I Said "I Love You," Then I Gave Your Love Away: Understanding Fear of Abandonment

Anyone who suffers from fear of abandonment doesn't even have to understand all of the lyrics to this song by Majid Jordan, "Gave Your Love Away." We can hear the chorus, feel the pain in the melody and feel the pain that it matches in our hearts.

Most codependents I know, and probably a majority of addicts, suffer from fear of abandonment. Some of us were emotionally abandoned as children, and some of us were both emotionally and physically abandoned as children by significant adults in our lives-- namely our parents, or caregivers.

Since that time, every relationship we have attempted to build with significant others has been subconsciously haunted by our deeply wounded inner-child; the one who suffers daily from fear of abandonment. This is one of the reasons why many of us people-please, care-take or put up with abuse from others: We are too subconsciously fearful of losing the toxic people we are now attracted to who remind us on a deep subconscious level of the adults who abandoned us as children. We will do most anything to avoid being abandoned by these toxic people.

The opposite is true when we meet people who genuinely love us for who we are. On a subconscious level we are terrified of these people. We have an inner-critic inside of us that is constantly reminding us that we "aren't good enough" for these people who genuinely love us. And we worry that when they discover the real us, they will abandon us just as everyone else has done.

In these situations, because our self-love is poor and we feel unworthy of genuine love, we will subconsciously do and say things to push these healthy people away from us. Part of us feels insane for doing and saying things to sabotage the relationships that are actually good for us, and yet the other part of us is completely comfortable in doing so because that side of us still doesn't believe that these people could truly love us, or that we are worthy of love.

So we stop communicating with these people who genuinely love us. We don't return their phone calls, or their text messages. When they ask us to do something with them, we decline, often times lying to them when we tell them we aren't available. Or when we are with them, we are either silent, withdrawn or rude. We may say ugly things to them or return ugly behavior for their kind behavior in other ways.

Essentially, we give their love away. Sooner or later, they get tired of being treated badly and know that they are worth being treated better. So they say "Goodbye" and walk out of our lives. More often than not, we feel victimized because we are totally unaware on a conscious level of what we have subconsciously done to force these people out of our lives. So we blame them for abandoning us. 

It's not until we wake-up through Recovery that we discover what's really been going on: We've been subconsciously drawn to the toxic people who treat us like our parents did and we will stick with those people in desperate fear of being abandoned by them, while at the same time, we have pushed away healthy people who truly loved us because we only felt worthy of toxic attention.

Fear of abandonment is something that requires great AWARENESS. We have to understand that fear, name it and understand how it affects our thinking and behavior. The only way we can become free of fear of abandonment is through therapy, the help of a Higher Power and the support of a Recovery group.

If you have been unknowingly suffering from the fear of abandonment, this is your wake-up call.