How to stop abandoning yourself in relationships

Self-abandonment does not look dramatic. It looks like always choosing the restaurant they prefer. It looks like not mentioning that something hurt because it does not seem worth the conversation. It looks like adjusting your personality slightly depending on who you are with, so that everyone is comfortable except, quietly, you.

How it starts

Most of the people I work with who struggle with this did not choose it consciously. They learned, at some point, that being their full selves created friction, or that love was more available when they were agreeable, or that their feelings were less important than keeping the peace. So they adapted. They became excellent at reading the room and terrible at knowing what they actually wanted.

You cannot build a real relationship with someone who only ever meets your edited version. They fall in love with a performance, and you feel lonelier than ever.

Signs you are abandoning yourself

• You feel vaguely resentful but cannot name what you actually need
• You agree in conversation, then feel quietly angry afterward
• You mould your opinions to match theirs, often without realising
• You feel most comfortable being needed, and most anxious when you are not
• You have been asked what you want and genuinely did not know

Coming back to yourself

Returning to yourself inside a relationship starts with small acts of honest preference. Saying what you actually want for dinner. Disagreeing about something small and sitting with the discomfort that follows. Noticing a feeling and naming it, to yourself first, then out loud. These are not big moments. But they are the moments where the real you begins to take up space again.

The right relationship will not just tolerate the fuller version of you. It will expand to hold it. You deserve to find out what that feels like.