Participate, Not Anticipate: A Way to Enhance Your Relationships

           Human beings desire happiness and well-being. One important way that we can find contentment and well-being is by creating bonds and engaging in relationships at intimate and social levels. A major drive that motivates people to connect and maintain relationships with others is their need to belong and to be accepted. This is a strong need to belong and to be accepted and is attached to strong emotions. 

When there is a threat to the sense of belonging and acceptance people can get intensely disturbed. There can be many emotional reactions to a real or imaginary threat to belonging. Mark Leary, a well-known researcher in belongingness, says that there are two ways — social anxiety and jealousy — that manifest when you experience a threat to your sense of belonging. He adds that these two experiences are largely anticipatory, alerting people to the possibility that their relationships may be in danger.[1] Social anxiety occurs when you doubt whether you will be accepted by your friends, other people, or groups. Jealousy in a relational context assumes that the other person can steal someone from you. Both, social anxiety, and jealousy, can become chronic and excruciatingly painful. Your perception of losing someone or being rejected by them may not be based on reality. Often, it is how you anticipate in your imagination that you might be rejected, that leads to anxiety and jealousy. It could be a pattern that your mind has learned from past experience but is no longer relevant. 

You do not have to live in constant agony of the fear of being rejected. Those who want to leave you will leave you anyhow, and it is not worth investing in those relationships. You need to become aware of the people who really love and accept you. You need to participate in relationships and not anticipate rejection. The more you focus on participation, the more you will enhance and enjoy your relationships, and the more you anticipate your fantasized rejections, the more you will damage your relationships and invite unwanted misery to yourself. 

Therefore, to enjoy and flourish in your relationships, participate, and do not anticipate. 

            

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[1] Allen, K.-A., Gray, D. L., Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (2022). The Need to Belong: A Deep Dive into the Origins, Implications, and Future of a Foundational Construct. Educational Psychology Review, 34(2), 1133–1156. https://doi-org.blume.stmarytx.edu/10.1007/s10648-021-09633-6