I used to greet my friends with hugs. Ten years deep in the racing world, I was surrounded by guys in the pits, joking around, competing, and talking strategy at dirt tracks on Saturday nights. I was happy and affectionate with my race friends the way you are with family, because in a lot of ways, that's what the racing world gave me.
My first husband fell for that version of me. Then over time, he kept asking me to be less of her around my male friends.
A hug here. A laugh there. The way I talked to guys I'd known for years. Slowly, it all became a problem. So, I started adjusting. A little less warmth. A little less me. Year after year, for eight years, I kept pushing down parts of my personality to keep the peace, until I could barely recognize who I had become.
What I had a hard time understanding was that he didn't fall in love with a quieter, duller version of me. He fell in love with the woman who hugged everyone, including the guys.
And for a long time, I convinced myself that if I could prove my love to him, he would eventually see that my bubbly side wasn't a threat.
If you're drained from trying to change someone, convince them, or become who they need you to be, here is where your actual power lives.
The Picture We Create
We all do this. We meet someone, we fall for who they are, and then somewhere along the way we start building a picture in our head of who we think they should become.
Sometimes it's small. You wish he'd be a little more patient. You wish she'd speak up more at family dinners. But sometimes the picture gets bigger, and it starts asking the person to change the very things you once loved about them.
That's what happened in my marriage. He built a picture of a wife who was quieter around men, less affectionate, more contained. I built a picture too, one where if I loved him hard enough, he would eventually trust me and let the real me come back.
Neither version was the actual person standing in front of us.
When the Real Person Doesn't Match It
Once you're holding a vision of who someone should be, you start measuring the real person against it constantly. Every hug, every laugh, every small moment of just being myself became evidence in a case I didn't know I was on trial for. That's exhausting.
And without realizing it, I did the same thing to him. I compared who he was to who I kept hoping he would become, someone who trusted me enough to let me be fully myself.
This is where relationships start to wear down. Not because the people in them are necessarily wrong for each other, but because so much energy goes into managing the gap between who someone is and who we think they should be.
You can love someone, believe in their potential, and still stop taking responsibility for who they choose to become. The difference is small, but meaningful. It moves from asking, How do I get them to change? to asking, Can I let them be who they are and decide what that means for me?
Letting Go Without Losing Yourself
I want to be clear about something, because this is where the idea gets misunderstood.
Letting go of the picture does not mean tolerating harmful behavior. It does not mean staying silent about what you need. It does not mean abandoning your boundaries so someone else can be comfortable.
There is a real difference between saying, this behavior affects me and I need something different, and saying, I need you to become a different person so I can feel okay. The first is a boundary. The second is a negotiation with reality, and reality does not negotiate.
If someone has to dim parts of themselves to make a relationship feel safe, the relationship isn't asking for compromise. It is asking for disappearance. That was what I slowly allowed to happen to me. And at the same time, I kept waiting for him to become someone who would finally make it feel safe for me to be myself again.
Letting Your Choices Belong to You
Over the course of those eight years, I stopped being able to see either of us clearly. I was too busy comparing him to the picture I had created and shrinking myself to fit the one he had created for me.
When you stop mentally correcting the people you love, something surprising happens. You get to see them again. Not the version falling short of your expectations. The actual person.
And when you stop editing yourself to fit someone else’s picture, you get to see yourself again too.
Stop loving people for their potential while being frustrated with their present. Let them be themselves. Then let your choices belong to you.
That’s not a smaller way to love someone. It’s a way of loving that doesn’t require you to lose your own light in the process.
Loving people enough to let them be themselves also means loving yourself enough to refuse to disappear because of someone else’s expectations.
Loving people enough to let them be themselves also means loving yourself enough to refuse to disappear inside someone else's expectations.
RESOURCES FOR YOU
Magnetic Morning Routine
If you’d enjoy a little guidance, I created this short audio practice to help you begin your day feeling grounded and connected to yourself. Take three and a half minutes to breathe, release some pressure, and believe in possibility. 💛
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