“Are you Mad at Me?” Obsessively Seeking Reassurance
Couples often come to therapy who turn out to have quite uneven levels of self-confidence. One person is relatively self-assured, while the other tends to struggle. They each may have moods, or temporary circumstances, that bring out the opposite—but their general baseline is asymmetrical. In many of these couples (not all), the underconfident one is chronically worried about how he or she is being perceived by the other person. And the worry tends to be excessive, both because it’s unrealistic (i.e., poorly calibrated to the real interactions), and because it’s inappropriately intense.
This dynamic can arise in any arrangement of genders. That said, I’ll randomly choose a pair for this post so I don’t have to keep the prose so generic. But any other combination can be found exhibiting the same pattern.
Suppose we’re talking about a somewhat anxious man and a more grounded woman. He may be in the habit of seeking reassurance by asking, “Are you mad at me?” The good news, of course, is that she often is not mad at all, and it costs only a moment’s effort to provide the requested reassurance. The trouble is, it doesn’t do much to dispel the anxiety that prompts it, if the anxiety is obsessive anyway.
Furthermore, the question is presented as an inquiry about the other person, but it isn’t really asking about her. It’s more of a statement: I now need another shot of reassurance, please. So it’s both a request, and a report about the speaker’s inner state of anxiety and affect-hunger. What it is not, is the very thing its literal meaning presents it to be: an expression of interest in how the other person is actually feeling. This mismatch between the question’s overt meaning and its real use can be annoying. It’s not just that the question is repeated too often; it’s that the wording reminds the less-anxious partner that the anxious one is so preoccupied with seeking reassurance that they can’t get around to giving much.
Couplehood is about taking turns, but obsessive reassurance-seeking makes it hard for the seeker to do that. Despite the exceptions, it can sometimes feel like it’s always the seeker’s turn, because they’re in more need. One of the less healthy ways to balance that out, is to let things build until the other person actually does get mad. A fight happens, or something like it, whose subject is this lopsidedness in the emotional balance of trade between Me Land, and the Republic of You. Promises are made, contact resumes, and the whole thing resets—until the next time the cycle reaches the same point.
Once a couple has been made aware of this, they may well be able to retire the phrase, more or less. Again, “Are you mad at me” is about the speaker’s need for reassurance; it’s a self-report (about feeling inadequate, guilty, undesirable, or rejected), and a reach for reconnection. Either of these two aims is better achieved directly, without the indirection of “Are you mad at me?”
When you feel the impulse to ask that question, slow down a bit, and ask yourself which feels more urgent: expressing your personal distress, or connecting to your partner? If it’s the former, do that plainly. Say you feel nervous, or glum, or whatever it is. If reaching for connection is uppermost, “How are you doing?” is much more warm and genuine than “Are you mad at me” can ever be. It also performs a bit of emotional labor, instead of demanding it.
Consider the content, too. Before you go ahead and wheel out the old “Are you mad at me?”, ask yourself just what hunch you’ve got, as to what might be causing the possible anger that you’re wondering about. Do you have any inkling what it might be? You probably do, and it might be best to go for that directly, instead of the open-ended option. This thing you’re worrying about—in your judgment, was it something that would irritate you, or no?
If you really think the regrettable remark (or some other misstep) was worth your partner’s anger, it might be more useful to explain how it happened, and express concern about how it affected the one you care about.
If you think the thing was not worth getting angry about, you may be better off just dropping it, and seeking reassurance by the very different path of giving some: do a chore, offer a compliment, or ask a question that’s genuinely about the other person’s experience.
When you give, you’re likely to receive.
The better you take care of yourself, the less emotional labor your partner will have to do.
Now here’s an analogy. One of the happy surprises of the Kennedy Administration was that when JFK lowered taxes on business, it turned out that the government collected more tax money than before. The lower taxes left the businesses with more cash to invest in R&D, capital improvements, new hires, better wages and salaries to attract new talent, and so on—with the result that their profits grew, so they paid more money to Uncle Sam, despite the lower percentage he asked them for. President Kennedy’s genius was to gratify the haves with lower taxes, and the have-nots with improved social services using the increased tax revenues from the cuts.
The point is that this can apply to relationships, too. If you go to therapy, get more exercise, improve your nutrition, maybe try meditation or yoga—anything that will wean you off the stress hormones your body and brain have learned to expect, and raise your emotional baseline—your partner will have less work to do. That may make him or her more disposed to give you the words of affection, quality time, acts of service, gifts, and physical touch that you crave.
As you achieve more self-love, what flows from your partner to you will be more of a freely chosen gesture, rather than a hasty triage for all those micro-emergencies that anxiety produces.
The better care you take of yourself, the higher the quality of the love you are likely to receive in your relationship.