CW: Non-detailed mention of emotional abuse. 

I am a woman in my late 20s that has battled anxiety for as long as I can remember. I see a therapist and am constantly working on dealing with my anxiety better. 

After one abusive relationship and many years of being single and figuring myself out, I finally met an amazing man. We have been dating for around 6 months and he is everything I have ever dreamed off in a partner. He is present, loving, caring and does his best to support my mental health. 

Up until now we’ve been really great about conflict resolution. We check out before things escalate and have discussions rather than fighting and being mean to each other. It really helps with my anxiety. 

Recently I did something stupid that had the potential to hurt him. When I brought it up with him, he was completely calm about it and said that he was okay and that I had nothing to worry about. But I felt so bad that I spiralled, kept over apologising and basically turned a molehill into a mountain. He was great throughout this. Any other person would have been annoyed by this spiral but he handled it really well. The next day after I was more calm he said he needed to check out for a few hours just to clear his headspace. This is when I completely freaked out. While I had the good sense to not invade his space and freak to/at him, I had a complete meltdown because my general anxiety + trauma from my previous relationship made me believe he was going to dump me. 

Of course, he didn’t. We met a few hours later and it was all fine. I was relieved but still a little on the edge. The next day, we were hanging out as usual and I did something that was mildly annoying. Not enough to be a real issue or argument but I could tell he was slightly annoyed (understandably so). Due to this and the things that happened before this, I’m stressing out about how he’s going to dump me again. 

2 of my serious relationships before this ended really abruptly and I can’t shake the feeling of being an annoying burden of a partner that’s too much for a good, kind and loving man like him. It’s like I’m having some warped relationship version of imposter syndrome, wherein I feel as if I’m going to “reveal” that I am too much to handle and that he will then dump me. 

I’m really really scared and worried and I don’t know how to deal with this. I’d love any suggestions that you might have.