Do You Have One Foot Out the Door in Your Relationship?
I want to get real here: Are you always, somewhere in the back of your mind, searching for a way to break free from your relationship?
Are you always thinking through your escape route? Your exit plan? Do you have one foot out the door?
Even though your partner is loving and caring, you can't stop this broken record of thoughts about bolting. It’s like you’re standing just inside the door of your relationship, but you can’t quite bring yourself to take off your coat and shoes. You’re huddled by the door instead of cozy on the couch. Your hand is on the doorknob, and you’re ready to go if needed, even though there’s no obvious reason to leave.*
If this is you, I want to talk about why this is happening, because it may not be what you think.
Mainstream relationship advice tells us things like…
If you don’t feel fully committed, then it must not be the right relationship.
If it’s not a f*** yes, it’s a f*** no.
But I don’t buy into these surface level explanations. Instead, I want us to dig deeper to uncover the underlying fears, traumas, and limiting beliefs that hold us back from fully leaning into healthy, loving relationships.
So… What’s the real reason you don’t feel comfortable enough to take your hand off the doorknob and step in with both feet? I’m Chelsea Horton, a relationship coach, body-mind integration expert, and the founder of Healing Embodied, and I’m here to help you answer that question.
Commitment is Scary — Period
The fear of commitment or intimacy often gets pathologized in mainstream conversations about relationships. If someone is a “commitment phobe,” there’s something wrong with them. Maybe they suffered a trauma or betrayal in the past, and as a result, they can’t bring themselves to trust anyone.
And while it’s true that trauma and violations of trust can absolutely contribute to a fear of commitment and intimacy, feeling intimidated by these things is actually pretty damn universal — committing to something like a (hopefully) life-long partnership is a big deal, and it understandably freaks us out.
Psychotherapist Ken Page puts it like this:
“Fear of intimacy isn’t a character flaw rendering us unfit for intimacy; it is part of being human. If we’re breathing, we have fear of intimacy. The real question is: How do we keep love at arm’s length, and what can we do to [shift that pattern]?”
So, the first thing we can do to help ourselves lean more fully into our relationships is to acknowledge the courageous task we’re asking ourselves to take on. Committing to a long-term relationship with another person takes courage, heart, and a willingness to face our own internal world and the internal world of someone else. This is not lighthearted work, and feeling scared doesn’t mean your relationship is doomed.
Getting To Know Your Fear
When we’re afraid of something, it usually means we believe on some level that we’re in danger. If you fear stepping with two feet into your relationship, this could mean you subconsciously believe it's not safe to fully commit and invest.
But where did this belief come from?
For most of us, commitment and intimacy are terrifying because they require immense vulnerability. Even if we’ve never been hurt or betrayed, most of us haven’t had enough healthy experiences of emotional vulnerability in our lives. We may not trust the experience of sharing and engaging so deeply with another person because it’s uncharted territory — and as humans, we’re hardwired to fear things we don’t understand or haven’t experienced yet.
On top of all this, many of us have been hurt and betrayed in relationships in the past, which primes us to feel even more hesitant and untrusting of vulnerability, intimacy, and commitment in the present. Maybe you’ve even witnessed pain, heartbreak, and loss in other people’s relationships, like parents or close friends. People who grow up watching parents struggle through difficult relationships tend to face more challenges later on, especially when it comes to intimacy and commitment.
If your experiences of love and commitment are wrapped up with memories of pain and loss, you might start to believe these things are worth being afraid of or even avoiding altogether. By holding yourself in a one-foot-out-the-door position in your relationship, you might go through the motions of commitment without actually fully investing on an emotional level. You don’t do this because you don’t love your partner — you do it because you’re trying to protect yourself from the pain you might experience if you fully invest in something that doesn’t go according to plan.
Because that’s what’s underneath the fear of commitment: We’re afraid of committing to something that won’t last, that isn’t “enough,” that might leave us empty and alone in the long run. We’re afraid of getting hurt.
So, having one foot out the door becomes the safer alternative, because it lets the fearful, wounded parts of us keep their armor on just in case… But if we want to experience true intimacy and connection, we eventually have to take the armor off.
Taking Off the Armour — Moving Beyond the Fear of Commitment
If you want to be able to commit to your amazing partner without constantly planning your exit strategy, here's what you need to do.
First, you must learn to face your fear by understanding what drives it.
Get curious with yourself. Start feeling into why love and commitment feel so scary.
What stories or experiences from your life have contributed to this fear?
What cultural messages have you absorbed that have left you believing deep down that commitment isn’t safe?
Digging into these fears can feel overwhelming and intimidating, so we recommend approaching this work with the help of an experienced therapist or coach. Through Healing Embodied, I’ve built my life’s work around supporting people who want to courageously yet compassionately explore their fears in order to cultivate a deeper capacity for intimacy and love.
Once you understand the roots of your fears and build some capacity for engaging with those feelings, you will need to learn how to feel safe being “all in” in your relationship.
This is not something that happens in the mind. We cannot think our way into feeling safe in a relationship. Instead, this process must involve the body, which is why our approach at Healing Embodied focuses on somatics, or the way experiences and emotions show up in the body. By meeting your emotions where they are — in your body — you can fundamentally transform your relationship to them.
For this work to be lasting, you must gradually rewire the subconscious connections between your body and mind that automatically leave you feeling unsafe in vulnerability, pulling away from love and connection with your partner.
None of this work is easy, and it can’t happen overnight. It requires unlearning years of rehearsed fear patterns that have deeply taken hold in your nervous system. But I can confidently say, after experiencing this transformative change in my own life and helping hundreds of other people around the world create the same kind of change, it is absolutely possible to create new patterns of security, connection, and love.
You do not have to live with one foot in and one foot out forever.
Cultivating Safety Within with Healing Embodied
Instead of always thinking through your exit plan…
Instead of constantly imagining what it would feel like to leave…
Instead of feeling forever split between where you are and where you could be…
Imagine being able to envision a future with your partner with a sense of wholehearted commitment and joy.
Healing Embodied is here to support you if you want help understanding and facing your fears of commitment and intimacy. We’re here to help you cultivate the type of love, safety, security, and presence you crave with your partner, and we truly believe having dedicated support in this process makes all the difference.
As dedicated somatic coaches focusing on the way fear impacts relationships, our team at Healing Embodied offers 1:1 coaching, live group programs, and self-paced courses to help you approach this life-changing work.
If starting with a self-paced course is your speed, check out our Safety Within course, which has helped hundreds of people develop the skills needed to start establishing a sense of internal safety and trust when relationship fears arise.
To work with us directly, apply for a free clarity call or check out our live group program, Rock Solid Relationship.
We can’t wait to help you step all the way in and claim the love that’s right in front of you.
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*The guidance in this article does not apply to relationships with any type of abuse. If you are feeling the desire to leave your relationship because you feel mistreated or abused in any way, please seek support elsewhere.