Love and Independence

Looking back, there was a season when love asked you to disappear. Slowly, by degrees, you became smaller so someone else could feel bigger. Your friendships thinned. Your interests shrank. Your opinions softened. Your time stopped belonging to you. You did not notice it happening — small loss by small loss — until you woke up one day and could not find yourself in your own life.

You are not doing that again.

Healthy love does not require you to disappear. It does not need your friendships to fall away. It does not need your interests to dim. It does not need your alone time to be defended. It does not ask you to fold up your separate self and tuck it away to keep the relationship comfortable.

A love that is right for you will love the friendships that have stood by you. It will be glad you have a life that is yours. It will appreciate the parts of you that exist independently of any relationship — the hobby, the quiet evenings alone, the friends you laugh with, the work that means something to you, the days that do not need to be explained.

You can be in love and still be entirely your own person. The two are not in tension. In a healthy relationship, both people remain themselves. Both people have their own lives. Both people bring those lives toward each other — freely, again and again — because they choose to, not because they must.

There was the losing of yourself. There is now the finding of yourself. There will be the steady knowing that you will not be losing yourself again. If you ever feel something tightening around your separateness, you have permission to honor that warning. You have permission to keep what is yours. You have permission to stay rooted in your own life even as you make room for someone in it.

You learned what losing yourself costs. You will not be paying that cost again.