Don’t diminish you in the name of making room for your relationship.

“The best relationships of any kind — romantic or otherwise — are the ones that encourage us, expand us, inspire us, rather than the ones that shrink, contain, diminish, entrap or shackle us.” –Dushka Zapata

We deserve a relationship that stretches us instead of withering us.

One of my friends doesn’t get this.

Ever since my friend started living with her boyfriend, she stopped caring about her interests. Whenever her boyfriend asks my friend to scroll through his Facebook feeds with him, she says ‘yes’. She says ‘yes’ even though she is in the middle of an important work that needs her entire focus. Her “me” is buried to a point where she doesn’t even remember what she likes.

Now, her boyfriend is her only interest. Her only passion.

She even leaves her thoughts unexplored.

This’s not cool.

Diminishing yourself in the name of making room for your relationship is not love.

My friend’s relationship is like building a tall brick tower with no windows and no doors. In this brick tower, she is a prisoner. A prisoner who abandoned her interests, passion, and dreams.

She loves him. So she willingly stays in this tower.

Would you stay in this tower?

I wouldn’t.

If I’m in a relationship that withers me, I would sit in the tower all day plotting my escape. My longing for a relationship that stretches me would be so strong that it would overpower any love I have for someone. My lover would blindfold me so I would never gaze at my interests and passion and fit me with gloves so I’d never touch my hobbies.

All these things would accomplish the same result: I would wilt, languish, severe from my interests and passion that make me feel alive.

This is why I have a mantra: I deserve a relationship that stretches me instead of withering me.

So does my friend. So do you.

Diminishing yourself to make room for your relationship is a tragedy.

Even if you love someone very much, that person is not you. Nobody else in the world can create like you. Write like you. Paint like you. Make beautiful necklaces like you. Teach like you. Dance like you.

And yet.

Some people turn their backs on their interests, passion, and dreams when they start a serious relationship. Instead of nurturing their unique dreams, which is their life force, they turn their backs on them for “us”.

They stop making time to go see the Northern Lights.

Pursuing their interests would threaten their relationship. So they diminish themselves in the name of making room for their relationship. They extinguish passions that make them feel alive. They deny their (very real) feelings towards their hobbies.

What a tragedy.

The only one who can make something, anything out of your interests and passion is you.

You lose what you can create when you diminish yourself.

There are many things left for you to discover.

Many things you are interested in, pursuits that may become a part of who you are. A different man who is jostling for the chance to unfurl and express himself. A different woman who is dying to create something new from scratch.

If you feel you’ve misplaced “me” to a point where everything has become “we”, here’s something to think about.

Love does not mean someone can have your everything.

In Niklas Goke’s article, Fall In Love With Someone, But Don’t Fall Out Of Love With Yourself, he writes,

“When we’re single, we’re obsessed with creating our own path. With learning, sharing, improving, making. When we begin a relationship, we often stop. 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. But we forget and get lazy.”

Elizabeth Gilbert has another wonderful paragraph on several ways we disappear into someone we love,

“I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time — everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.” — Eat, Pray, Love — Liz Gilbert

Her point: don’t disappear into someone you love.

Some people think disappearing into the person we love shows our commitment.

The truth is…

We have botched what commitment means.

My friend’s boyfriend feels entitled to pop into his girlfriend’s workspace every time he wants to share a dog picture. Expecting her to give up her personal interests to do whatever he wants is not love.

He thinks that is commitment.

No one told him his actions show insecurity.

In my relationship, I want to feel plugged in, alive, instead of trapped, resentful, owned, and controlled. I want the result of who we are together to be something that expands both my partner and me.

I have my own life with the added joy of being interested in my partner. I may not be interested in many things he is interested in — like football games — but I am unfailingly interested in him.

If this sounds like the opposite of commitment, you misunderstand me.

I am loyal, solid, and for real. I will come through for him in more ways than I can imagine. I just am not interested in being the one to tell him to stop pursuing his interests and passion.

Pursuing your interests doesn’t mean you don’t love someone enough. It doesn’t mean you’re selfish. It means you respect yourself. It means you build a healthy relationship.

It means you’re in a relationship that stretches you.

Commitment does not mean managing each other’s insecurities. It does not mean diminishing yourself. It does not mean detention, confinement, obligation, or a burden.

Your relationship deserves more.

You deserve more…

You deserve someone who is not threatened by anything you could want.

You deserve someone who inspires you to create, to express, to explore, to discover.

You deserve someone with his own passions, pursuits, and interests. Because you need time alone, to process, to write, to hang out with your friends without him. This doesn’t mean you don’t want to be with him. Actually, it often means you want time to think about him.

You deserve a relationship where both of you can grow, learn, and stretch. You deserve a fellow explorer who stretches you instead of withering you. You deserve someone who renews you. You deserve someone who loves your unique interests and passion.

You deserve someone who’s committed to who you are and who you can be instead of committed to the sacrifices you convince yourself you must make for each other.

To your inspiration,

Banchi