Stop Calling It Love

You used to have opinions about restaurants. You had a favourite coffee order. You knew which movies made you laugh and which ones bored you to tears.

Now you can’t remember the last time you chose anything.

It happened so gradually you didn’t notice. First, you stopped suggesting restaurants because he always had a better idea. Then you stopped ordering what you wanted because it was easier to just go along. Now you sit across from him at dinner, eating food you don’t particularly like, pretending to enjoy conversations that don’t interest you, wondering when you became a stranger to yourself.

This is what losing yourself in relationships looks like. Erosion that’s quiet, incremental, almost invisible. It’s the slow theft of everything that made you, you.

And I know why you did this. You learned early that being small kept you safe. Naming this doesn’t shame you; it frees you.

What you’re really losing

You think you’re losing preferences about restaurants and coffee orders. That’s not what you’re losing.

You’re losing the promotion you didn’t apply for because it would mean more responsibility, longer hours, and he already complains you’re not home enough. You didn’t even discuss it with him. You just knew. So you stayed small and told yourself you didn’t really want it anyway.

You’re losing friendships. The friend who stopped calling after you canceled plans for the third time because he had a bad day and needed you. The one who slowly realised you couldn’t have a conversation anymore without checking your phone to see if he texted. The women who used to make you laugh until your stomach hurt, who now exist as occasional likes on your social media.

You’re losing your creative life. The writing you were going to do. The business you wanted to start. The art that existed in your head but never made it to your hands because there was never time, never space, never permission to prioritize something that was just yours.

You’re losing years. Actual years of your life spent managing someone else’s comfort, someone else’s ego, someone else’s needs, while yours got smaller and quieter until they barely whispered at all.

And if you have a daughter, she’s watching. She’s learning that this is what love looks like. That women make themselves small. That accommodation is affection. That your needs don’t matter as much as his comfort. You’re teaching her the same lesson your mother taught you, whether she meant to or not.

This is the real cost. Actual life. Actual potential. Actual self.

Society trained you to disappear

You were sold a lie.

You were taught that being accommodating was virtue. Be flexible. Be understanding. Don’t be difficult. Don’t be demanding. Pick your battles. Compromise. Good women are easy to love because they don’t require much.

You believed it because you saw it everywhere. Your mother did it. Your grandmother did it. Every romantic comedy you ever watched told you that love means sacrifice, that putting his needs first is noble, that if you just loved him enough and asked for little enough, you’d finally be enough.

So you became what they wanted. Agreeable. Flexible. Low-maintenance. And it worked, at first. He loved how easy you were to be with. How you never complained. How you always went along with his plans.

And then they turn on you. The same society that sold you accommodation as virtue now judges you for it. You’re weak. You’re a doormat. You let yourself be controlled. Where’s your backbone? Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?

They told you to be small, then blamed you for disappearing.

And the cruelest part is that you blame yourself too. You think you’re the problem. If you were just stronger, more assertive, more clear about your boundaries.

If you grew up watching your mother accommodate, override her own preferences, make herself smaller to keep peace, you learned that love looks like self-erasure. Not from what she said, but from what she did. From how she moved through the world.

The pattern of losing yourself in relationships continues because we’ve been teaching girls for generations that their value lies in how little they need, how much they can tolerate, how small they can make themselves to fit into someone else’s life.