How would I go about dealing with abandonment issues?

Hey,

Great to virtually meet you. 

Patterns of relating, or the way we work with other people can be ingrained, and there since childhood, we learn these early on and can go on for a long time realizing these are no longer working for us and trying to change these. 

This kind of work can take some time to do and is really best suited to therapy, and a type of therapy that looks at relationships, or attachment styles, transactional analysis, and integrative therapies can be really helpful here. This can be a difficult task to complete alone. 

Transactional analysis sounds a little fancy but it takes the interactions and looks at where these are going wrong, and how we can go about looking at them in different ways that feel more helpful, and more functional. Stephen Karpman and the drama triangle are a really good way to get some insight into if this is the right therapy for you and may offer you some solutions in dealing with this relationship in a slightly different way in relation to communication. 

This is a long read but take a look here:

https://www.changeboard.com/article-details/17186/nutshell-how-to-escape-the-drama-triangle/

Eric Bearne also wrote about the games people play again this is a long read but may be helpful to take a look to see if you and your partner are being drawn into games. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) also may be really helpful in supporting some change here as well, learning when the feeling of the abandonment is being triggered and recognizing the emotions and thoughts here then learning new ways to think feel and behave through talking about what's going on for you and developing new thoughts can be really helpful. 

In any relationship it can be super important to have really good boundaries and a healthy agreement between the two of you, taking time to sit down and consider your expectations and have a conversation around this can also be really important. Once you have this initial agreement in place its also helpful to decide when you are going to review this and keep it up to date. 

Online there are some really good relationship contracts and it may be worth taking a look at relate.org.uk to see some of the resources that they have. 

Take care

Neil