How To Stop Losing Yourself In Relationships

You can find yourself again.

Hi there,

It’s common for people to lose themselves in relationships. It’s a pattern I’ve seen over and over again — and I’ve lost myself in relationships, too.

I’m not talking about giving up your skydiving hobby because you’ve decided to take fewer life-threatening risks now that you’ve found someone to spend your life with. I’m not talking about developing an interest in period dramas because your partner can’t get enough, and now it’s something you two can share. When I say “losing yourself,” I really mean abandoning yourself — I mean that the most important parts of your selfhood disappear into the relationship.

Like so much of how we relate to partnership, the way we lose ourselves comes from a mix of our childhood conditioning, societal messaging, patterns from past relationships, and our own attachment fears. Gender plays into it, too — there’s that societal messaging for you: Women might default to giving and giving to the relationship without giving to themselves. Men might strive to be the hero or the fixer, feeling responsible for their partner’s happiness. In every case, you’re over-focusing on the other person and not yourself.

Here’s how to stop losing yourself — and how to find yourself again.