“Your individuality is the most valuable thing you have.” Martha Beck
One of the many things I wish someone would have explained to me before I got married is the delicate balance that’s required between maintaining your own individuality and being part of a couple.
Think back to when you were dating…
Maintaining your own sense of self wasn’t terribly difficult:
- You had your own place
- You had your own friends
- You had your own career
- You had your own hobbies and interests
- You had your own goals
You probably didn’t have kids yet, so you had more time for yourself.
Now think about what it’s like after you’ve been married for a decade or more…
- You live together, and you share each other’s space every day
- You have the same friends—joint friends or couples like you
- You likely still have your own career or ways in which you contribute to the family… but it probably looks very different than it did before
- The hobbies and interests you make time for are probably the ones the two of you can do together… or maybe you’ve given up those interests altogether
- Your goals are about the family… and even if you have “joint” goals, you might feel like you’re floundering in different directions, moving toward different goals altogether
The prevailing Theory Of Marriage seems to be this:
When you’re single, it’s okay to maintain your sense of individuality.
Once you get married, you have to give all that up and orient your life around you as a couple.
But I strongly disagree.
As a matter of fact, I think it’s healthy to invest in yourself—as well as your marriage.
My theory is that the health of our relationships never resides in the extremes. It always lves in the middle, gray area.
Too much individuality when you’re married, and you’re living like roommates. Too much emphasis on only being part of a couple, and you lose your sense of self.
We need both to create strong, healthy relationships.
And parents… I know what you’re going to say: “But what about the kids??!”
Your kids need you be an individual and a couple, as well:
- They need to see what a prioritized, healthy, loving marriage looks like
- Girls need to see who their mother is – not only as a wife and mother – but also as a woman. Our daughters need to know they don’t have to lose themselves if they want to have a family as an adult!
- Boys need to see this, too. Our sons need to know how to prioritize their relationships… and the individuality of themselves and their partners!
Believe it or not, your marriage is more likely to really struggle when you lose yourself.
You feel like you’ve oriented your entire existence around what everyone else wants, and at some point, you wonder, “When is it my turn? What do I want? Why hasn’t anyone prioritized me the way I’ve prioritized them?”
We’re certainly not going to blame our kids for that feeling… but we will blame our partners.
And that quiet resentment mounts slowly and steadily over the course of years until we feel so disconnected in our relationship that we’re not even sure we want this marriage anymore…
But maybe what you’re really seeking is a different (or suppressed) version of yourself….
When you feel alive and passionate in your life, you no longer look to your partner to MAKE you feel that way. (He could never do that to begin with, and anyway: It’s not his job.)
Sometimes the challenges in our relationship are, in fact, about the dynamics in the relationship… but sometimes they’re about us and what we’re missing. (Often, it’s a little of both.)
Want to see what’s at the root of your marriage struggles? This is the deep work we do inside my program, The Decision. Let’s see if you’re a fit.