How To Love A Woman With Anxiety
Trust me, she's worth it.
getty So, you've fallen in love with a woman who has anxiety. You're one of the lucky ones.
You have met a woman who feels deeply. Commercials for dog food make her cry. So does messing up that Pinterest recipe she was so excited to try. She loves fiercely, and, if you are lucky, she will choose to love you. Here's what it's like loving someone with anxiety, and how to do so without losing her.
Love a woman with anxiety softly.
For a woman with anxiety, the world itself is loud, the wrong kind of shirt on her skin can spend the entire day screaming at her, a tough word or look from her boss is like Norwegian death metal. Be her soft place to fall in a world full of loud uncertainties.
Love her consistently.
Games are always awful when you play them during courtship. Games are even worse when you try to play with a woman who has anxiety. She spends every day just trying to keep up with the game that is living a normal life.
When you say you'll call her, call her. When you say you'll see her, see her. When you tell her that you love her, mean it. She doesn't want the moon from you, she wants the truth. And once you join her in this strange realm, you'll find out just how great it can be.
When the woman with anxiety who you love starts to cry after sex, hugging her knees, her body wracked with sobs, do not ask what's wrong. Hold her if she'll let you. Rub her back and talk to her. Don't try to fix her, just tell her ordinary everyday things and in her own time, she will come back to where you are.
When the woman with anxiety who love wakes up in the middle of the night screaming because she has come face to face with the idea that she's going to die and there's nothing she can to do stop, hold her hand. Get her a glass of water. Tell her a joke. Turn on the TV. Sit with her until she can fall back asleep.
Let her stay home.
You love her, you want everyone you know to meet her and love her too, and because she loves you, she'll do this. She will go to every party, she will shake every hand, she will put herself outside of her comfort zone and not even realize that it's breaking her up into tiny exhausted pieces. Don't make her. Tell her to take a night to herself, even if you'd pay in gold nuggets for every second you spend by her side.
Love her as fiercely as she loves you.
For a woman with anxiety, every day can be a study of loneliness, waging a war against the millions of hissing voices inside her own head. Wade through the tumult and squeeze her tightly.
Check your impatience at the door, call her out when lack of self-care is making her snippy or mean, push her when she is uncertain, be a sounding board when she needs one and an advisor when she asks for your help.
The reward you get? Her smile. Her devotion. Her wry observations about the way the world works. Her keen insights into the people around her. Her. The reward you get is her, and the reward she gets is you, and together you will reap wonderful things.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cat, Batman. Her work focuses on relationships, pop culture and news. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.