Reassurance Seeking in Relationships: Why It Happens and How to Stop

“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” “Do you still love me?” “Do you still want to be with me?” – if you find yourself constantly asking these questions in your relationship, you might be reassurance seeking.

Reassurance seeking is often intertwined with a sense of anxiety, and the reassurance never actually leaves you feeling reassured for long, if at all. Both partners can be impacted by one partner’s reassurance seeking, and the relationship can suffer if it’s not addressed early.

In this article, we’ll explain what reassurance seeking looks like and why you need constant reassurance, how to stop seeking reassurance, how to support a reassurance seeking partner, and what this all has to do with your attachment style.

What Reassurance Seeking Actually Is

Reassurance seeking in relationships is a habitual, compulsive tendency to ask for reassurance from your partner that the relationship and their feelings haven’t changed. Psychologists define it as:

“The relatively stable tendency to excessively and persistently seek assurances from others that one is lovable and worthy, regardless of whether such assurance has already been provided.”¹

Looking for reassurance from time to time isn’t a bad thing in itself, but when it’s constant, and the answer doesn’t change how you feel, it’s worth looking into the reasons for this behavior and how to stop it.

Am I Reassurance Seeking?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you might be reassurance seeking:

• Is there an underlying sense of anxiety behind me asking questions?
• Does the anxiety stick around, or come back soon, after the questions are answered?
• When the urge to ask for reassurance arises, do you feel able to control it?

Reassurance seeking doesn’t actually give you reassurance – what you’re really looking for is relief or validation. When you feel reassured, you’re still putting your trust in someone to believe that what they say is true – if the underlying problem is relationship anxiety and difficulties trusting, your partner’s reassurance will not be enough.

This is where your attachment style comes into play.

Reassurance Seeking and Attachment

Attachment anxiety is conceptually associated with a need for reassurance, so it’s no surprise that studies have found significant correlations between reassurance seeking and attachment anxiety². Attachment avoidance, on the other hand, typically has no association with reassurance seeking – some studies find people high in attachment avoidance are actually less likely to look for information about their partner’s internal world³.

One study found that for women with high attachment anxiety and men with high attachment avoidance, their own excessive reassurance seeking was associated with lower levels of trust the next day⁴. However, partners of men who were high in attachment avoidance and engaged in reassurance seeking actually reported higher trust the next day, as did women with high attachment anxiety whose partners engaged in reassurance seeking.

Further, women who are low in attachment anxiety have been found to have a more positive mood the day after reassurance seeking, while women high in attachment anxiety feel lower². It seems that it’s not as simple as one attachment style being more likely to reassurance seek than the other – although this is true, the context of reassurance seeking matters when it comes to its impact.

Where the Need for Reassurance Comes From

Since people high in attachment anxiety tend to base their self-worth on how others view them, it makes sense that they can fall into reassurance seeking. Especially if this actually serves to lower trust in their relationship, if they don’t feel reassured enough by the responses, then they only need to seek even more reassurance.

There’s also been a noted association between reassurance seeking and depression, although attachment insecurity has been found to be a better predictor for reassurance seeking than depression⁴.

Reassurance seeking can also happen outside of the context of relationships. You might reassurance seek about whether people think there’s something wrong with you, whether people think something bad might happen, or whether everything is generally okay, for example. This can be quite common in OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), in which reassurance seeking can be a way to cope with distressing intrusive thoughts. For more about OCD in the context of relationships, read about ROCD (relationship-OCD).

Real Life Examples of Reassurance Seeking

Reassurance seeking can take different forms. A few examples are:

• Asking your partner repeatedly if they still love you.
• Constantly checking in on your partner’s mood; always asking if they’re okay.
• Always asking your partner what they’re thinking about.
• Repeatedly checking that your partner still wants to be with you.
• Regularly asking your partner questions about how they feel about you.

It’s natural to seek reassurance sometimes. Here’s an example of normal reassurance seeking compared with compulsively seeking reassurance:

Normal reassurance seeking

Dana has been feeling low lately, and she’s been overanalyzing her partner’s actions. Worried they’re starting to pull away, Dana decides to check in. She says:

“I know I haven’t been myself lately. It might be in my imagination but I feel like you’ve been more distant than usual, and I just wanted to check whether you feel that way.”

Dana’s partner reassures her that they haven’t been more distant on purpose, and plans a date to make sure they’re still connecting. Dana still feels low and a little uncertain, but she trusts her partner and doesn’t feel the need to ask again.

Compulsive reassurance seeking

Liam often feels anxious about his relationship. When he feels his partner is pulling away, he has an urge to check in – even though his partner has previously expressed that they feel overwhelmed by his need to be reassured often. He asks:

“Do you still love me?”

His partner says yes, but they’re clearly frustrated by the repeated question. Liam feels anxious because of their apparent frustration, and the need for reassurance doesn’t go away. Next time the urge to ask arises, Liam once again finds it difficult not to act on it.

Why Reassurance Backfires Over Time

The example of compulsive reassurance seeking shows how it actually leads to an even deeper need for reassurance. Even if Liam’s partner didn’t show frustration, the relief after this kind of reassurance seeking is only temporary. This is an example of the anxiety cycle:

When we feel anxious about a relationship, seeking reassurance is a quick-fix that doesn’t address the underlying problem. When we get that reassurance and a feeling of relief, we’re training our brains to think: “asking for reassurance got rid of my discomfort. Next time I feel uncomfortable, I can do that again.” Because you’ve strengthened the brain connections without resolving the problem, the next time you feel the urge to ask, it will be sooner and stronger than the last, and you’ll need more reassurance to feel the relief.

This is how reassurance seeking becomes an anxious spiral. We only break the cycle by addressing the anxiety and the underlying problem, instead of avoiding the feeling and looking for relief.

How to Break the Reassurance-Seeking Cycle

Breaking the reassurance seeking cycle requires you to learn to sit with discomfort. Building your emotion regulation skills can help you to do this – mindfulness can help, and cognitive reframing is especially useful when your anxiety comes with specific thoughts.

It can be more beneficial to try to delay seeking reassurance in small increments, increasing each time, than trying to ignore the urge entirely. It might help to communicate with your partner that you’re working on it, particularly if they’ve already expressed a frustration or discomfort with your reassurance seeking behavior.

Taking time to understand the patterns underlying your reassurance seeking can help you to address what’s really going on. Consider the role of your attachment style – if you don’t know your levels of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, take our free attachment quiz.

Supporting a Partner Who Seeks Constant Reassurance

If your partner is the one who’s reassurance seeking, it’s normal that you might find it frustrating. It can feel like nothing you do or say is good enough, and you might feel guilty on top of that for reacting this way. This is all okay and normal to feel, and your feelings matter too.

It might feel like the best thing you can do is to give them the reassurance they’re looking for, but as explained above, this is actually reinforcing the reassurance seeking cycle. Next time your partner asks for reassurance, try asking them a question in return: what is it they really need? What’s the feeling underneath the need for reassurance? A calm, caring conversation about the underlying patterns in your relationship might reveal things that help you both to understand each other better.

Conclusions

Reassurance seeking easily becomes a downward spiral, so it can be difficult to break the habit. Even though it might leave you with an instant sense of relief, the need for reassurance can come back around quickly if the underlying problem isn’t addressed. Seeking a little reassurance from time to time is normal, but needing constant reassurance can be damaging to your relationship.

Some people actually experience higher trust after reassurance seeking – if your partner has lower attachment anxiety, or more attachment avoidance than you, then their reassurance seeking might actually make you feel closer to them. However, in general, constant reassurance seeking is a sign that something needs to be addressed.

To find out your emotional regulation score, take our free emotion regulation test.

FAQs About Reassurance Seeking

Why do I need constant reassurance in a relationship?

If you need constant reassurance in a relationship, you might be dealing with a strong sense of anxiety. This could be attachment anxiety, anxiety in the general sense, or both. Reassurance is a temporary relief, so constant reassurance seeking actually reinforces the anxiety underneath.

Is reassurance seeking always OCD?

Reassurance seeking can be a response to intrusive, distressing thoughts in OCD, but it isn’t always OCD. OCD is a complex disorder with several components that can only be diagnosed by a qualified professional.

Is reassurance seeking a compulsion?

Seeking reassurance can feel compulsive. Normal reassurance seeking does not feel like an uncontrollable urge, but problematic reassurance seeking can feel like a compulsion you can’t completely control.

Is reassurance seeking a sign of anxious attachment?

Reassurance seeking is correlated with high attachment anxiety, as you might have a low self-view and a sense of self-worth that depends on your attachment figures.

References

1. Joiner TE, Metalsky GI, Katz J, Beach SR. Depression and excessive reassurance-seeking. Psychological Inquiry. 1999 Oct 1;10(3):269-78.
2. Shaver PR, Schachner DA, Mikulincer M. Attachment style, excessive reassurance seeking, relationship processes, and depression. Personality and social psychology bulletin. 2005 Mar;31(3):343-59.
3. Rholes WS, Simpson JA, Tran S, Martin III AM, Friedman M. Attachment and information seeking in romantic relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2007 Mar;33(3):422-38.
4. Evraire LE, Dozois DJ, Wilde JL. The contribution of attachment styles and reassurance seeking to trust in romantic couples. Europe’s journal of psychology. 2022 Feb 25;18(1):19.