.

It is not to say that I was not intentional about my dating goals but I was more excited about discovering who the person is and also discovering how I react to different people and learning more about myself. It is an act of courage that I really think everyone should embrace because we get learn so many things about ourselves. We are not controlling the outcome and we are not expecting a perfect and flawless dating experience.

Is situationship good? Yes, sometimes, these random connections are the ones that teach us what we want in romantic relationships because trust me, you cannot fully predict what’s going to happen when you connect with someone. So don’t beat yourself up for connecting with someone whose intentions don’t align with yours. 

I truly believe that you’ve got to put yourself out there as much as possible because these are invaluable experiences that are going to teach you how to navigate through uncertainties and how to pick better people to date in the future. How would you expect to master the game if you refuse to play and practice?

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Why You Should Not Be Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop In Relationships

1. You Will Miss Seeing The Potential Good In People

You should not be waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships because you will miss seeing the potential good in people. If you are very suspicious about people in general and you think that probably all men are the same and you’re gonna get the repeated experience from the past, you will miss seeing the potential good in people. Even if the right person arrives right front of you, you might be thinking that this person will disappoint you and you will find reasons why things are not going to work out with this person rather than seeing the potential good that can come out of a new connection.

2. You’ll Not Enjoy The Present Moment

Are you going to get divorced in five years if you want to marry your partner? Do you think anyone knows the answer to this? Do you even think that people who got divorced actually knew that they were going to get divorced when they got married to their ex-partner?

Honestly, nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future and you wouldn’t know if your relationship with this person is going to be a successful one or not if you keep wanting to control the future and you want answers even before you arrive into the future.

By wanting to avoid mistakes you are actually missing out on the current happiness that connections with people can bring you even if they are fleeting connections. Have you ever wondered why a lot of single people have been single for a long time? That is because they are being super careful about relationships that they deny themselves the chance of being in a relationship because they fear the relationship would end.

Meaning to say, if you are going to be in a relationship, you wouldn’t want to judge what will happen in 10 years, and if let’s say if this person you are dating is going to turn out to be a bad choice, you wouldn’t want to miss out on the happiness that you will get for the next 10 years.

3. You’ll Subconsciously Attract Negativity

So, say that you have been on hundreds of dates and you met a lot of people who have disappointed you, what you are telling your mind is that you are going to attract people who are going to disappoint you. You are telling your mind that you will repeatedly meet people that are going to give you a similar pattern and dating and eventually you will have to reject them.

It is not wrong to go on many days and it is also not wrong to have unmet expectations in dating and relationships. However, if you allow those failures to get into your head and eventually make you believe that you are unworthy of relationships, you will subconsciously attract negativity. 

Are you constantly sharing reels or memes that mock men or relationships in general with your friends? Even if you think that it is not harmful to share friendly banters with your friends by sharing reals that mock relationships or men or even women if you’re a man, these are subconsciously reinforcing negative experiences in your mind.

4. You’ll Be Less Forgiving and Not Willing To Work Through Issues

If you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships you will be less forgiving and not willing to walk through issues with your partner. Let’s say you have been impacted by your ex-boyfriend who cheated on you in the past and after that, you have been super careful with whom you go out on date with. If you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships, if at all you catch some signs that your current boyfriend is micro-cheating on you, that will make you believe that this relationship has to end and you will make decisions abruptly to break up.

I am not saying that seeing repeated negative patterns is a good thing, but what I’m saying is that if you are not allowing yourself to heal from the past hurt, you will not be able to forgive people, you will not be able to work through challenges that arise in a relationship.

5. You’ll Have Trust Issues

So, in a nutshell, if you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships, you will always have trust issues and it would be extremely difficult for a partner to live with someone who has a high level of insecurity and trust issues.

It will also make it difficult for you to move on and to find a healthy relationship but also accept the fact that relationships can have a lot of flaws and you have to forgive a lot. As a result of it, you will find it hard to receive love from people and you will always be guarded and lonely deep inside.

How To Reduce Anxiety When Dating and In Relationships?

If you are a woman, I think you need to acknowledge the fact that men are attracted to women’s physical appearance. It is extremely rare to see men who dismiss physical attraction when it comes to love and romantic relationships. It doesn’t mean that men are always attracted to supermodel figures because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But ideally, people are attracted to each other based on some sort of attributes that they find attractive in each other.

So, knowing how men and women operate in relationships, even if you have been cheated on in the past, you have to acknowledge the fact that men are attracted to women based on physical appearance. Therefore, if you tend to bring your past hurt into your future relationships and you tend to micromanage your relationship and never allow your partner to look at any women or follow any women on social media, this is going to be detrimental for your relationship.

What you need to understand and establish is a deep level of trust with your partner. If your partner finds a lady pretty, it does not mean that he is going to cheat on you.

That’s the analogy for someone who has been cheated before in a relationship. The same applies to any sort of situation whereby you need to heal yourself so that you do not subconsciously attract negativity into your love life.

FAQs

What does waiting for the other shoe to drop mean?

Waiting for something bad or untoward to happen to you which you feel is inevitable. When you are waiting for the other shoe to drop, it means that you are always anxious and anticipating something bad to happen.

Why am I constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop?

It is an anticipation for something you knew was coming, which is usually a bad thing. This is referred to as anticipatory anxiety. However, psychology today says that about 85 percent of things that people worry about actually never happen.

Is waiting for the other shoe to drop a trauma response?

The more trauma a person has experienced, the more their limbic system is fine-tuned to detect potential threats. Researcher Brené Brown describes waiting around to detect potential threats in life is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. This means that although people are actually happy in their lives, they are always afraid that something bad will happen and people generally believe that if we are too happy, something bad is going to happen to us. This is anticipatory anxiety. 

How to fix waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Finding time to be present and be in the moment will help you to enjoy the present moment and stay happy in the present moment without worrying about the future and without worrying if the happiness will be a lasting one or not. 

By being in the present moment, we are also training our minds to accept that life is unpredictable, and we have to fully enjoy the happiness that the present moment is bringing us rather than focusing on how bad the future can be. We will also be able to fully accept and enjoy the happiness brought about by the present moment without judging what will happen in the future.