Fixing your partner's insecurities is not your job. But there are things you can do to tackle them.

It may be good to give your partner a surprise gift every so often. Taking him or her to a random date at a nearby park can be sweet. But sometimes, what your partner really needs is just a confidence boost. Because believe it or not, even the most confident person in the world can feel insecure. 

A deep sense of security is fundamental in a loving—and hopefully long-lasting—relationship. While this is said to be basic, giving your partner the sense of security he or she needs can be a little challenging. 

There’s always a reason why your partner is showing signs of neediness and possessiveness. Good news.. These feelings are fleeting. They come and go. What your partner feels now may no longer be the same tomorrow. As a loving partner, it is your duty to find out why he or she feels this way and eventually come up with a game plan to help address this.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve put together some very ruminative ways on how to make your partner feel more secure:

1. Make your partner feel the so-called sense of inclusion.

Introduce your partner to your family and friends. As you welcome your partner into your life, make him or her feel that you truly are proud of what you share. Don’t forget to be on top of the situation. Your partner agreed to go with you in a non-neutral ground. You should always keep in mind that it is absolutely important for you to usher him or her in your circle. You do not want your partner to end up being a wallflower just because you failed to do proper introductions.

You should also include him or her in your future plans. The primary reason why you both chose to be in a serious relationship is longevity. Making your partner feel (as though) he or she is a part of your future will exemplify how serious you are with the relationship. This, I tell you, will definitely hit a home run. 

2. Be private.

Let your partner feel that he or she can trust you by making sure that your arguments, differences in opinions, and secrets remain just between the two of you. Others’ involvement in your personal issues is totally unnecessary, counterproductive, and devastating.

3. Do not leave your partner guessing.

It is important to not leave your partner hanging. Do not wait for hours or days before you respond to his or her messages or pick up his or her calls. When you're busy, tell him or her. When you're not in the mood to talk, communicate that. It sure does not feel good to be left in the dark.

4. Show support for your partner’s endeavors.

In some of your random conversations, you get to find out what his or her interests are. Encourage your partner to take part in activities that he or she is enraptured by. It might even be a better idea to join your partner in any or all of these activities even when you are not totally passionate about them. 

Supporting your partner also covers setting individual (emotional and financial) goals and meeting them. Give your partner the assurance that 20 to 30 years down the road, you will still be having a great time together, living an emotionally and financially stable life you both created for each other. 

6. Compliment when there’s an opportunity.

A foolproof way of making your partner feel special is giving sincere and genuine compliments here and there. Tell him or her how beautiful he or she is. Compliment his or her wit. Acknowledge the wisdom behind his or her judgment. Remind your partner why you chose to be with him or her—that quality which made him or her stand out. Sounds easy and petty but these tricks go a long way. 

It is also a very effective tactic for you to recognize your partner’s insecurities and compliment them for that. Getting compliments about what he or she considers an insecurity is a great way to build your partner’s self-esteem. Doing this will help your partner feel appreciated. A wholehearted compliment leaves little to no room for resentment.

7. Quit the mind games, talk it out, and answer questions.

Mind games are downright infantile. When in a relationship, the least you need is a juvenile partner who is zealous about his playbook. 

Communication is a key element to any relationship. The lack of it is the nub to most, if not all, of relationship problems. Whenever you feel your partner shows signs of insecurity, talk it out. Take the initiative to start the conversation and try to pick his or her brain. There’s no better way of understanding what’s going on than by assessing the situation yourselves. In order to reap the maximum benefits of communication, be mindful of timing. You don’t wanna add to your partner’s distress by insisting on talking about his, her, or your insecurity after a long day at work or after noticing his or her very apparent annoyance. 

Additionally, your partner may have a ton of questions about things. Be patient enough to answer each and every one of them. Sometimes, your partner asks you questions not because they don’t know the answer but because they wanna be reaffirmed and appeased. This is perfectly normal.

8. Do not give your partner a reason to doubt you, and that includes entertaining advances from anyone.

When you decided to be in a relationship, you took on the responsibility to stay away from anything and everything that will hurt your partner, including cheating, dishonesty, and withholding the truth. Instinctively, trust is given until one finds a reason to cease giving it. That is what we wanna avoid.

Also.. Being friendly is inevitable. Flirting is not. Drawing the line between the two is not really that hard to determine—if you only try hard enough. Be mature enough to learn how to straightforwardly and politely decline even the slightest hint of flirting from anyone.

Sure, you may think that the person you made eye-to-eye contact with in the supermarket is cute. But as a discerning partner, you should outrightly dismiss this distraction and focus on the more valuable things. The least you wanna do is disrespect your partner—intentionally or not.

9. Past is past and focus on the now.

A hangup from an ex, a what-if with an almost-but-never-was, or whatever it is that will make him or her feel that you’re stuck in the past—all of these should be buried in the deepest abyss of your mind and totally forgotten. You should move on from all these impertinent things of the past and draw 99% of your attention to what’s more important: the magical relationship you have with the person who loves you so much and is willing to climb mountains just to be with you. 

When you accept people in your lives, you also learn to accept their unpleasant side and insecurities. Accepting their insecurities means you are also accepting the role you can play to positively deal with them. While it is said that fixing your partner’s insecurities is certainly not your responsibility, doing something to help him or her feel more secure is.

In order for your relationship to flourish, you should deliberately shun all the things that contribute to your partner’s insecurities and be more than committed to carry out the significant promises you made before each other. A relationship is not happy by default. You make it the way you want it to be. 

[Image from PowerofPositivity.com]

Trust me, it's okay to be clingy and intense.

Now that I’m done with graduate school, I realized I now have the luxury of time to meet people and date. Dating someone new is especially thrilling: the blindingly bright future, the peculiarly electrifying uncertainty, the obnoxiously cute attachment. Don’t we all just love how relationships typically begin?

As you get to know each other better, you focus your attention on this new person. You slowly (and unknowingly) tear down the sturdy wall you built—the same wall you intended to safeguard your frailties. While this can be magical, razing this wall to the ground can be a little too scary. Exposing yourself to unpredictability can either result to sheer bliss or irreparable mayhem. Surely rattling but worth it.

Wherever my dating life leads me, I usually just try to enjoy the process and bask in the moment. In the course of time, and with the help of my prying friends, I think I’ve already figured out what works for me when I involve myself with someone. Is it being too clingy (like how I am to my date)? Is it the intensity? Case by case, but you bet.

Unfortunately for me (us?), dating is bound by etiquette—a subjective, arbitrary list of dos and don’ts. To illustrate, sex after the first date. If two people truly hit it off after a fancy dinner, sex can be the perfect night cap. But some may label this as absurd and will easily cast aspersions on either or both parties. The relativity of how things can be construed is very confusing. Are we here to subscribe to vague conventions? Or are we all about pleasuring ourselves in ways not-so normative?  

Assuming there’s a follow through. Communication is constant. The effort is there as well. You inadvertently show deep desire and all of a sudden, you feel like you’re intensely hooked on this stranger. Interpreted as weakness, clinginess picks up its age-old reputation of a baleful manifestation of a failed relationship. We tend to paint a gloomy picture when talking about overeager love—or whatever it is. This, for most parts, simply isn’t fair. A relationship’s success should not be pinned on one’s decision to take the fast lane instead of taking it step-by-step. For me, it’s all about the varying degrees of attachment each one of us is sensitive to. One’s collective dating pattern may be a good basis in determining whether or not hyperintimacy at the onset will result to something favorable. This, however, is not foolproof.

I’m clingy. I'm intense. Marupok as hell. And I don’t think I should apologize for being so. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe being clingy and intense’s about being authentic. It’s about showing what you truly feel. It is about giving your all amid the risks. In fact, I can imagine my most amazing relationship right now, and that is with someone as clingy and intense as (I think) I am.

So when does an amazing relationship happen? It happens when the both of you breezily delete dating and hookup apps the moment you imagine having a great future together. It happens when the both of you send clear signals that you wanna date and get to know each other better without intentions of just messing around. It happens when the both of you trumpet each other to family and friends because, guess what, you both want your circles overlapped. It happens when the both of you treat responses to text messages as urgent because that’s just how excited you are to share your days' stories. It happens when the both of you yearn to spend quality time with each other despite hectic schedules. Ultimately, an amazing relationship happens when the both of you do not care about looking foolish in front of each other because you both know what genuine connection can do to you.

I don’t really mind being clingy and intense—if that means being true to myself and expressing what my heart feels. I figured a rapt and positive appreciation of such clinginess and intensity can be the right context for something propitious. 

So, hey, you. Come. Let’s be clingy and intense with each other. Regardless of where this will lead us to.

[Image from: Very Well Family]

A Welcome Curse

Many of you know that I am a part of an unconventional family structure with three parents, two biological and one adoptive. I had my fair share of questions about this atypical setting, but through time, I realized how blessed I am to have Mama, Papa, and Mommy—three living parents at once. They, especially my Mom, clearly epitomized unconditional in palpable form. The love and fondness they gave me is just too difficult to describe and put into words. Most would think this is a blessing. I sometimes deem it a curse.

As a child, I was provided with almost everything. I relished all types of support I ever needed: financial, physical, emotional, psychological, name it. I was filled with so much love growing up. I vividly remember the time when I screwed up in uni. People were doubting my capabilities. I even doubted myself. Dreams were shattered almost to a point of irreparability. But Mommy was there. She believed in me when no one, including myself, did. In an instant, I was back on track.

People still wonder what the reason was for me to have eminently faltered at that time. And as some of you might have guessed, it was all because of love. I fell deeply in love, a love without regard to anything, not even self-destruction. In introspection, I ask: why am I capable of giving too much love, leaving nothing for myself?

I trace it back to the curse. I have been loved dearly by many. By some means, I feel the compulsion to share the same love with the people around me. The feeling is relentless. This self-imposed coercion even intensifies when romance enters the picture. I become unusually aggressive. Most of the time, my no-chill attitude gets in the way. The likelihood of a premature end is high. 

Is it really a bad idea to give it your all? Do you really have to give in to these unnecessary reservations and just wait for the magic to happen without lifting a finger?

A few weeks ago, I started dating again. Surprisingly, I found myself heftily swiping, mostly to the right, after a relatively long period of hiatus. By some stroke of luck, I matched with a Boston-born-Seoul-raised-NJ-NYC-schooled lawyer. The profile was admittedly interesting. The photo captions and responses were candidly intriguing. Who wouldn’t find a lawyer whose actual frustration is becoming a novelist riveting? Immediately after I was push notified of the match, I sent a straightforward hi to break the ice. Seconds later, I got a response. The conversations went on and there simply was chemistry. I am particularly attracted to how this yuppie pivoted trivial subjects to sensible and philosophical discussions. For the first time, after lurking in what is believed to be a haven of immaturity and mundaneness, an odd one out.

As the connection deepened, the thought of finally meeting in the flesh also surfaced. I suggested the idea of having a casual dinner to kick off the face-to-face getting to know, as I would normally do. We both agreed to check out this new dim sum spot in the East Village, an idea that resonates a lot with our Asian heritage. We had a good meal and decided to grab a scoop of ice cream at a nearby artisanal shop. A couple of hours didn’t seem to be enough for our conversations so we ended up moving to a tea shop a few a blocks away from Union Square. I was engrossed. Casually, I found out that the lawyer I was talking to is Princeton- and Columbia- educated. And what’s astonishing is that this piece of information didn’t throw me off the track. I would normally be awestruck by such stellar academic accomplishments. But I wasn’t. We talked about our families, our brand of politics, our interests, our future plans. Time went by so fast. We only decided to wrap up when we had no other choice but to leave as the barista was already kicking us out of the place.

“Thanks. I had a wonderful time. Good night,” I said through a text message.

“Don’t thank me. I had a wonderful time too. Good night.”

I felt the arbitrary and inexplicable connection right then and there. I knew that something could blossom from it. I was never the type to get excited by hookups and anything carnal. This instance just proved that genuine connection can be established at the onset, and the physical and non-physical may be compartmentalized. To some extent, the feeling was magical. It, however, became taxing because of all the overthinking I was subconsciously doing. I’ve become too fixated with the possibilities and the idea of us dating, for the lack of a better term, entertained me. My tortuous mind consumed me.

Days after, we still exchanged hi’s, hello’s, and a few interesting thoughts. Us hanging out for the second time was definitely something we talked about. We even exchanged wink emojis as a way to spice up the conversation. But all of a sudden, there was silence—the deafening kind. Maybe that’s the end of it all? Who knows.

Through the years, I have developed a reputation of having a voracious dating appetite. Do I think it’s startling? Not necessarily. I believe chemistry is extremely hard to find. When you find it, hang on tight. You’ll eventually find someone who’s gonna hold on tighter. Don’t blame yourself for going “overboard”. You’ll eventually meet someone who will appreciate all of you and your hopeless romantic crap.

I recall a conversation I recently had with a colleague. He said that the relationship you have/had with your parents, albeit of a different kind, speaks a lot about how you are and will be as a partner. This relationship molds your personality and influences the thought process and mindset you will eventually have. This made me ponder. True enough, as in my case, the undying fervor and infinite affection I got from my parents pushed me to be the kind of lover I am today. Sometimes lenient, but most of the time intense. At times, I see myself fearing the unexpected: becoming a cynical and an incapable-of-loving monster. But a snap back to reality tells me that having such fears is a healthy sign of humanity. Having such preposterous thought reminds me of the level of awareness I have as regards my environment and my reality. It goes without saying that I am not yet the person who I fear to be. And for this, I just continue to thank heavens that even after all the failed relationships and missed connections, I still am my usual self. I remain hopeful without the need to build walls around me.

I know I am cursed and I don’t mind. At all.

[Image from: Big Love Ball NYC]