So you love him, but you don’t trust him? You’ll share your body with him, but you won’t let him into your innermost thoughts? You say he’s different from the rest, and yet you still compare him to every man who’s hurt you?

How does that work?

I know the first few lines insinuated that it’s women who I’m talking about, but in reality anyone can be hit with the subject of the blog (quick hint: check the title). For those who still don’t get it, I’m talking about insecurity.

Insecurity is a feeling of anxiousness or uncertainty. It’s a lack of confidence in yourself or whatever you may be facing. In a relationship, to be insecure usually points to low self-esteem and a sense of inadequacy. You constantly compare yourself to others. You never feel good or worthy enough. And jealousy is a pretty close bedfellow of insecurity. Not the best combination, though. It’s kind of like a twisted pb&j sandwich: Separately, the components are okay, but together they can make one epic mess.

How does one become insecure? The easiest way to unlock this achievement–figuratively speaking–is to experience rejection and humiliation. Of course, that’s not to say everyone who has experienced such is or will become insecure; however, people handle negative experiences in their own way. Some don’t bother dealing with them at all. But those types of encounters are usually the ones to create the issue.

And for the record, insecurity is an issue.

This is something I have personal experience with. I’m the type of person who gets stronger with time. I always say the strongest steel is made in the hottest fires. Don’t know if that’s 100 percent accurate, but it gets my point across. Time and experience builds me up. But I wasn’t always like that.

I have had some incredibly harsh rejections that made me doubt nearly everything about myself. From the way I looked to the way I spoke, everything was debatable and more or less hated. Well…maybe “hated” isn’t the right word. Let’s roll with “despised.” Yeah, that’ll do.

While in various relationships, I tried to keep my insecurities to myself, but they eventually overflowed into daily life. I was constantly comparing myself to my man’s exes, yet trying to set myself apart. I would beat myself down over my appearance and even went so far as to transform myself into the woman I thought he wanted me to be instead of just being myself.

And jealousy? It is indeed a bitch.

None of those relationships lasted, and I don’t blame them for ending. As I said before, experiences build me because I always take something from them. I learned that I was insecure. I learned the root of my problem. I also learned insecurities can destroy a relationship.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure the last part out, but it’s funny how when something concerns you specifically, you can’t really see it. All of your issues could pimp-slap you across the face and you’d still insist you didn’t feel anything. Well, I’ve been pimp-slapped by the truth, and let me tell you, it hurt.

My relationships couldn’t progress while I had this issue. How could it? Everything was questioned or doubted. And when my emotions took a backseat so the guy could drive the relationship for a while, I began to lose myself, which only escerbated things. Not only did I not believe in myself but eventually the men stopped believing in me, too, at least as a prospective mate.

Kind of hard to love someone who can’t even love herself.

I had to take a hard look at myself. There were some things I had within me that I had not dealt with. Years of hurt and disappointments that I never even spoke about just compounded into a big ball of self-hate. I hid it as well as I could, but the funny thing about life is that you can’t run from yourself no matter how hard you try. Eventually, everything catches up to you and forces you to deal with your inner demons.

I’m still a work in progress, but I’m glad to say I’ve come a long way.

Insecurity isn’t something that can disappear overnight and there is no magic word I can give you to make the process move any faster or hurt any less. But what I can say is that if you read the first three lines of this piece and can easily relate to them, you probably have some insecurities. Dealing with relationships, and ultimately yourself, is difficult, and sometimes you feel as if you’re drowning in emotions. The only thing I can tell you is that you may need to turn the mirror on yourself and do what you can to fix any hurts you find. It’ll get better.

Slowly but surely, it’ll get better.