I’m losing myself to my relationship

[Guest_294]

It has been years since I have posted on BB and I haven’t really felt the need to come back to it but I feel like I am falling apart a bit at the moment. The summary of the story is this: I have been dating my boyfriend S for around 8 months now. We flew into our relationship, two months after I got out of a serious 4 year relationship that broke down very bitterly and left me with a lot to work through in therapy (still need to make a start on that). S is, on paper, wonderful. He is incredibly thoughtful, he is intelligent, he fits in with my friends and family and I’m in love with his. Our lives mesh together like they were meant to. We are in the same line of work and have similar aspirations for our future. Recently, some cracks have started to appear for me but no one would know they were there. I have found myself super frustrated by his tendency to play the hero - he will write himself in as the “responsible one” to every drunken night out, or the “sensible voice” who calms every fight. For every story he tells, there is an element of him “saving the day”. It is bordering on self-centred (over)-confidence in my mind. I feel like we also have very little to talk about when we’re not talking about an imagined future: when we move in together, when we have kids, when we live overseas, when we travel the world, when we decorate our home. We very rarely have anything to say about the present. I worry that, other than this imagined future, we actually don’t have much in common. He hasn’t seen or heard of any of the movies or music I love, we don’t read the same books or have the same hobbies, he prides himself on exercise and productivity whilst I am more inclined towards reading and relaxation. Our work talks only take us so far and then we start discussing our kids names. Also…the intimacy aspect of our relationship is very limited, occasionally non existent. 

There are some more selfish / shallow things I’m worried about / find myself suddenly unattracted to or getting the ick from…but that is less important (although feeling hard to overcome as well…). 

I had a very messy relationship with my ex. He was emotionally manipulative and made me feel like I had to shrink to accomodate and remediate his insecurity - if I succeeded at something, he felt like he had failed, so I just stopped talking about my success until it felt like it wasn’t one. I stayed with him far too long and it was only through deep and consistent emotional manipulation that I stayed and went back as many times as I did. 

I think what I am really worried about now though is a chronic lack of any sense of self. My forum posts reflect the fact that since I turned 18 I have never had a period of being single that lasted longer than 4 months. I have jumped from serious relationship to serious relationship and have had almost no time by myself as an adult. When I ended my last relationship I promised myself I would put myself first and find that sense of self I had been missing and instead I did what I have always done and jumped to the next one. Now I find myself with no clue of who I am without S. His friends are my friends; we spend our weeks participating in his hobbies; I have almost no hobbies of my own and I hardly spend time with my own closest friends. 

None of this to say that is particularly S’s fault - he himself is deeply independent and I’m sure he would be upset to think I felt so trapped but the reality is I think I am not good at being in relationships. I give my entire self to a person and don’t even reserve any for me. He has every part of me and it feels like there’s nothing left. I don’t know who I am without him. 

Can I remedy this whilst I’m still in this relationship? Part of me wants to cut and run, another part feels like I’ll never find anyone this good again. 

To make matters complicated, the people in my life have strong feelings on the matter too. When I discussed with my family, they said they had never seen me happier than with S, and I shouldn’t sabotage myself or him over nothing. They said that the people in my life, including S, would be blindsided by this change, whatever and however long I had personally felt it. 

All help and advice is, as always, greatly appreciated. 

[therising]

The warmest of welcomes to you, especially at a time in your life where you're longing to discover your natural self. I'm a gal who's a big believer in the quest to discover our natural self as being one of the greatest quests of all in life. From start to finish, technically it can take a lifetime. Being the nature of any great quest, there are so many questions, with each answer offering a step forward on our path.

There are just so many facets to us, too many to mention. Some we will choose to bring to life and some we we'll choose not to. Some will come to life gradually through experience and some may suddenly come to life. Some will be brought to life by others and some through the hard work we may do on our own. So many different ways for facets of our self to come to life. Whether it's the party-goer, the philosopher, the wonderer in us, the adventurer, the dancer, the pool player, the intolerant upstanding part of our self or the people pleaser, it really can be a seemingly endless list of facets or aspects that go toward making up the whole of who we are. If there's one thing I've learned in my 54 years on this earth it's this...I will always be finding new parts of me. While I could say 'There's no way I have a SCUBA diver in me', in 2 years time I could  be diving with a tank on my back amongst some coral reef half way 'round the world. Just because I can't envisage this part of me, doesn't mean it's not there waiting to be brought to life. The right person and/or right circumstances may be what triggers it to life.

I'm wondering whether your partner loves 'the hero' in himself, whether it brings him joy and he loves to share the joy. On the other hand, it may bring him a sense of security in relating to this identity or part of himself. Without it he may feel 'less than' or 'worth less'. I think some of us are sharers and some aren't. While you or I could achieve heroic feats and there could be some part of us dictating 'Gee, you're a legend!', we won't necessarily share our self proclaimed 'legend' status with anyone else. We might just smile and keep it to our self, along with a sense of the joy it brings us. 

In returning to aspects or facets of self, could there be a guitar player in you, a local/national/international adventurer in you, a painter, writer, researcher, student (longing for further study) and so on? I've found, in a partnership, it can be a matter of 'What new facets will we bring to life in each other together (adventuring together)? What parts will we bring to life independently, while encouraging each other? What parts will we keep personal, maybe to be revealed at a later date or maybe not at all?'. I laugh hysterically when I consider what it would be like to bring the pole dancer in me to life, without telling my husband. Then, once I'd become so good at it (through regular classes), I couldn't help but share. I think he'd go into shock.😂 What do you think your friends would say (the ones you haven't seen for a while) if you said to them 'Let's learn pole dancing'?. If their response was 'Have you gone mad?!', you could always come back with 'You know, I thought about how I want to do something that would be so out there and fun and you were the first person/people I thought of'.