When you’ve been in a relationship for years and years, it can be easy to lose yourself a bit. In fact, for many of us, losing yourself is the norm, the expectation, the go-to pop culture example of relationship ideals. For example, think about Lily and Marshall from How I Met Your Mother and every time we combine people’s names like Brangelina; it’s almost as if a “good” couple is a couple of people who become a single person with a single identity. Popular as this may have been (or still is), it’s actually quite unhealthy. The couples who have healthy long-lasting relationships are the ones who are able to maintain a healthy balance of “me” and “we.”
For the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about people who are in an otherwise healthy relationship. For people in abusive and manipulative relationships, some of this may not apply, and deeper healing and help will be required to get out of the relationship and back to yourself. Your safety should be your primary concern.
If you are in an abusive relationship, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-7233 or text “START” to 88788 for confidential support. If you can and are comfortable with it and feel safe doing so, please seek a qualified professional in your area for ongoing therapeutic support.
Why do people tend to lose themselves in relationships?
There are a lot reasons we tend to lose ourselves in a relationship. Oftentimes, we’ve seen that people lose their individuality with the best of intentions: people want to please their partner(s). It can feel pretty innocuous. We want to feel safe and secure in our relationship, and we tend to think that surrendering to our partner(s) will help us feel this way. A lot of people end up losing themselves in an effort to become the person we think our partner wants us to be.
Another reason people tend to lose themselves in a relationship is because time is at a premium. We only have so much time in a day, and balancing everything we have to do can mean that we have to let some things go by the wayside. When you’re in a relationship, the thing we tend to let go is our individuality because we want to spend time doing things with our partner(s). It isn’t always, or is hardly ever, sinister.
What happens to the relationship when people lose their individuality within a relationship?
When people lose their individuality in their relationship, the relationship can start to feel stale. Even worse, it can lead to feelings of resentment, and some people even start to feel like their partner is to blame for their loss of self. For a while, it might seem like things are going great. We feel good about being close and connected but then we may start to get frustrated and feel a little smothered or dissatisfied. It’s easy to blame the relationship when in reality it’s because we let go of something that was a part of us.
Essentially, not only can we lose ourselves, but we can also lose sight of how it happened. No matter how well-intentioned it began, it’s not healthy for the relationship or the individuals within it.
Why are boundaries important in finding your individuality again?
Boundaries got an unfortunate reputation somewhere along the way. A lot of people, particularly people who are people pleasers, think that the best way to be accepted and “keep the peace” is to forgo their own boundaries and wishes to make the other person or people around them comfortable. A lot of people associate boundaries as something we put in place with someone who is unhealthy. However, when you’re in a healthy relationship, boundaries serve as guidelines to lift up and support each person’s wellbeing.
In a healthy relationship, boundaries create clear distinctions between what is you, me, and us. Let’s pretend that your relationship is a sheet of paper and you and your partner both share a box of crayons. Boundaries would be the outline of a beautiful picture you get to color together. However, without boundaries, you don’t know where to color and may end up with a mess of clashing colors and no distinct picture. In essence, boundaries help us define how your relationship functions and maintains a healthy balance of being individuals and being “us”.
Oftentimes people think that if they truly love someone, they need to do whatever the other person wants. This ultimately ends with people getting lost in each other and a big blurry mess of colors. Not having boundaries in a relationship can cause something with the potential to be beautiful to turn into something wholly unrecognizable.
How to start reclaiming your individuality within a relationship
If you’re worried you’ve already lost yourself, don’t worry too much. You can find yourself again and stay happy in your relationship (if that’s what you want)! The first step I recommend to people who want to begin this process is to start considering what you miss about yourself or the person you want to become again. Get curious about which aspects of you are missing currently and which aspects you want to reclaim.
Let’s say that before you began your current relationship, you spent every opportunity you had backpacking alone to reconnect with yourself and nature. Perhaps doing this every weekend is simply out of the question right now because you don’t have time or space for it, but is there some way that you can start to bring some of that back in? Could you perhaps go backpacking once a month? Once every few months? Maybe you only have time for day hikes. However you can start to reclaim those little aspects of who you are is a huge win, even if they feel like huge concessions in the moment. Reclaiming yourself doesn’t have to be all or nothing, and it doesn’t mean you don’t love your partner(s).
How can people support their partner(s) through this transition?
Reestablishing boundaries in a long-term relationship can feel scary for a number of reasons that we don’t have space to get into here. Any one of them can result in it feeling really intimidating and almost threatening feeling to you or your partner(s). Have a conversation with your partner(s) about what it is about the relationship that you want to protect and hold on to. You can also reassure your partner(s) that this will be a slow process and that they get to have input in terms of what this looks like for the relationship.
It can also be helpful to remind your partner why you want to do this and reassure them that you want to strengthen your relationship by strengthening your relationship with yourself. Hold space for your partner’s experience and encourage them to come along with you on the quest to become individuals again.
How can a counselor support couples and individuals through this transition?
When you feel insecure in your relationship or find that you’re feeling smothered by it, it’s helpful to seek out guidance from a counselor. Typically, when we’re dealing with extreme ends of the spectrum, it indicates that there are underlying beliefs at play that can be complicated to see and work through when you’re in the middle of it. These beliefs can be fears, anxieties, beliefs about how relationships work, beliefs about your own worth, etc. Having someone who is trained to help recognize how those patterns are playing out and impacting you and your experience gives you a better opportunity for those patterns to be spotted and addressed. It’s like that phrase “you can’t see the forest through the trees,” or why a lifeguard doesn’t get in the pool with everyone; if you’re too close, you can’t see the bigger picture.
A counselor will be able to help you get to the root of how you got lost in each other and how to reclaim your individuality in a way that serves each partner and the relationship.
The bottom line
You are your own unique person who brings something special to each of your relationships. Losing yourself in your relationship doesn’t help anyone, and you deserve to love yourself for who you are. Relationships are stronger and more beautiful when they’re made up of individuals. If you’re ready to embark on this journey and want a little extra guidance, you can reach out to us here at Pivotal Counseling or read more about how we support relationships of all kinds on our Couples Counseling page. This is your relationship, and you deserve to show up in it authentically.