#33 - When You Lose Yourself in Relationships

Welcome to Beyond Bitchy, mastering the art of boundaries with Vicki Tidwell Palmer. Do you think of personal and relationship boundaries as harsh, rigid or bitchy, or do you feel clueless about how boundaries work? Whether you think boundaries are bitchy or baffling, we will give you a fresh vision of personal limits as a source of freedom and liberation. Every week, Vicki shares expert information about how you can master the art of boundaries so you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. Hi, this is Vicki Tidwell Palmer and welcome to episode number 33 of the Beyond Bitchy podcast. This week, I'm going to answer a listener's question, which is all about what happens when you lose yourself in a relationship or you defer too much to what the other person wants to do or likes to do, or maybe what they want you to do, or maybe when you are overvaluing the other person or the relationship. This can happen in intimate partner relationships, which is the case for this particular question and it can also happen in friendships and in other relationships or with family members. In the end, it's all about finding balance and resolving this kind of issue involves at least two categories of skills. One has to do with your ability to practice boundaries, which we will focus on primarily, but it also has to do with an understanding of interdependence, which I'll also talk about. By the way, I love it when listeners submit questions because it helps me to know, for example, what may not be clear about how to do boundary work and it helps me to provide just a great and high level of service to my listeners, which I truly love to do. So I'm going to paraphrase her question, she says, "Hi, Vicky, your podcast has been a game changer for me." She said she would love to have some guidance about how to track and maintain balance in her time, her energy. I think she says care, I think she means self-care around boundaries. She goes on to describe that she's married and she's come to recognize that in her relationship that it's about her husband almost exclusively and that she has given over, she describes quote, "All my attention and spiritual energy to him." She says she's been correcting the balance, but it's not something that she has an inherent understanding of, and I take that to mean that she doesn't have kind of an innate understanding of how to balance her energy and her time between herself and her partner, and she could use more food for thought about this whole issue. So as I said, this is something that we can all struggle with from time to time. And it has to do not only with boundaries, but also as I mentioned before, our practice of being interdependent in relationships with other people. And to briefly describe dependence and our works in relationships is that if you think of being dependent or the opposite of dependent, which is anti-dependent or needless and wantless, and I'll describe all of that as we go along, but if you think about dependence on a continuum, on one end of the continuum, you have a person who is too dependent in relationships, so they rely too much on the other person. And on the other extreme, you have, there's two categories actually on the other end of the extreme, one is the person is anti-dependent, which means I know what I need, but I don't want your help and I don't need your help and I'm not going to ask you for help. So this person is kind of like an island, they're very self-contained, they don't reach out or ask for help, and they certainly don't know how to be interdependent with another person, which is the healthy middle between these two extremes. So on this other extreme, where the one option is to be anti-dependent, the other possibility on this same end of the continuum is that you are needless and wantless. Needless and wantless is I don't even know what I need or what I want, so I don't have the ability to ask for it or to get my needs met. So those are the two extremes, you're either too dependent, too needy. And as you can imagine, if you're on that end of the continuum, people in relationship with you might feel rather drained if they're around you a lot because essentially a person who's too needy, they're kind of glomming on to the other person and using the other person's energy so they can feel very draining on the other end of the continuum. If you're in a relationship with someone who is, for example, anti-dependent, you may have the sense that you're sort of unnecessary in the relationship, like they don't ask you for anything, or as I said before, they're very self-contained, they're like an island. And so they may just kind of put off this air that they just don't really need anybody because that's how they show up. And if the person is needless and wantless, you can have a similar feeling before a different reason, which is that, like you might ask them, what would they like for their birthday or how would they like to celebrate a special event? And they just don't know. They don't have an idea. And so it creates a kind of deadness in the relationship. And when it comes to the issue of dependence in relationships, what we're looking for, the healthy middle is to be interdependent. We're dependent with people we're in relationship with so that we know how to get our needs met. And we're willing to do that when we have the ability to do that. We do ask for help. And at the same time, we're also willing to do what we need to do. So a simple example of this, and I use it all the time, is let's say that this happened to me recently where the battery on my car died. And I didn't do this, but I'll just make up a story where let's say that I asked my husband to take care of it. So in our case, that meant the car needed to be towed and taken to a dealer ship because the battery was still under warranty, so there was no cost for us to replace it. So let's say that I decided that I wanted to ask my husband for help. And he said he couldn't do it, or maybe he just didn't want to do it. Well, it's my car, and so it's my responsibility to get it done, unless he and I have an agreement that he's going to take care of all those things, which in my case, we do not. So let's say I ask him, you know, would you be willing to coordinate all that and get the tow truck to come and pick up my car? And he says, no, either don't have time to do that, or I don't want to do that, or he just says, no, then it's my responsibility. If I decide to get upset about that, that actually is my issue, because it's my responsibility. So that's an example of how interdependence could work, because he might have said, sure, you know, I'll be happy to do that for you. But that's a nice, very simple example of how interdependence works. Over on the one hand, I know what my responsibility is, meaning my car, I'm willing to ask him for help, and I'm also willing to accept his no and take care of it myself. Or if he says yes, I'm willing to accept his help. So that's just a snapshot of how dependency works in relationships and what it looks like in the healthy middle. And the reason that this is important when we think about finding balance in how we defer to other people around activities and those kinds of things is that, sometimes if we are on that extreme of being too needy, and I'm going to talk about this more toward the end of the podcast, but if we're in the more the too needy end of that continuum, and also just to say this, all of us are going to have a natural default to one end of that continuum or the other. Even if we're pretty healthy on a bad day for not doing well, if we're not feeling well, most of us will default to one end of the extreme. We will not go to the far extremes, but we will default toward one end or the other. But if you're on the too needy end, you will tend to defer to the person that you're in relationship with, you will tend to go along with what they want to do. You will tend to essentially sacrifice yourself, your own reality, your needs and wants, in order to get your needs met from the other person. And it's a very dangerous place to be, but I just want to connect for you how this relates to this whole issue of dependence and how dependence works in relationship. Because if we feel extremely dependent on another person, we're going to tend to go along with what they want to do because we may be too fearful about what would happen if we don't do that. And as I said, I'm going to touch on that a little more later in the podcast. So what does this have to do with boundaries, this idea of balancing our time and paying attention to our own needs and wants and essentially kind of losing ourselves in a relationship. This question that the listener asked is essentially about how do I identify my own reality, my own preferences and everything that goes with that. Because that is always the first step in clarifying your own boundaries or the agreements that you may want to create with other people. So how to balance your own reality with your partner's reality and what he or she likes to do or how they prefer to spend their time, that's the question here. But for you, for anyone asking this question, you've got to know what your reality is first. And for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, you will know that step one of the five step boundary solution process I created, which is a process to help you identify, create and establish healthy, effective boundaries, step one is you've got to identify your reality for those of you who are new to the podcast, I highly recommend going back to episode nine, where I talk about the introduction to the five step boundary solution process. And then I do an episode on each one of the five steps. So that's what it has to do with boundaries is that you've got to identify your own reality. Because if I am deferring to my partner around whatever they want to do, I am actually most likely ignoring my own reality. And I want to give you a really simple, elementary example of how this works. And I think every single person listening to the podcast is going to relate to this example. So think about the last time that you and your partner, or maybe you and a friend, we're going to decide what restaurant you wanted to go to. So here's how it usually goes, one person says, well, where do you want to go? And then the other person says, well, I don't know, or I don't care, where do you want to go? And they go kind of around and around like this for a while. And what I recommend when people are dealing with this or any other kinds of issues like this, this is very relational, by the way, is that before you ask the other person where they want to go, you ask yourself, where would I like to go? Going back to the reality issue, this is about your own reality. So you sit there and you think, okay, we're going to go out to eat. Where would be the top two or three places that sound really great to me right now, so that I can start with that? And I also recommend, and if you're in a coupled relationship, this is a great skill to learn, is that both of you do this independently. So one person, and it's fine if you initiate it and put out your preferences first, but you identify two or three places, you'd like to go and say, these are the places that I'd like to go. And a lot of times that resolves it because if you offer two or three options, there's typically one that the other person would be interested in doing. But if you want to do this, if this is a problem in your relationship, this particular kind of decision, then it would be a great idea for you all to practice this for a while. Each person comes up with two or three options and then you both share those and then you come up with an idea. And the reason that this is relational is that you are taking responsibility for your own reality and your preferences, each person is. And then you are collaboratively together deciding what you want to do. I also want to share that a parent that I know had a brilliant solution to doing this, this kind of restaurant dilemma when trying to decide where to go as a family. And so what he does is he tells his children that they have three minutes to decide between themselves where they want to go. And of course, a little aside here, as the parent, you have to be willing to go to wherever they choose to go. The other thing you could do here too is you could say here's three options and you all have three minutes to decide. And now that I've kind of thought of it more, I think that maybe how he did it. But either way, you know, there's no right or wrong here. You can say to your children, okay, here are three options. You all have three minutes to decide amongst yourselves where you would like to go. And if you don't decide in three minutes, then I'm going to decide. I just think it's brilliant because it puts out options. It's time limited and it just doesn't drag on and on and on. I just love that as a solution. So that's what this has to do with boundaries. It's first and foremost that you are identifying what your own reality is. And I think, let me just say this too, because I don't think I mentioned it before. If this is all new to you, you know, I mentioned the prior episode, I highly recommend you go back to episode nine to learn about the five steps. And you can also get a free five step boundary solution, clarifier, which is a downloadable fillable PDF on the homepage of BeyondBitchie.com. So what the listener here is describing is that she's essentially deferring to the preferences, activities, there's probably a number of things here of her partner. And she wants to be more balanced so that she's also honoring herself, her own reality and her preferences. And she's on a path to doing that, but she wants some ideas and some things to think about. So here are my recommendations for how to proceed. If this is an issue for you and for this listener, I would start speaking of reality. I would start by making a list of all of the things that you used to do, either before you were in this relationship or before you noticed that you had really kind of lost yourself in this relationship, you don't use that term exactly, but it's kind of a, it's another way of putting it. So making a list of everything that you used to do before you were in the relationship or before you noticed this issue and are there any of those activities that you miss? You really miss doing them and that you would like to continue doing. So that's a very good starting point as you're trying to find balance around this. And it's very common for people to do this, especially if you have been single for a long time and you get into a relationship, people tend to do this where they stop doing things they were doing before. I've even seen this with people who were engaged in really important activities like even going to a therapy or if they were in recovery, they either decreased or stopped going to recovery meetings. And after a while they start to notice the effects of that and this is, these are pretty serious decisions because sometimes it makes the difference between staying sober, for example, or not. And anything like that, write those all down. And this is for now, this is all for you. This is not something you would share with your partner. And then I'd like you to add to this list anything that you would like to do now that you didn't necessarily do before. So this may be a new interest or something that you, I have just started becoming curious about, but you really didn't want engaged in it before. But you would like to do and add those to the list. So what you're doing is you're coming up with a list of things that you like to do or things that you think you would like to do. Things you're curious about or that you would like to try. And this is a great thing to do because it's going to set you on a path to incorporating more of those into your life. And then the next thing I recommend is to write down all of the activities that you're doing with your partner right now that you wouldn't on your own do. So some examples of that might be like I'll give some examples from my own life, like I am not a sports person. The only time I enjoy going to a sporting event and this is in the past is when my son was playing sports. So he played baseball, he played soccer, gone to the CrossFit gym where he belongs. I enjoy that, but don't ask me to go to a baseball game if my son is not playing or a soccer game. I am not interested in that. So that would be an example. It would be on my list or could be other kinds of entertainment events. It could be music. It could be whatever. It doesn't matter or maybe it's spending time with people who are more his friends or people that he likes to hang out with, but you don't really like to or they're not really couple's friends. And it doesn't matter what it is, just write those things down, things that you would not on your own do. and it doesn't mean that you won't continue doing these in the future. It's just for you to get clarity around, you know? I'm doing this thing or this thing or this thing and actually on my own, I would never do that. And sometimes too when you're trying to assess things like this, I'm really fond of using a rating scale. So like on a scale of one to 10, 10 being, oh yeah, absolutely, I would go do this no matter what and one being, I really do not want to do this almost at all. You might even rate some of these activities or all of them to kind of assess your level of interest and that means it's going to give you more clues as to how you want to balance your time. Another thing that I think is very helpful and it may or may not work in your situation depending on kind of how you organize your time. But this is a great tool for people to use when they're really assessing in general how they're spending their time is to take out your calendar. If you're a person who keeps a very detailed calendar, it's very helpful. If you keep a detailed calendar, probably not as much if you don't. But what you do is you essentially just wipe out your entire calendar and you can do something like, you know, just get a calendar template that's completely blank. And think about with your free time because that's probably what you're referring to mostly here. This is not about work time, it's about your personal time. If your calendar was completely free, there was nothing on it at all in your personal time. Of all those things that you have listed already, what would and where would you start putting those back in? And I have found, 'cause I've done this myself more related to work than my personal life, it's very clarifying because you'll find that there are things that have become important to you or maybe things that are important to your partner that you're spending a lot of time on. But there are other things that you want to do that for you, they have a much higher value or a much higher payoff. An example that I think of immediately for myself is that for me, writing a personal writing or journaling, it's just part of my daily mental health. And if I don't journal every day, I can notice, I do notice a difference in how I feel overall. So if I stop journaling because somebody else has an agenda for me around something that they want to do, that is going to have a pretty profound negative impact on me and then there are going to be other ripple effects from that and I'm gonna come back to those in just a minute because they are very important. And what I might find is that so journaling for me would be a 10. It's something that I really must do every day and I notice it when I don't. And the thing that I may be doing because my partner wants me to do it is a two. So it's a very easy way for me to assess what's more important to me and what I need to focus more on. These ripple effects from making choices like this is another area that is helpful to look at. If you're noticing that you're starting to feel resentful and remember resentment is victim anger. It's I'm angry because I have made up in my own head that I'm a victim of you demanding my time, which is what we're talking about in this particular instance. When you start getting a resentment over how you are spending your time that is nobody's fault except your own unless somebody truly owns your time. Like if you work for a corporation, they own your work time. But in your personal life, each of us, if we're an adult, we have 100% control over our free time. And so when we get a resentment around that, it's on us. And so that's another area to notice is like, if there are certain activities or things you're doing in the relationship that you have a resentment about, wow, that is a big red flag that will point to you where something needs to shift and change. And I'll say, too, that this isn't easy. As you, as you, this listener are finding balance here, they're going to be probably some hiccups or even upsets around this. As you start speaking of boundaries, you will need to start setting boundaries around. Well, I know I used to do that in the past, but now I'm not going to be able to do this anymore. I've just found it's not workable for me. And those will likely have ripple effects in your relationship. And you'll learn things by going through that process in terms of how your partner responds to those changes. And these are not easy things to do. Because what we started with first is boundaries for yourself, because when you're finding balance, you're creating limits for yourself. And then the positive and negative consequence of this is that as you start setting the boundaries outside of yourself with other people like, yes, I will or no, I won't be engaged in those activities anymore, you will get certain responses. And depending on the person or what it is you were doing with them or for them in the past, the response could be pretty big. And that's really a whole other episode around how to manage not the right word, but how to internally think about and respond to people when they are upset with your own boundaries. So the last thing that I want to bring up about this, I want to ask this question, which it may seem a bit paradoxical at first, which is, why might it be a good thing that I'm doing this? So what I mean is, I want you to ask yourself, if I have lost myself in this relationship or I know that I'm kind of going along with this other person's agenda or whatever too much, why might that be a good thing? And this is a hard question to wrap your mind around. I use it fairly frequently because it's so often the case that there are very good reasons why we do the things that we do, even the things that may not be terribly functional or they may be actually very dysfunctional. There's almost always a good reason. It doesn't mean we want to continue it, but that's why I asked the question, why might it be a good thing that I'm doing this? And this question and the answer to it will help you discover some of the hidden benefits or the gain or maybe even comfort that participating in this way in your relationship, what that might be giving you. And this is hard because it often requires us to be very honest with ourselves, even when it doesn't cast a very positive light on us. For example, someone in a situation like this might find that the reason they have essentially, and you didn't say this and this may not be true for you, but if you have essentially kind of folded your life into another person's life, the reason may be because you are terrified that if you don't do this, that the other person will leave. If you aren't at their big and call or you don't go to every event with them or whatever it is. And related to that, I do want to make an observation about this listener's question that they got my attention. She uses the term spiritual energy. She says, "I've given over all my attention and spiritual energy to him." And as I read that, it sounds very much like when someone has made their partner a higher power. And we do do this and some of us do it more than others. And so if you're concerned that this might be the case, or maybe you know that you've done this, that you have made your partner a higher power, then I would want to look more deeply into any possible issues of love addiction. And if you're not familiar with love addiction, it's a condition, and frankly, it's a pretty serious condition that's often overlooked, but it's where a person places an extremely high value on another person that they're in relationship with. It's typically in an intimate partner relationship, but it could be a friendship or it could even be a supervisor or a boss. This can show up in many ways. You can be love addicted to someone, the same gender as you, even if you're heterosexual. And what happens is that you assign a lesser value to yourself and a higher value to the other person. And so when we're in a healthy relationship, we ideally want to be in a, I'm okay, you're okay, or a same as kind of position, but when you're love addicted to another person, you make them your higher power. You put them on a pedestal, you assign a higher value to them, and most likely to your relationship as well. And you can imagine how damaging this can be to the person who's suffering with love addiction, And also to their relationship. Love addiction, like I said, is an often overlooked condition and it's very debilitating. One of the reasons that it's hidden is that love addiction because there's a lot of fantasy and rumination and preoccupation with the object of the love addict's attention. And it's often hidden. So, you know, if someone is using a substance, for example, you can usually tell that they're altered, they're using whatever the case may be. In love addiction, it's all going on in the mind. And the person stays in kind of a condition of being kind of on a high, either being preoccupied with or being in fantasy about the love object. And you know, it's a very difficult condition to come out of and to recover from. And it's typically rooted in childhood neglect. And so, one of the ways that I often try to assess, there are many ways to do this, but one of the ways I try to assess for love addiction is how the person believes they would feel if the other person left their relationship because typically a person who has full-blown love addiction, they will feel as though they're going to die. So, sometimes I'll ask the person, or I'll say, you know, would it be true for you to say that if this person left you, you would feel like you were going to die. And a person who has true full-blown love addiction, they will say, yes, that is exactly what I think would happen to me. And it can feel that way. It can truly feel that way if you're a love addict. When you lose the relationship or the other person starts to distance or separate from you, you can feel as though you're going to die. It's very, it's a very serious condition and it needs to be taken seriously. There are a number of books about love addiction available out there, including my favorite really is Facing Love Addiction by PMLity. There's also another book called Is It Love or Is It Addiction by Brenda Schaefer? And you can find many more books, but those are two that I recommend. The other thing I'm going to do too is that sometime probably this episode won't air for about a week after I'm recording it, but by now there should be a blog post on the BeyondBitchie.com website where I'm going to talk about boundaries as related to love addiction and give you 10 questions to ask if you're concerned that love addiction may be a problem. Now, I'm not saying that it is in this particular case. However, this would be a version of what would be very typical for someone who struggles with love addiction. So today we have addressed a listener's question that was about, you know, how do I find balance when I feel like I have maybe lost myself or I've really given away too much of my time and energy to an important relationship. And I've offered some specific tasks, some action items to do that I do think will give you clarity to do that and also set you on a path to finding more balance. And, you know, I want to come back to the calendar exercise. I really highly recommend that in this case and to anyone who this sounds interesting too because, you know, the calendar exercise will help to laser focus your attention on what's truly important to you as you fill in your time. And time is just, you know, it's sort of cliché to say it, but it's just so precious. It's so valuable and we, all of us need to be engaged in, you know, what is most high value for us moment to moment. And I hope that this episode has been helpful not only to the listener who submitted the question, but to anybody else who is concerned that you might have given up too much of your own life, your preferences, your goals or, you know, maybe even your dreams in important relationships. So, until next week, I invite every single one of you to embrace the power you have to create the boundaries you want to create so that you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. See you next time. Thanks for listening to BeyondBitchy Podcast. Head over to BeyondBitchy.com for show notes, the BeyondBitchy blog and other resources to help you master the art of boundaries. Till next time, remember, boundaries aren't bitchy.