How To Not Abandon Yourself To Be With Someone Else

It’s extremely common when coexisting in a relationship, or even attempting to, that we leave our being to meet someone where they are at. Let me clarify, there’s a difference between putting in mutual effort + working together to meet in the middle, and completely leaving yourself and your needs in order to make things work with someone else.

Coming from someone who is infinitely guilty of this, I completely understand how strong connection can influence our life. I also understand that when connection is being threatened, we use all of our human ability to make things work and we go to intense extremes to ensure it doesn’t leave completely.

When we go to these extremes, more times than not these extremes require us to give parts of ourselves that we shouldn’t be giving up at all.

If our relationships ever come to a place where we are being asked to, or even just feel like we must deny our own needs in order to satisfy the connection; that relationship is not meant for us at that time.

If our relationships ever require that we compromise speaking our own thoughts or disconnect, embracing our truth, or settle for something that doesn’t make us happy or our we aren’t aligned with; that relationship is not meant for us at that time.

In order to not leave ourselves or the parts of ourselves that need tending to, we first must acknowledge and honor the version of ourself that we currently are. This version of ourself might be someone who works a lot and needs a break in order to maintain a healthy mindset. This version of ourself might be fearful of past trauma and may need whoever we are with to honor where we currently are (as we must do for ourselves first).

Whatever phase or space of life we are currently in, we must get familiar with our current self that exists there.

Secondly, we need to be aware of our own needs. We cannot expect others to know what we need, we have to be aware ourselves. Being familiar with our needs would be acknowledging when we need breaks, when we need more communication, why we need transparency to the extent that we do, etc.

Lastly, we have to come to a space where we know we are worthy of not compromising any part of ourselves. For example, sometimes I see relationships where someone in the relationship desperately needs communication but either feels like they are asking too much or makes excuses as to why their partner cannot fully give them that they need.

Part of honoring who we are as individual people is not only being aware of who we are and what we need, but holding ourselves and our relationships accountable of meeting those needs.

The moment that we know we need communication in order to thrive in a relationship and we do not get the communication and still choose to be present and stay, we are abandoning a part of ourself.

The moment we know we need humor in our lives in order to thrive and we begin to make excuses as to why things are so stressful and serious rather than playful, we are abandoning a part of ourself.

It is so crucial that we know we are worthy of having our needs met and we never compromise a part of our truth or our most mindful self.

Our relationships are a reflection of the wellness of our lives. The ones that are meant for our lives and will enrich our lives are going to be aligned with where and who we are, and we will never feel like we have to give much of ourselves in order to keep them in our worlds.