I saw a post today that stopped me in my tracks because I literally felt like I could have written it.

It talked about what happens when, somewhere along the way, you become so accustomed to adjusting to everybody around you that you stop realizing how much of yourself you’ve been adjusting away.

And it stopped me cold.

This was me.

And I don't think this only happens in marriage.

I think this happens to women in motherhood, in family, in friendships, at work, in church—anywhere we have learned that being loving means being accommodating.

And for me, it started in childhood.

The 10-year-old me.

She learned how to read a room.

She learned how to be responsible.

She learned how to make herself useful.

She learned that being needed could feel a whole lot like being loved.

And those skills followed me into adulthood.

I became the dependable one.

The strong one.

The person who knew how to make everything work.

All while denying or minimizing my own trauma.

And people became so accustomed to that version of me that one day I had to confront something uncomfortable:

I'm not sure anybody actually knows me.

And then came an even harder question:

Have I allowed them to?

I Thought Being a Good Wife Meant Being Adaptable

Marriage absolutely requires compromise.

You cannot share a life with another human being and insist on getting your way all the time.

But somewhere between compromise and constantly adjusting yourself, there is a line.

And I crossed it without realizing it.

I learned to read the room.

If he was upset, I adjusted.

If there was tension, I tried to fix it.

If the children needed something, I made room.

If everybody else had an opinion about what should happen, somehow my preference became the easiest one to sacrifice.

And because I could accommodate everybody, I did.

Over and over again.

Until accommodation stopped being something I occasionally chose and became the way I moved through my life.

There's a difference between compromise and self-abandonment.

I didn't always know the difference.

I Became So Good at Reading Everybody Else That I Stopped Reading Myself

I can tell when somebody's mood changes.

I know when someone needs encouragement, space, help or reassurance.

I can feel when something isn't right.

But how often did I give myself that same level of attention?

Not often.

Sometimes we become experts on everybody else's emotional world while becoming strangers to our own.

What am I feeling?

What do I need?

What do I want?

What am I carrying?

What would make me happy?

I wasn't asking myself those questions.

I was too busy asking what everybody else needed from me.

I was everything for everybody while neglecting myself.

And because I had done it for so long, I didn't even recognize it as neglect.

I thought it was love.

Doing Everything for Someone Is Not the Same as Allowing Them to Know Me

This was the part of the post that really challenged me.

Because sometimes we believe our love and our labor should communicate everything.

I show up.

I handle all the things.

I provide the support.

I remember what everyone needs.

I even anticipate needs that aren't spoken aloud.

And somewhere inside of all that doing was an expectation:

Surely you know me.

Surely you know what I need.

Surely after everything I do for you, you should know when I need something from you.

And when that didn't happen, resentment grew.

That was hard for me to admit.

Because eventually I had to acknowledge my own role in creating that dynamic.

People knew the version of me I consistently showed them.

The capable one.

The fixer.

The supporter.

The woman who could handle it.

But being capable isn't the same as being known.

People can know how strong I am without knowing where I'm fragile.

They can know everything I do for them without knowing what I need from them.

They can know the woman who takes care of everybody without ever really meeting the woman underneath all of that.

And I had to ask myself:

Had I actually allowed myself to be seen?

I Needed a Place Where I Felt Safe Being Soft

There is something painful about being the person everybody depends on and then realizing that when you need something, people don't necessarily know what to do with you.

The strong woman eventually gets tired.

The fixer eventually needs help.

The woman who holds everybody else eventually wants somebody to say:

I've got you.

You don't have to carry this one.

And when that didn't happen, I felt overlooked.

Unseen.

Sometimes even unloved.

But another realization hit me just as hard:

I had participated in creating the very dynamic I was resentful about.

I mirrored neglect of self.

I sent the message that it was okay to overlook my needs because I was overlooking them too.

That landed like a ton of bricks.

Like a bomb went off in my life.

Because I realized I wasn't just looking for a safe place to be soft.

I had to learn that it was safe for me to be soft at all.

Safe to need something.

Safe to ask for help.

Safe to not have the answer.

Safe to disappoint somebody.

Safe to allow tension to exist without rushing in to fix it.

Safe to be loved when I wasn't being useful.

Maybe I Didn't Need to Find Myself

Maybe I needed to learn how to remain myself.

To have enough emotional structure that somebody else's disappointment doesn't automatically become my emergency.

To let another adult have an emotion without believing it's my job to regulate it.

To say what I need without apologizing for needing it.

To say no without giving a ten-minute explanation.

To stop automatically minimizing what I want because somebody else wants something different.

And this does not mean I've stopped compromising.

It does not mean I've stopped loving deeply.

It doesn't mean I no longer care about the needs of the people I love.

It means I am no longer willing to disappear in order to prove that I love them.

I can love you and still have boundaries.

I can care about your feelings without becoming responsible for them.

I can make room for you without removing myself from the room.

That's the difference.

For so much of my life, I believed everybody around me had to be okay before I could be okay.

I don't believe that anymore.

I haven't become less loving.

I've stopped requiring my own disappearance as proof of my love.

Because I matter too.

And I love it here.