Maintaining a unique and separate self in any relationship is an ongoing and necessary process for the person who desires growing emotional wellness. This can be most challenging in the intimate relationships or being a spouse and a parent but it doesn’t stop there. Maintaining a self can present an enormous challenge at work.

We all know someone who got so consumed by a career that who he or she was got lost in what he or she did for a living. Similarly, we all know someone who got “lost” in love or gave herself completely to parenting and didn’t know herself or her husband when the children left home.

Such blurring of boundaries in intimacy, family, and career, is often affirmed as love or commitment and sacrifice or the call of mothering. Some parents joke about it with “I used to have a life and then I had children.”

The emotionally well are able to stand alone (maintain self) and engage in intimate relationships and satisfying careers and powerful and effective parenting.

If this describes you, all is not lost.

Begin somewhere: express your opinions (even if they are unpopular), learn to say “no”, do something wild, unexpected, make slow shifts in your focus, reclaim your voice.

Posted on February 5, 2019 at 8:38 am in Difficult Relationships   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL