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How Rejection Sensitivity Affects Your Romantic Relationships

By January 20, 2025Blog
rejection sensitivity & romantic relationships

Rejection Sensitivity Takes You Away From Your Goals

Is rejection sensitivity sabotaging your relationships? It could be that you’re dating to search for lasting love, are in a romantic relationship, or that the relationships with your friends and family are being affected by your anxious relating. Or perhaps you have a relationship with someone that is being hindered by their sensitivity to rejection.

Rejection sensitivity is the tendency to anxiously expect, easily perceive, and intensely react to rejection.

As such, it can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby those who are hyper-fearful of rejection think, and thus subsequently behave, in ways that evoke rejection from others. It’s a vicious cycle.

Repetitive thoughts do that. They lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, for better or for worse. This is why affirmations are so powerful for displacing repetitive negative thoughts and a propensity for negative thinking with positive thoughts and a natural tendency for positive thinking, both consciously and subconsciously, thus leading to conscious and subconscious behaviours that positively affect you and your life.

Of course, with something like rejection sensitivity, you also have to look at what else is behind that type of behaviour in addition to the repetitive negative thoughts. For example, it could be your attachment style, such as anxious or avoidant attachment, or previous relationship trauma.

Furthermore, how does relationship sensitivity affect your dating journey and romantic relationships?

 

Rejection Sensitivity & Romantic Relationships Research

To shed a light on how rejection sensitivity relates to romantic relationships, researchers conducted a scientific review of 60 studies with a combined total of 16,955 participants [1]. So, let’s take a look at what they found, along with some notes from me as bullet points.

 

Dating

Those higher in rejection sensitivity tended to date less frequently offline, but dated more frequently online than less rejection sensitive individuals.

 

  • Whilst rejection can still happen during online dating, one may find it easier to have the distance online dating affords as it allows daters opportunities to justify rejection, thus reducing its detrimental effect, with reasons such as, ‘They don’t even know me so they are not rejecting me’, ‘I don’t know if they even looked at my profile properly’, and so on.

 

  • With online dating, one isn’t able to see visual cues of rejection, making it less anxiety-provoking for rejection sensitive individuals who tend to be hyper-alert for cues of rejection.

 

Positive Relationship Factors

Rejection sensitive individuals tended to experience lower relationship satisfaction, perceived their partner to have lower relationship satisfaction, experienced less relationship closeness, and had lower levels of romantic expression.

However, rejection sensitivity had no bearing on relationship commitment.

 

  • Rejection sensitivity is found amongst people with insecure attachment styles and this means they are likely to engage in thoughts and behaviours that are relationship-sabotaging such as worrying about whether they are worthy of love; being clingy, or flitting between being closeness and distance; requiring lots of reassurance; and being hyper vigilant for signs of rejection for fear of abandonment. So this could explain such findings.

 

  • Attachment style aside, the tendency to anxiously expect, easily perceive, and intensely react to rejection means that simple interactions can be fraught with ‘danger’ for the rejection sensitive individual, resulting in the use of distance from one’s partner as a form of defence mechanism leading to less relationship closeness and lower relationship satisfaction.

 

  • Greater fear of rejection can lead to more tentative attempts to express oneself romantically, thereby reducing romantic expression.

 

  • Given the hyper-vigilance and a greater chance of misunderstanding their partner’s interactions as being of a negative, rejecting nature, and their fear of abandonment, it’s easier for relationship interactions to be seen as ‘proof’ of their partner’s lack of relationship satisfaction. Neutral and even positive communications and other interactions can be easily misconstrued as a sign of relationship issues.

 

Negative Relationship Factors

Both intimate partner violence perpetration and intimate partner violence victimisation were associated with rejection sensitivity, meaning there was a greater likelihood that rejection sensitive individuals would either inflict intimate partner violence on their romantic partner or be a victim of it.

 

  • The former reflects a hostile, aggressive, dangerous disposition whereby the rejection sensitive person behaves in an entitled manner when they feel their unreasonable needs are not being met, and channel their negative emotions outwards towards their victims. Think dark triad traits – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism (all linked to a higher prevalence for insecure attachment styles [2, 3, 4]) – which overlap with one another meaning that if one person has one trait, they usually have aspects of one or both of the other traits. Such violent perpetration can be verbal, physical, or sexual, direct or indirect, and take place online or offline.

 

  • The latter reflects those who may stay in an abusive relationship due to fear of rejection, and a lack of confidence in one’s own worth.

 

Rejection sensitive individuals also had a higher likelihood of experiencing romantic relationship conflict.

 

  • As they are hyper-vigilant to ‘threats’, they are more likely to engage in conflict and/or induce conflict in their romantic partner due to how they behave, for example, misconstruing inane interactions, using unhelpful tactics to seek reassurance, or being inordinately jealous.

 

Rejection sensitive persons were more likely to engage in self-silencing behaviour. This connection was more prevalent in rejection sensitive women than men.

 

  • This could be how they try to hold on to a relationship, even when it is unhealthy, like those who are victims of intimate partner violence. It may also be how they try to quickly diffuse tense situations with their partner. In doing so, they would not be relating authentically which could lead to further relationship problems and/or staying in the wrong relationship for too long.

 

Rejection sensitive individuals also perceived themselves as having less power in their romantic relationship.

 

  • Due to being fearful of rejection and even abandonment, they may see themselves as unable to exert control and so end up feeling as though they have less power in the relationship which in turn will have a knock-on effect on their worth, leading to a negative spiral where both influence one another reciprocally.

 

Sexual Factors

Rejection sensitivity was linked to a greater likelihood of engaging in risky sexual behaviour (such as unprotected sex with a new sexual partner) and a higher likelihood of sexual compulsiveness (sexual addiction).

 

  • The former likely reflects being eager to please and appease when that feels easier than feeling ‘rejected’, and the latter could be a way to suppress the uncomfortable, anxious sensations of rejection sensitivity with a stronger and more pleasurable sensation.

 

You Can Change Your Propensity For Rejection Sensitivity

Remember that rejection sensitivity is the tendency to anxiously expect, easily perceive, and intensely react to rejection. It is, by its very nature, counter-productive to healthy, happy relationships.

Even if a partner is having personal issues they are struggling with, a rejection sensitive person may see their partner’s words, body language, or behaviours as a sign of their partner being upset with them or not truly loving them when this may be wholly incorrect. Overcoming this requires good communication, a keen motivation to understand one another, and to better use one’s thoughts in a manner that will be conducive to togetherness, empathy and compassion for one another.

And whether you’re dating and looking for lasting love, or are in a relationship, if you’re not being your authentic self then you will be uncomfortable, anxious, and unable to know whether you and they are a good fit. A core fundamental of happy relationships is being authentic.

If you recognise yourself in any of the above, then know that you can change your attachment style, you can heal your past relationship traumas, and you can prune away any unhealthy relationships in your life once you decide to. It’s up to you.

 

References

1. Mishra, M., & Allen, M. S. (2023). Rejection sensitivity and romantic relationships: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 208, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112186

2. Ellina, E., & Parpottas, P. (2023). The Role of Narcissism and Attachment in Adult Romantic Relationships: A Study of Greek-speaking Adult Participants. The European Journal of Counselling Psychology. https://doi.org/10.46853/001c.84014

3. Nickisch, A., Palazova, M., & Ziegler, M. (2020). Dark personalities – dark relationships? An investigation of the relation between the Dark Tetrad and attachment styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110227

4. Set, Z. (2021). Mediating Role of Narcissism, Vulnerable Narcissism, and Self-Compassion in the Relationship Between Attachment Dimensions and Psychopathology. Alpha Psychiatry, 22(3), 147–152. https://doi.org/10.5455/apd.99551

 

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