How Low Self-Esteem Can Impact an Intimate Relationship

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Self-esteem entails your overall sense of your worth—a measure of the degree to which you value, approve of, appreciate, prize, and respect yourself. It is rooted in your genetics, social interaction (especially those of early childhood), trauma, thoughts (especially thoughts that are critically self-evaluative), and health.

Low self-esteem may involve feelings of inferiority, a lack of confidence, feeling unlovable and inadequate. It may contribute to, and be reflected by, difficulty in accepting praise, a negative critical internal dialogue, fears of failure, frequent social comparison, self-doubts, people pleasing, and heightened self-consciousness.

By contrast, those with healthy self-esteem believe in themselves and their abilities. They maintain a positive outlook when facing challenges, leading them to have sufficient frustration tolerance to ride out the tension of dealing with such challenges. They have sufficient self-compassion that helps them to be compassionate with others. They are assertive in recognizing and seeking the satisfaction of their core values, desires, and needs. They take responsibility for their actions and feelings.

Throughout my years as a clinician, I’ve often heard the comment, “I’ve done fine when I’m single. But I tend to feel most confused about myself when I’m in a relationship." Low self-esteem may be an important factor, among others, that contributes to this reaction. Low self-esteem in either partner often plays a major role in both internal and interpersonal conflict, especially in an intimate relationship.

Challenges with low self-esteem

Feeling inferior and inadequate, lacking confidence, and feeling unlovable leaves those with low self-esteem highly sensitive in their most intimate relationships. They may feel especially self-conscious in an attempt to guard against behaving in ways they believe will expose their perceived weaknesses to others. Not only do they seek to protect themselves from being found out, but they also exert much psychic energy trying to defend themselves from their own critical voice.

Their self-doubts and lack of emotional awareness and emotional acceptance contribute to their heightened reactivity to interactions with a partner that they may be prone to interpret in a negative light. Not trusting themselves, they may tend to overly focus on pleasing a partner, only to experience a sense of invisibility in their relationship. Additionally, because they overly defer, they may increasingly lose touch with what it is they value, desire, and need.

A partner with low self-esteem may fail to savor positive expressions of love and praise. In effect, such loveable behavior is not internalized to help challenge their low self-esteem.

Research regarding low self-esteem in intimate relationships

The tendency to negatively interpret a partner’s communication was revealed in one study of 104 couples involved in a dating relationship averaging 19.9 months (Murray, Rose, Bellavia, et. al., 2002). The researchers led participants to believe that their partner perceived a problem in their relationship. They then assessed perceptions of the partner’s acceptance, partner enhancement, and closeness. Those with low self-esteem were more likely to interpret their partner’s problem as an indication that their partner’s affections and commitment might be declining. Consequently, they criticized their partner and reduced their closeness. Being less sensitive to rejection, partners with high self esteem affirmed their partner. The key conclusion was the suggestion that the chronic need for acceptance may result in people with low self-esteem seeing signs of rejection where none exist—and subsequently weakening their attachment.

Another study involved 130 married couples who completed self-esteem and marital adjustment inventories (Goyal & Nakra, 2023). They found that higher marital adjustment correlated with higher self-esteem and recommended that people be taught how to develop self-esteem.

An earlier study explored coping efforts as a factor of self-esteem that might impact marital adjustment (Belanger, Di Schiavi, Sabourin, et. al., 2014). They studied 108 couples and found self-esteem to be associated with marital adjustment. Additionally, they found that higher self-esteem and marital adjustment were associated with the use of problem-solving strategies and less avoidance as a way of coping.

A comprehensive longitudinal study explored 885 couples over 5 years and 6,116 couples over 15 years (Erol & Orth, 2014). It found that the initial level of self-esteem of each partner predicted the initial level of the partners’ common relationship satisfaction. These effects did not differ by gender and held when controlling for participants’ age, length of relationship, health, and employment status. The development of self-esteem in both partners of a couple contributed to the development of the partners’ common satisfaction with the relationship.

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One study explored how partner self-esteem influenced interpersonal risk following rejection (Peterson, DeHart, Bellows, et. al., 2019). Studying 102 couples, they found that rejection from a low self-esteem partner undermined connection seeking behavior.

Low self-esteem can negatively impact the manner in which a partner makes requests for support. More specifically, they may engage in indirect support seeking–behaviors, such as sulking, whining and/or displaying sadness to elicit support. It was found in one study that when such behaviors occurred, partners reacted with less support (Don, Girme, Hammone, et. al., 2018). Essentially, indirect support seeking made it less likely that low-esteem partners would get the support they so strongly desired.

Interactions between partners is an emotional dance that is defined not only by how they relate with each other, but also the nature of their self-evaluations. This was clarified by one study of couples in which support providers higher in self-esteem experienced greater efficacy during couples’ support discussions and delivered greater support to their partner (Jayamaha & Overall, 2018). This subsequently led the recipient to experience greater efficacy during the discussions as well as greater self-esteem over time.

The importance of recognizing the impact of self-esteem in intimate relationships

Low self-esteem can negatively impact an intimate relationship. As such, awareness of one’s own degree of esteem as well as that of one’s partner can be an initial step for learning ways to communicate and support each other that take esteem into consideration. Such knowledge can be motivating for both partners. Esteem can be improved in a broad variety of ways that might include individual psychotherapy, couples therapy, mindfulness meditation, and bibliotherapy. These experiences can also foster ways of communication that are supportive for the esteem of both partners.

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