Are you losing yourself in your relationship and falling out of love?

Are you losing yourself for the sake of your relationship and falling out of love?

Avoiding to express your real self, by pleasing others can mean that you fall out of love, by giving up aspects of yourself and not getting your needs met in love. Have you sacrificed yourself or compromised yourself for love and felt disappointed when the relationship fell apart?

Are you falling out of love by losing yourself to your relationship?

• Have you noticed that you keep attracting relationships where your needs do not get met?
• Do you find partners’ who do not want to commit, but you desperately want to change their mind and prove to them that  you’re good enough?
• Do you put all your hopes and dreams into your partner and feel disappointed when the relationship does not work out?
• Do you make it your mission to change your partner or fix them?
• Do you secretly want to rescue or fix your partner, accommodate their temper, and end up feeling abused or used?
• Why do you fall for those who you end up taking care of, or meeting all their needs?
• Do you find yourself fitting in with your partner and giving up aspects of yourself?
• Do you constantly lose yourself in relationships, becoming unhappy and falling out of love when your needs do not get met?

The truth is, these ways of relating are most likely the way you coped in the past with care caregivers who let you down, so you replay the same pattern of trying to get your needs met in love.

How do these patterns come about and how do they replay in the adult relationship?

In the hope of feeling loved, the child will shut out feelings of hurt or rejection to prevent them feeling worthless and unwanted, and accommodate those needs of the care giver, so that they can feel loved or good enough. They may realise that expressing their real self causes them to feel bad about themselves, so they forgo their real self and learn to meet the needs of the caregiver, such as, walking on egg shells to avoid feeling reprimanded, pleasing them, or keeping the peace.  Therefore, the real self goes underground and the false self is used to meet the needs of others, to avoid feelings of hurt, rejection or worthlessness, and to feel good enough.

Are you falling out of love by forgoing your real self to please others

Have you wondered why you give up yourself for love, and end up falling out of love?

Are you falling out of love by forgoing your real self in relationships? According to James Masterson, the real self does not feel good enough and hides behind the defensive false self that wants love, approval and acceptance from others. In these situations, the person will seek relationships to feel good about themselves and get the love they always wanted. Therefore, the mission in life is getting love, acceptance, and approval in order to feel good enough, and the real self is ignored. In adult life, the person overlooks themselves in relationships, forgetting about their own needs or themselves, and accommodates the needs of others, as part of an entrenched pattern of adapting their behavior for love  in order to avoid feeling not good enough within themselves. However, this behaviour causes the real self to get buried. These negative feelings get stirred up in relationships when the person activates themselves or expresses themselves, causing them to back down and give themselves up for the sake of pleasing others, to avoid feelings of rejection or hurt.

Unknowingly, individuals who felt unloved, often avoid these negative feelings deep down within themselves, in order to feel better. Just like a child that preserves the image of the good parent to get their needs met, the person will project this displaced need for love onto relationships, so they can seek relationships to feel good about themselves and avoid these unwanted feelings within themselves. They escape the feelings of rejection or worthlessness by seeking love in a relationship. When individuals feel bad within themselves, they often look for love in the hopeful fantasy of feeling good enough by adapting themselves to meet the needs of others. Attempts to express themselves lead to painful feelings underlying their real self, so they adopt the defensive false self in the hope to be loved or good enough for others. Yet, deep down they do not have self love and so they overly invest in others to feel good enough, by further negating themselves and becoming unhappy in love, when their own needs do not get met.

Are you falling out of love by adopting the false self to appease others?

In this way the individual will unknowingly give up aspects of themselves for love, yet end up feeling unloved. They will put up with things, find it hard to express their own needs, or have difficulty setting boundaries, because they fear the consequences of losing the loved person, and attempt to avoid  feeling bad  for activating themselves. However, these entrenched patterns of relating cause these individuals to compromise themselves in relationships, when they forgo expressing themselves and lose themselves in relationships, until they fall out of love.

 Have you ever noticed that you lose yourself in relationships until you fall out of love? Our Counsellors in Melbourne offers relationships expertise for individuals and couples therapy services or marriage guidance by assisting individuals to express their real self in relationships, while working on the underlying feelings that hold them back and managing the overwhelming anxiety of getting in touch with their real self. This way they do not lose themselves in love, but are able to be themselves in order to foster healthier relationships.

A healthy self will foster healthy relationships. When you gain self acceptance and self love, you do not defensively need others to feel good enough, and you are able to meet your own needs in a relationship. When you can share aspects of yourself, and obtain self-fulfilment within yourself, you can offer more of yourself in relationships, to develop a stronger foundation for your relationship.

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