Hello, my loves. Today, we’re going to be talking about a little thing called self-abandonment.

If you keep wondering why you feel anxious and resentful in your relationship, or you feel like you’re never being fully met or fully seen by your partner, it’s probably because you keep abandoning yourself.

You are not broken. Nothing’s wrong. You’ve just been running a pattern from your shadows, and today, we’re going to drag that shit into the light.

My Most Consistent Pattern

Abandoning myself in relationships was once my most consistent pattern.

Before I started this work, I never resonated with being a caretaker. I actually resonated with being a little bit selfish and bratty and putting my needs first, but in a way that was entirely unhelpful and actually quite demanding rather than simply holding my standards and requesting what I needed from my partner.

But after I began doing the work, I swung to the other side of the pendulum. I really dropped my ego and took the time to look at the other person’s point of view, which was great—except that I swung too far.

Instead of being selfish and demanding, I switched to this overexpression of caretaking.

I was very aware of my partners’ woundings and their traumas and the things that they had experienced, and I didn’t want to contribute to that. So instead of asking for anything, I completely abandoned my needs and my desires and my boundaries because I thought, “Well, I want to be there for them. I want to be a good partner.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to support your partner. That desire is coming from a good place. But this self-abandonment that follows is actually coming from a space of, “I don’t want you to see me a certain way. I don’t want to be the villain in your story.”

Self-abandonment isn’t actually about protecting the other person…it’s about protecting ourselves.

Self-Abandonment Shows Up As…

Here’s what self-abandonment actually is: anytime you betray your needs, your boundaries, your values, or your truth to keep someone else happy, you’ve self-abandoned.

When we take responsibility for other people’s emotions, things get really distorted.

On the surface, we’re thinking that we don’t want them to feel a certain way, so we’re going to adjust our behavior. But underneath that, it’s actually about us not wanting to feel a certain way for making them feel a certain way.

Not sure what I mean? Here’s an example.

Let’s say you are newly dating someone, and they want to have sex…but you’re not ready.

You want to say no, but you’re afraid that they’re going to feel rejected. So instead of making them feel rejected, you decide to say yes, and you’ll just endure it. You’re still consenting, but it’s not a full enthusiastic Yes.

In this scenario, you say you don’t want them to feel rejected…but actually, you don’t want to be the person who did the rejecting. You don’t want to be responsible for your own guilt over rejecting them.

It’s not about how the other person feels. It’s about how you feel about what the other person is feeling.

The Jar Problem

“Aren’t I such a good person for abandoning myself and my needs for my partner?”

Sure! It’s great that instead of asking for what you actually need, you’ll just be extremely resentful of your partner instead. So much better, right?

(Sarcasm, babe.)

I’m going to tell you what my therapist told me: your needs are equally important as your partner’s. And if you keep ignoring yours in favor of his, it will wreck the relationship entirely.

I still can’t believe I had to be fucking TOLD this, but this is how my therapist put it:

You and your partner each have a jar. When the jar is full, it means your needs have been met.

Both jars are equally important. You don’t get to smash your partner’s jar with a hammer and take everything he has (aka, demand that he use all his energy filling YOUR needs instead of seeing to his own), but you also can’t take your jar and keep emptying it into his.

If you are pouring all of your stuff into his jar and then you’re not getting anything back, you’re not in a relationship that has reciprocity. Your jar is fucking empty. And then you’re looking at his jar like, “His jar is so full. Why doesn’t he give me anything?”

What that helped me realize over time is that when you are in a relationship, both you and your partner are consenting adults who are responsible for your own emotions.

You absolutely want to factor in your partner’s emotions. It’s not like you should steamroll them and go “I don’t give a fuck. I’m going to do whatever I want, and your feelings don’t matter.”

Of course you want to be compassionate and considerate. But you also can’t be fully willing to abandon your needs and your desires for theirs every single fucking time. You can’t be saying yes to things that are a full no in your body or override the pace you’re comfortable with. You can’t lie and say something that hurt your feelings deeply was actually perfectly fine.

Now, sometimes that response can be due to trauma and going into a freeze response, which I have a whole module on in The Connected Woman. That’s more complicated. But more often than not, you just haven’t built the muscle to actually say the thing and learn how to have difficult conversations, and so you end up abandoning yourself instead. We need to work that muscle.

Self-Trust is Sexy

I’ll leave you with this: you cannot call in someone who chooses you if you are abandoning yourself.

Self-trust is the new sexy. And if you’re completely in the fucking dark on how to start holding your ground and stop kicking your needs to the curb, head to Episode 217 of Unf*ck Your Relationships—I’ll tell you all about it.

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