Preservation of Self in Relationships

by Rebecca Kimbel D.T.M

Preserving of one’s self in a relationship is challenging, especially for women. Women frequently allow themselves to become an appendage to a man’s life instead of maintaining their own. “Loss of self”, in relationships is the leading cause of lack of fulfillment, unhappiness and breaking ups.The first seven years of a relationship is commonly a battle for control, changing one’s partner’s thinking, or remaking them in to a version of the stronger personality. If unfortunately, they succeed, they discover the magnetic differences attracting them from the start, are slipping away. We hear this complaint, “I don’t know what the matter with you is. You are not the person I married”.

Compromising to enhance joy in a relationship is advisable and wise. Forfeiting what you believe, enjoy or hope to accomplish, is not. If you forfeit vital parts of your self, the relationship and often life itself looses its value. Somewhere deep inside we know real love is not critical, controlling or diminishing. We instinctively know acceptance is not real if we have to become something other than what we are to become acceptable.

We see rosy cheeks, happy smiles and joyous behavior in courting couples. A few months later he complains about the time it takes her to serve him, criticizes what she says and tells her she’s getting fat. Her countenance has changed from joy to nervous and anxious. She’s gained ten pounds. She no longer seeks emotional comfort in him; instead she placates her emptiness with food. He believes he is in control, but reality depicts a relationship in trouble.

He ignores her stress. He believes he can command a different reality. The tighter his grasp of control, the more the emotional bond between them struggles to survive. He seems oblivious to the fact that if she cannot be who she is when she’s with him, the time will arrive when she cannot be with him. The tighter his grip, the more she slips away. “I’ve lost interest, I don’t know who I am any more, and I have to find myself,” she wrote in the note when she left him.

He tells everyone, “It was a total shock. We were so happy. She has mental problems. I took good care of her, what more could she want?” He spends years blaming her. She spends years regaining strength to maintain her convictions, goals and self worth.

Neither of them knew how to nurture and maintain the magnetic diversity that attracted them. They simply played the cultural rolls in relationships they had grown up with. They didn’t understand the preservation of self and self esteem are essential to long lasting and loving relationships.

 

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