2. You abandon parts of you (from your hobbies to your friends to your job).

I don’t buy into the notion that commitment has to mean detention, confinement, obligation, or burden. I’m committed to who my partner is and to who he can be rather than committed to the things that bind us, or the sacrifices we convince ourselves we must make for each other.

I don’t want us to dedicate our lives to confine ourselves in the name of making room for our relationship.

I want him to inspire me to create, to express, to explore, to discover, and I crave knowing I inspire him in the same way.

Here are 4 signs you fail to represent yourself in your relationship:

1. Things you don’t like to do become things you never do.

Just because your partner does simple tasks at home does not mean you can’t do it. Just because something is easier for the other person does not mean you can’t do it.

2. You abandon parts of you (from your hobbies to your friends to your job).

There are many things left for us to discover, many things we’re interested in. Pursuits that might become a part of who we are. This pursuit waits for the chance to unfurl and be expressed. Instead of nurturing all this, which is in effect our life force, we turn our back on it for “us”.

You’re so absorbed in your relationship you allow every “me” to become “we”.

Somewhere along the way, you lose yourself.

Niklas Goke in Fall In Love With Someone, But Don’t Fall Out of Love With Yourself, writes,

“We stop discovering ourselves because we’ve discovered someone. But that someone’s not us. It’s another person and it’s no reason to quit our own little journey.”

You and your partner don’t have to do everything together. You can have your life with the added joy of being interested in the life of someone you love.

If you love spending time in a book club and you are not doing it anymore for the sake of your relationship, reconsider. You are not going to be happy by suppressing what you want to do.

Do things for you that you would do for someone you love. Important things like going to a book club and participating. Or taking a night out with your girlfriends. Or buying that business suit you have been dying to have in your closet.

3. You’ve poor boundaries.

I want to be with you all the time twenty four hours a day. I know I just met you but I want to spend every minute with you.

You are responsible for you.

The other person – even if you love him the most – is responsible for himself.

Anything that breaches this basic frontier between where you are and others begin is a display of poor boundaries.

Boundary setting is a life-long exercise you often need to re-examine and re-establish.

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” – Brene Brown

4. You don’t soothe yourself when you’re distressed.

When distress tinkers my heart, I’ve a routine that soothes me. I rest on my bed for hours or I journal. I call close friends. My partner is one of my sources of self-soothing.

He’s not the only source.

When you soothe yourself, you build a foundation of resilience, inner strength, and self-trust. You don’t need another person to soothe yourself. To calm yourself. To comfort yourself. To listen and sort through your feelings.