There are some lucky people out there who aren’t cursed with the overthinking gene. Some people are blessed with minds that don’t jump to conclusions and that take things at face value.
They don’t over-analyze and over-interpret everything that happens to them.
The rest of us, however, aren’t quite so blessed.
Whilst overthinking can cause problems in any area of your life, it’s in romantic relationships that it tends to manifest itself most often, and where it can wreak some serious havoc.
Overthinking may have been the reason that past relationships of yours have ended, even if that particular thought never entered your slightly over-wrought mind. It may also be the main reason why your current relationship isn’t all sunshine and roses.
Worried you might be overthinking things in your relationship? If these warning signs sound familiar, this could apply to you.
Speak to a certified and experienced relationship coach to help you manage your overthinking to prevent it from ruining your relationship. You may want to try speaking to someone via RelationshipHero.com for empathetic, specific, and genuinely insightful relationship advice at its most convenient.
1. You Always Change Your Mind
Your mind just can’t pick a lane. Your brain thinks about things so much that it can’t help but continually arrive at different conclusions. Only they’re not conclusions, because you don’t stop there.
You think you’ve made a decision, but you don’t stop dwelling and turning it over in your mind, meaning you’ve completely changed your mind again five minutes later.
2. You Can Read One Simple Text 10 Different Ways
The dawn of text was a disaster for the overthinkers among us. When you read someone’s words without the help of seeing their body language and hearing their voice, you can interpret the things they’ve said in a million different ways.
Are trying to be sarcastic? Patronizing? Are they annoyed? Are they uninterested? Did they ask any questions? Why did they say it that way?
You don’t stop there. It’s not just what they say, it’s how long they take to reply and whether or not those little ticks on Whatsapp have gone blue.
Whilst your friends might behave this way at the beginning of a relationship, they all calm down after a while, whilst you can read things into your partner’s texts even after you’ve been together for years.
3. It Takes You Hours To Compose A Text
If you can spend a long time dissecting what they’ve written, it will take twice as long for you to decide what to reply.
4. You Have An Encyclopedic Memory For Things They Say
You can remind them of the exact words they said during a fight you had 6 months ago. You store the things they say to you away in the depths of your brain, even if to them they were just throwaway comments, and you can easily spend hours mulling them over.
5. You Can’t Commit
When you think about commitment so intensely, it stops becoming such an appealing prospect. One person? For the rest of your life? Really? But what if they’re not ‘the one’?
You constantly obsess about all the things that could go wrong in the future and you focus on your partner’s negative traits, talking yourself out of the whole thing pretty successfully.
6. You Fight Over Tiny Details
You find yourself constantly bickering with your partner, or always seem to be annoyed with them.
You get into blazing rows and then can’t even remember what it was you were fighting over in the first place (clue – absolutely nothing).
You pick fights based on your partner’s tone of voice or precise choice of words.
You then freak out that you picked a fight, certain that they’ll break up with you.
7. You Never Trust Your Feelings
You’ve now got to a stage where you know that you’ll analyze things to such an extent that you can pretty much convince yourself of anything, whether or not it’s true.
That means you can’t trust how you feel, because as passionate as you feel about it by now, you’ll probably be over it by tomorrow.
8. You Even Confuse Yourself
It goes without saying that your partner tells you that they don’t understand the way your brain operates.
You can’t really blame them, because even you can’t follow your thought processes most of the time.
9. You’re Always Convinced Your Partner Is Mad At You
You’re always sure that they’re mad at you or off with you because they seem too quiet, or too chatty. You can even read into the way they’re walking. Or the way they’re breathing, for that matter.
If they tell you they’re “fine,” you can spend hours wondering what they really meant by that.
10. You’re The Eternal Pessimist
Everyone else’s worse case scenario is pretty much the only scenario you have in your head. You’re convinced that the relationship you’re in is going to end horribly, so you can’t really see the point anyway.
11. You Always Say Sorry
You can convince yourself that practically everything going wrong in the relationship is your fault, even when it’s not, because you assume you must have done something wrong.
12. You Have To Have A Plan
You need to know exactly when you’re seeing your partner next, and can’t handle uncertain plans.
You’re convinced that when they don’t make immediate plans to see you again, it means they never want to see you again, ever.
By the time they do suggest a plan, you’ve already agonized over it so much that you’ve accepted that it’s never going to happen, so suddenly having a plan throws you off completely.
The uncertainty of the phrases “see you later” or “speak soon” fill you with dread.
13. You Need Constant Reassurance
Much as texting puts you on edge, if you don’t hear from them constantly, you convince yourself that they’re not interested. They don’t love you. They probably hate you…
14. You Struggle To Live In The Moment
You’re so busy worrying about all of the above that even when you’re actually with them and everything’s going well, you find it difficult to actually be in the moment. You’re too busy analyzing something they said yesterday.
15. You Trust Your Friend’s Judgment More Than Your Own
You defer to your BFF when it comes to any decision-making about your relationship, because you think they’ll make much better ones than you will.
You send them screenshots of messages to your partner asking for their opinion and wanting to know what to do, and blindly follow their advice without stopping to think about whether it’s actually the right thing.
You ask your friends the same questions and bring up the same topics again and again, and often get eye-rolls in return.
16. You Don’t Trust Your Gut
When it comes to head over heart, your head wins every time. You ignore what your instinct is trying to tell you and determinedly make a detailed pros and cons list instead.
17. You’re Never The One To Break Up
You’ve never broken up with someone in your life, because it’s far too big of a decision to make.
You stay in relationships you’re not happy in because you don’t want to take the risk and regret it down the line. You’d far rather they broke up with you!
Are You Guilty Of Overthinking?
Whilst kicking the habit is not easy, the first step toward taking control of your mind is being aware that there’s a problem.
Obsessing about things less could be the key to finding and maintaining the happy, healthy relationship that you really want.
Still not sure how to stop overthinking in your relationship? Chat online to a relationship expert from Relationship Hero who can help you figure things out.
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- 20 Things You Should Know Before Dating A Girl Who Thinks Too Much
- 3 Signs Of Trust Issues And How To Get Over Them
- 6 Major Signs Your Partner Sees You As An Option, Not A Priority
- Is True Love A Choice Or A Feeling?
