How To Recognize Signs You Have Abandonment Issues ( & What To do About It)

The dreaded feeling of being left, feeling unwanted or feeling rejected  can have debilitating impact on our relationships. When you  are scared of losing someone you love and make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, you can sabotage your relationship if you don’t get it treated. Here’s how to recognize signs you have abandonment issues and what you can do about it.

When you experience fears of abandonment, you can do anything to prevent someone from leaving you, when you perceive threats that may not really exist.

As a couples therapist, I notice that a person with abandonment issues might instigate fights to keep a partner from walking away from an argument. This is an attempt to prevent a partner from leaving.

A partner walking away from an argument can stir up fears of abandonment and lead to protesting, such as using complaints or criticism to draw them back into the conversation, as a bid for connection, to be heard.

John Bowlby used the term protesting to depict a child having an emotional meltdown as a way of eliciting the parent to respond to their emotional needs. In a similar way, adults can also have emotional tantrum, as complaints or criticism, in order to elicit a response from their partner as a bid for connection. But this has the opposite effect and causes their partner to feel attacked and pull away, thereby inflaming the fear of abandonment.

John Bowlby’s attachment theory provides a framework for understanding these dynamics. Bowlby identified that separation anxiety in children produces “protest behaviors” and that these patterns frequently persist into adulthood as insecure attachment styles.

The fear of abandonment can be depicted in children suffering signs of separation anxiety whereby they get distressed when the parent leaves the room or drops them off at day care.

When the child has not internalized a secure relationship with the care giver, they can continue to latch onto the caregiver to avoid feelings of abandonment or separation, and continue to cling to partners in subsequent relationships.

A person who lacks a sense of object constancy or object permanence feels the relationship is not stable or secure whenever there are minor conflicts, setbacks, or when a partner goes away on a business trip. They may feel their partner is no longer available for them, if they are not in close contact with them or experience moments of separation from them.

In extreme cases of borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorders, a person can feel intense feelings of abandonment or emptiness when they are unable to grab their partner’s attention, and will become overly dramatic or distressed to get their partner’s attention. Psychoanalyst James Masterson’s concept of “object constancy” is also relevant—those lacking this capacity may experience what he termed “abandonment depression,” characterized by overwhelming panic, anxiety, emptiness, and distress when facing perceived rejection.

Holding onto unrequited love may be a way of protecting oneself from facing feelings of abandonment that would emerge if they were able to let go. Staying attached stops them healing those abandonment wounds. Letting go of the relationship releases the abandonment feelings and therefore holding onto relationships is a way of escaping the pain of abandonment and restoring the feeling of being loved, even though it may be a fantasy they’re holding onto and not reality. James Masterson calls this the abandonment depression, whereby a person feels panic, anxiety, depression and emptiness.

So, how can you tell if you suffer from separation anxiety?

Here’s 20 Telltale Signs You Have Abandonment Issues

1. Monitoring your partner: Constantly checking and tracking of a partner’s activities
2. Seeking Constant Reassurance: Persistent need for validation and attention
3. Jumping from one relationship to another: Unable to be alone
4. Disproportionate Reactions: Worry that minor disagreements will end the relationship
5. Looking for problems: Reading into everything and finding issues to fix
6. Relationship Preoccupation: Intense emotional investment in the other and getting easily attached
7. Controlling a partner: Making partners feel trapped so they do not leave by isolating them or making them dependent
8. Accusations: Looking for evidence to support your fear of losing a person
9. Protesting: Using fights as a last attempt to be heard as a protest or bid for connection
10. Testing: Pushing the boundaries or testing your partner’s love, such as threatening to leave to see how much they care.
11. Sabotaging: Subconsciously doing something that destroys the relationship to avoid potential rejection
12. Settling for less:  Putting up with too much because you do not want to let go of the person
13. Abandoning yourself: Fear losing your partner if you say how you feel or stand up for yourself
14. Mistrust and insecurity: Feelings of jealousy or insecurity; expecting your partner to find better.
15. Emotional Manipulation:  Using guilt trips or punishment to get a partner to comply with your wishes or demands
16. Separation Distress: Experiencing emptiness or anxiety during normal, brief separations
17. Unfounded Suspicion: Intrusive thoughts about infidelity or abandonment without evidence
18. Rejection Anticipation: Constantly looking for signs of potential abandonment
19. Being needy or clingy: Inability to function independently, requiring constant contact
20. Attachment to Unavailability: Being fixation on unattainable individuals to avoid getting attached to a person who can leave

A common sign that a person has abandonment issues is when they are preoccupied with thoughts of someone leaving, feeling uncomfortable with departures or brief encounters of separation from a loved one. A person with an abandonment wound can look into things that are not happening in order to find ways to protect themselves from the fear of a partner leaving.

What can you do if you are showing signs of having abandonment issues? If you want to overcome the feeling of being abandoned, you can seek treatment for abandonment issues.

You can push someone away, if you are constantly thinking that they will abandon you. No one wants to be accused of something they’re not doing, whereby it might eventually end up becoming self-fulfilling that they abandon you when they feel you do not trust them.

So, what do you do if you’re suffering signs of abandonment issues?

All of these behaviors’ may momentarily alleviate the pain of feeling abandoned,  but they can sabotage your relationships if you don’t know how to deal with your triggers.  If you notice you have a fear of abandonment, therapy allows you to work through the feelings of abandonment to overcome the fear and interrupt the behaviors by unlearning the patterns derived from anxious attachment.

Despite being deeply rooted in early attachment experiences, abandonment issues respond well to targeted therapeutic interventions. With proper treatment, individuals can develop more secure attachment patterns and healthier relationships.

Effective management of abandonment fears allows individuals to break self-defeating relationship cycles and develop capacity for secure, fulfilling connections characterized by healthy interdependence rather than anxious attachment.

The Psychotherapy addresses unconscious patterns stemming from early attachment experiences. By exploring developmental origins of abandonment anxiety, individuals gain insight into current relationship dynamics. The Masterson method specifically addresses separation sensitivity, rejection sensitivity, anxious attachment, borderline personality traits, and avoidant tendencies.

In my therapy practice I help clients to work through the underlying abandonment feelings so they can manage emotional triggers and learn how to respond in ways that do not push away their partner away to avoid feelings of abandonment. According to James Masterson, acting-out behaviors, such as the ones I depicted in the list, are an attempt to avoid being abandoned or feelings  of abandonment, and once the feelings are worked through in therapy, these behaviours go away.

Nancy Carbone has a M.Soc Sc (Couns) who is a relationship therapist who helps her clients clients struggling with abandonment issues to break through the barriers to get the love they want. For more information contact 0449861147  or  send an email