No relationship is easy. That’s what we agree on.
Romance often leads to feelings of vulnerability, which in turn forces us to face our deepest fears and fight battles we’ve been putting off for years. Whether we win or lose is up to us.
Unfortunately, some people don’t fare so well. Their fears end up influencing their behavior, and before they know it, they’re playing subconscious (or sometimes even conscious) games with their partner.
Want to know which ones?
Here’s a list of seven mind games that highly insecure people love to play in relationships.
Let’s get started right away.
1) Faking it Hard
It may seem strange that people who are already in relationships would pretend to be hard. After all, they’re already in a relationship, so what’s the point?
The point is to get attention.
Let me explain.
If you take your time responding to your partner’s texts, give them affection too sparingly, or withdraw emotionally for a while, you’re essentially forcing them to take control of the relationship.
In this way, you’re luring them into feeling affection and testing how much they love you and how far they’re willing to go to reconnect.
A heightened version of this is the silent treatment, which psychologist Bernard Golden describes as “a destructive form of passive aggression” that “creates an atmosphere of anxiety, fear, and sadness that prevents a basic sense of security.”
The truth is, refusing to talk to your partner or testing whether they’re trying to get you back once you’ve drifted away can’t do much.
Often, these types of games make things worse, not better. Creating feelings of unease, anxiety, and insecurity is the worst thing you can do in an intimate relationship.
2) Arouse jealousy
See, I get it.
You’re feeling insecure, unsure how to get your partner’s attention, and struggling to communicate your needs, so you’re just trying to… intentionally make them jealous.
From talking too much about a certain coworker to flirting with random people in front of your partner, you might be trying to elicit some sort of reaction from them just to make them feel like they still want you.
You’ve been there before.
But as psychologist Marianne L. Fisher says, “Intentionally making your partner jealous is a risky strategy for getting attention.”
It’s risky because your partner might get so upset that they end up breaking up with you.
It’s risky because it incites unnecessary arguments.
It’s risky because it doesn’t reflect what you want — for your partner to be more affectionate or to make you feel seen and understood.
3) Keep a Log of Love Gestures
I used to date a guy who kept a log of all the things he did for me. One day, he brought it up: “I’ve done X, Y, and Z for you, and the only thing you’ve done so far is buy me a cake!”
I stared at him in confusion.
Wasn’t he supposed to do all these things out of pure love? Was he just recording all his little gestures of love so he could compare them to mine? Had he been keeping a log this whole time?
I felt confused, but more than that, I felt betrayed. Suddenly, all his expressions of love seemed superficial. Like he didn’t mean it.
If you’re deeply insecure, you might be tempted to keep a log, too. You might think it helps you stay grounded and in control.
The truth is, that it devalues all your gestures of love, reducing them to mere business transactions.
If you want to buy your partner a gift or cook them a delicious dinner, don’t do it in the hope that they’ll return the favor. Do it simply because you want to please them.
4) Guilt
Ah, good old guilt has entered the fray!
“Guilt is a form of unconscious emotional blackmail where the person feeling guilty feels entitled and innocent of any wrongdoing,” explains psychologist Lynn Margolis.
It’s also a powerful strategy for eliciting emotional responses from your partner. If you’re not getting the attention you want, all you have to do is make them feel guilty, and voila! The affection flows back, all for you.
The problem is that true love can’t be guided by guilt or pity. If you make your partner feel bad for not caring enough about you or giving you the reassurance you want, they may try their best to prove their love to you, but it won’t come from a genuine place.
One woman I know once called her partner while on a business trip abroad. She cried and begged him to come back because she missed him so much.
Aside from being a clear display of an extreme form of anxious attachment, this is also an example of guilt. He couldn’t come home, of course, so he spent the entire business trip feeling bad.
Let this serve as a lesson to all of us: Let’s not make our partners feel bad about our feelings and challenges. Let’s work on ourselves instead.
5) Compliment Fishing
This game isn’t as harmful as the others on this list, but it’s still worth mentioning.
In one of my previous relationships, I used to fish for compliments all the time. I felt insecure and didn’t think I was getting enough reassurance, but instead of talking about it, I asked silly questions.
“Do you love me?”
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“Would you love me if I turned into a butterfly?”
“What do you like about me?”
“Why do you love me?”
I feel bad just typing these questions, but they were the reality of things at one point in my life. I asked questions like this because I needed reassurance from my partner to feel better about myself.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that these questions had become so frustrating that I pushed my partner away from me. In a way, I was so worried that he would withdraw his affection that I pushed him away myself.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are not fun, I’ll tell you that.
6) Making fun of someone else’s insecurities
I was once in a relationship with a guy who loved to put me down. He passed it off as a joke, but his so-called jokes were rooted in something much more serious: he was deeply insecure about himself, so he tried to bring me down to his level.
If he lowered my self-esteem, if he made me feel a little uncomfortable, I would become insecure about myself too. Of course, I wouldn’t be intimidated by him anymore.
We broke up instead.
If there’s one thing this relationship has taught me, it’s to pay attention to how I feel around the other person.
If you feel supported and encouraged to be your authentic, confident self, that’s a sign that things might work out.
If you feel like you have to filter yourself out at every opportunity, like your partner’s words are hurtful and unnecessarily harsh at times like you’re in an invisible competition with them even though you don’t know what the prize is…
You might be in a relationship with someone so insecure about themselves that they can’t help but play on your vulnerabilities, too. That’s a big red flag.
If there’s one thing you should feel about your partner, it’s to feel safe. Someone who uses your vulnerabilities against you is far from safe.
7) Narrative Twisting
Finally, let’s not forget some of the most common manipulation techniques: emotional manipulation, self-deception, and word-twisting.
You might think that an insecure person would immediately admit to making a mistake and apologize because they don’t think highly of themselves, but the truth is more complicated.
Many people who hide deep insecurities will go to great lengths to appear confident. They will build a large but fragile ego, and as a result, they will find it extremely difficult to raise their hand and apologize.
And what do you do if you don’t want to lose?
You twist the narrative to your advantage.
Whether it’s through manipulation, which psychologists describe as a form of manipulation that makes the other person doubt their perception of reality, or projecting your fears and problems onto your partner, you hold your ground and fight, fight, and fight some more.
Just so you can win.
Of course, there is no real winner here. Mind games can be so toxic that the foundation of your relationship can crumble, and before you know it, you’re on the verge of breaking up.
You can’t solve your insecurities by playing games of manipulation. What you can do is work on yourself, learn how to communicate effectively, and show your partner that you’re a team.
The only way to win is for both of you to be victorious.
