People act in really unappealing ways when they lose themselves in their relationships.
I see this every day in my work as a coach, but also because it happened to me at the end of my marriage.
I originally wrote this article when I came to the depressing conclusion that I had done exactly the opposite of what I teach, and that thing is…
I had totally and completely lost myself in my relationship.
Now, “losing oneself in a relationship” is a trite phrase thrown around ALL THE TIME by relationship coaches— myself included.
But I’ve noticed that while people might talk about it, they don’t deal with it as it’s happening very often.
I can look back on many failed past relationships and nearly pinpoint the exact time it happened, but this time, I noticed I had lost myself in real time. And it was awful.
That’s why I wrote about this— to help you and make myself a roadmap so I never, ever let this happen again. And, I’m happy to share that in the years since I wrote it, it hasn’t.
Here are 26 signs you have lost yourself in your relationship:
1. You mirror your partner’s beliefs.
You have lost your unique voice in the relationship and your life as a whole.
You echo your partner’s beliefs and opinions without even thinking about it. You agree with them automatically even if it means pushing aside your own thoughts and feelings.
2. You mold yourself to suit your partner.
Like a human chameleon, you change your behavior or appearance to gain your partner’s approval.
When I was a kid, my grandmother switched religions with each of her four husbands.
This is what losing yourself in a relationship is like. You pretzel-twist yourself into whatever you imagine your partner wants.
3. You put your partner on a pedestal.
You overlook your partner’s flaws and place their needs above your own. You have a sense that they are better and more “correct” than you are.
Everything they do seems perfect to you, so you just go with it without considering what you really want.
4. You avoid confrontation.
You have started avoiding confrontation altogether because you are afraid disagreeing might disturb the peace.
When something bothers you, you swallow your feelings and pretend everything is fine just to keep things running smoothly. You’re exhausted and feel like you’re losing your voice, but you’re too afraid of potential conflict to speak up.
You refrain from saying no or expressing your true feelings.
5. You consistently let your desires fall by the wayside.
Instead of speaking up about what you want, or simply doing it, you put it aside.
I’m not sure why sometimes it seems so important to forgo what we want for what we imagine someone else wants.
Do we do it in favor of… approval? Not rocking the boat?
When we ignore things like our desires and wants that are messy and take hard work, we put our head in the sand. We don’t have to do anything about our own desires or take any risks.
We can go on like it’s all not happening, until we’re so overtaken with regret and resentment that we just can’t stand it any longer.
6. You constantly seek your partner’s reassurance and validation.
You constantly seek your partner’s reassurance, needing them to validate your feelings and choices to feel secure.
You have lost trust in your own judgement and want your partner’s instead.
When you doubt yourself, you turn to them for approval since you think they are the only thing that can make you feel okay.
7. Your emotional state depends on your partner’s mood.
Your emotions fluctuate widely depending on your partner’s mood. When they are happy, you are happy. When they are upset, you spiral into fear, anxiety and sadness.
These constant mood swings are exhausting, but you truly think that you are not okay if they are not okay. You feel validated and safe when they are happy.
8. You’re consumed by the fear that your partner might leave you.
Persistent worry they might leave you has hijacked your thoughts. When they seem distant or preoccupied, you worry it’s a sign they don’t love you anymore.
Since the anxiety overshadows most things you do, it’s difficult for you to feel secure or enjoy your time together.
At the end of my marriage to my ex husband, one night I walked the dog and remember feeling an intense sense of panic and fear that I would die without him. It just wouldn’t let up.
Since I was terrified of what would happen to me if he left, securing the relationship became my goal in life– one that I failed.
9. You neglect your own desires and requirements.
You have been so focused on meeting your partner’s needs that you have completely neglected you own.
Whether it’s your personal goals, passions or even basic self-care, you keep pushing aside what you want for the sake of your relationship. It’s starting to take a big toll on you.
You feel drained an unfulfilled, as if you are slowly fading away.
10. You feel like you have no control over your life.
Your life now seems to be totally consumed by your relationship. Any control you used to have over your time has disappeared in favor of what your partner wants.
You have given up making decisions for yourself.
Now it seems like your partner dictates the direction of your life. You feel powerless and disconnected from your internal compass.
11. You lack boundaries.
You have let your boundaries dissolve, allowing your partner’s needs and desires overshadow your own.
There is no clear line where your preferences end and theirs begin.
You bend to fit their expectations and feel lost and overextended.
12. You consistently overextend yourself.
You attend to everyone else’s needs first, which is silently eating away at you.
Except it’s not really silent, since everyone around you can sense the toxic resentment that seeps through like sewage in a leach field.
To everyone around you, you come off like a long-suffering, put-upon martyr.
Martyrdom might work for religious figures, but sacrificing yourself for your relationship isn’t good for you and it’s the death knell for your partner’s attraction to you.
When you don’t take responsibility for the fact that you’ve let your own light go out, it’s easy to look around and decide that it’s someone else’s fault. This is both a cop out and a way to absolve yourself of responsibility for your own happiness.
13. You seek control in other areas.
Because you feel powerless in your relationship, you try to control other aspects of your life.
Even though the reality of your daily life is that you’re bored to tears and working at half the level of joy you could be, you’re weirdly attached to doing it this way right now.
This is why it’s vitally important that everyone else act how you expect.
If someone else around you is truly happy or following their own bliss, it forces you to consider your situation and this sucks.
14. Your self-worth depends on your partner’s approval.
Your self worth has become entirely tied to your partner’s opinions and approval. When they praise you, you feel valued and confident.
Otherwise, you feel riddled with self-doubt.
You no longer have a sense of your own worth and rely on their praise to feel good about yourself.
15. You’re living a worried, hand-wringing, fear-based life.
A bunch of unsettling “what ifs” lurk around and rule your life.
“What if” you die in that fiery crash?
Better not buy that motorcycle.
“What if” you never get famous and make doing your art?
Better not even bother to sketch anything.
“What if your spouse doesn’t take the right exit on the freeway?”
You could be LATE!” The horror.
“What if…” “What if…” “What if…”
Dealing with anxiety is exhausting, and indulging in all of these outlandish trains of thought can be a way to distract yourself from what you’re really feeling bad about.
16. You feel disconnected from your emotions.
You live in an emotional limbo territory between neutral, numb, angry and resentful. Your emotional range has become blunted, negative, and angry.
Joy and true happiness are fleeting. You might not be anxious and depressed (many are), but you’re flirting with them at least.
Anger is bubbling right below the surface at any time, ready to jump out and attack anything in it’s path.
17. Your partner dominates your thoughts.
You find yourself constantly thinking about your partner. You might worry about them, long for them, have conversations with them in your head– the works.
The relationship you have with them in your mind is almost more real than the one you have in real life.
Either way, their happiness, priorities and preferences have taken top priority in your life.
18. You long for your single life.
The weight of constantly considering someone else’s needs is exhausting, which has made you miss the simplicity of single life.
You often think about what it would be like to be single again and daydream about when you could do whatever you felt like without compromise. You feel envious of single friends and family members.
19. You think in terms of “we” instead of “i”.
Instead of thinking about what you want first, you automatically tack on your partner.
Your identity has merged so much with the relationship that you’ve lost your sense of self. When you think about your life, there is always an implied “we.”
20. You’ve lost touch with your own goals, passions and life purpose.
Remember when you were so full of hope for the future?
Do you feel like that’s been crushed and you’ve let your life’s purpose fall by the wayside?
That sense of loss is a big sign you have lost yourself in your relationship.
21. You’ve isolated yourself socially.
You’ve drifted away from friends and no longer participate in social activities without your partner.
You have stopped reaching out and nurturing other relationships. You can’t remember the last time you made social plans without your partner.
Your world has shrunk to fit just the two of you and you’re starting to feel the pinch of that isolation.
22. You’ve stopped doing your hobbies.
You can’t remember the last time you did anything you used to enjoy by yourself.
Your hobbies have taken a backseat as you spend most of your time with your partner or doing things that interest them.
You have sacrificed the passions that once defined you for the sake of the relationship.
23. You avoid making decisions.
You have stopped making choices for yourself and now wait for your partner to decide almost everything. Whether it’s what to eat, where to go or how you spend your time, you have defaulted to whatever they want.
You have become so used to prioritizing what they want that you barely recognize your own desires anymore.
24. You’re going through the motions.
You go through the motions and do what’s expected without really thinking about it. Your days blend together while you’re on autopilot.
You keep things running smoothly in the relationship even though you feel more and more lonely and empty inside.
Life goes something like wake up, take kids to school, go to work, deal with the kids, sleep. Rinse off. Repeat. Carve out a few minutes of “quality time” on the weekend. Rinse and repeat.
If this wasn’t already bad enough, your sense of humor seems to be on hiatus as well.
25. You use anything to fill the void.
Since real joy feels like such a long way off that it’s practically unobtainable, it’s tempting to look for something… anything to fill the gnawing hole in your gut and your soul.
You reach for anything that might help with the growing sense of loneliness and emptiness.
Temporary relief– like losing whole days to Netflix marathons, doom scrolling on your phone, eating yourself out of house and home, drinking and shopping provides temporary relief.
26. The hopeless feeling that you’ve sold yourself out won’t go away.
“This isn’t all it’s cracked up to be” is pretty much your mantra.
Remember those hopes and dreams I was talking about before?
You wake up every morning with a vague sense that “it’s not gonna happen.” It’s as if you have betrayed your own identity and aren’t sure how to get it back.
How to find yourself again.
Real talk: if you keep going in this sleep-walk, zombie, half-life direction you’re headed in, getting your mojo back is NOT gonna happen.
Unless you make a change. Now.
You know how on planes during the safety demonstration, they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first?
Because you’ll die if you try to help everyone else before yourself?
Losing yourself in your relationship is like throwing your own oxygen mask out the window and then trying to share your partner’s mask.
This is claustrophobic and toxic for both of you.
If you see yourself in this, it’s time to make a change. Let this be your gentle wake up call. Here’s how to do it.
1. Get clear on your values, desires and expectations for your relationship.
It’s not too late to figure out what YOU actually want.
There are no shortcuts to knowing yourself except to stop and think about who you are and what you want.
You can only make lasting changes when you have an idea of what you want instead. Your values, desires, expectations are all important and should be taken into account.
The only person who can honor them right now is you. We only create mastery by doing. Knowing what you might want is part of getting to know you again.
2. Establish firm boundaries.
Once you have defined what is and is not acceptable in how you are treated, it’s time to define some limits and stick to them.
This likely means having a conversation with your partner about the way you want your life to look. It could also mean making the tough decision to make bigger changes like breaking up or separation.
Either way, this may be uncomfortable but it’s the only way to create a space where your desires and identity are respected.
3. Make your own choices.
Now that you have made your boundary fence, it’s time to decide what you want put in and outside of it.
By making your own choices, you stay connected to what you want and need instead of always deferring to your partner.
It might feel weird at first or like you are doing something wrong, but it gets much easier.
4. Learn to say no and stick with it.
Your only chance to create a healthier, more balanced relationship is by learning to say no.
Boundaries aren’t meaningful without enforcement. While it may be challenging at times, you have to learn to hold strong to your no and enforce it.
Don’t hesitate to refuse requests or demands that make you uncomfortable.
5. Insist on mutual compromise.
To hold your ground and insist on a compromise, you’re going to have to stop placating and people-pleasing your way through the relationship. At first, it might feel like you are being mean or rude, but this gets easier with practice.
Asserting yourself requires you to step up and stand firm while you negotiate.
When I say “negotiate,” I don’t mean that everything is super serious, simply that everything is a negotiation.
So far, you have been giving up on your right to negotiate in your relationship in favor of people-pleasing and peace-keeping.
To get yourself back, you must take your rights back. This involves negotiating.
6. Stay vigilant for red flags.
Getting yourself back is not a one time event. After you set your first round of boundaries, you will most likely need to keep reinforcing them so your partner understands things have truly changed.
This might make your relationship rocky and difficult for a while.
However, you already tried not setting boundaries and ended up losing yourself, so you might as well watch to make sure things aren’t going back the way they were.
7. Communicate openly and honestly.
Part of open and honest communication is to confront issues directly and honestly.
Sharing your thoughts and feelings without holding back is the next step to regaining control over your life. This way you will be able to stop misunderstandings before they begin and prevent resentment from building up.
Start addressing problems as they come up instead of bottling everything up until you explode.
In practice, communicating more openly and honestly can feel like you have turned the conflict dial up to 11.
Remember that avoiding conflict got you to this place so you are going to have to try something different to get out.
8. Take some time for yourself.
After you have set boundaries, figured out what you really want and started to get yourself back, it’s time to spend some time with you. Even if you have to carve out an hour here and there.
If you have been avoiding this because of anxiety around being alone it’s that much more important that you do it.
You must aim to make spending time with yourself a safe place, otherwise why would you want to spend time with you?
Do something nice for yourself. Dust off one of those hobbies. Simply sit alone in a room. It doesn’t matter what you do, just spend some time with yourself.
9. Seek professional assistance.
Getting yourself back after losing yourself is a big deal. It might be worth it to get yourself support by hiring a therapist or getting a coach.
Having someone to bounce ideas off of and help you become a happier, more authentic person can be priceless.
Either way, you don’t have to make major life changes alone.
To get my help with your situation, check out my 1:1 coaching offerings here.
