The Moment You Realise You've Been Shrinking Yourself in Relationships
The front door closes after coming out from a really fun dinner with friends. You take a deep breath, and go straight to the bedroom because you know he’s not going to ask you how it went - there’s no point even pretending.
You’re in the supermarket together and see your favourite childhood cereal. You go to put it in the trolley, and he says “we don’t need that, we have granola at home”. You feel your shoulders drop, and put the cereal back because why bother.
It’s date night, and you’ve put on your favourite dress. You feel really great about yourself for the first time in a while. You walk into the living room hoping he’ll notice. All he says is “great, you’re finally ready, let's go”.
This is what shrinking looks like. It’s not one moment - not all at once. It’s in the small moments where you begin to feel invisible, unimportant, uninteresting. Each incident doesn’t seem “that bad”, but over time you’re getting smaller and smaller and it’s like it happened before you could even notice.
But something happens where you begin to notice.
You’re at work and one of your co-workers gets flowers from their boyfriend “just because”, and your stomach sinks because you can’t remember the last time you got flowers. Not even on Valentine’s Day. That feeling in your stomach is saying “am I asking too much?”.
You get back from hockey practice where you had the most fun you’ve had in a while. You go to tell your partner about it and all they say is “that sounds fun” barely looking up from their phone. Except this time, instead of that feeling in your stomach and the sigh, you feel angry. You notice it bubbling up in you screaming “look at me!”.
Just like the shrinking, the realisation happens slowly, over time. You have a moment driving alone listening to that song about female empowerment and you realise you can’t relate. You can’t sleep at 3am because you feel off, and then you realise you don’t feel off, you feel lonely. You’re in the shower after getting back from the gym, and your partner hasn’t said hi to you yet and you realise it’s not that he didn’t notice you came home, it’s that he doesn’t care.
And then it happens - your stomach drops and a wave of emotions hits you over the head. Sadness for the person you’ve become, grief for the time you’ll never get back and the version of you you’ve lost, and anger at all the ways you’ve been ignoring yourself. It hurts - it really hurts - to recognise all the ways you’ve abandoned yourself and all the things you’ve lost in the process.
But it also feels like clarity, like relief, like a weight has come off your back and you can see clearly for the first time in years. The sadness and the relief are close friends - one cannot exist without the other. You have lost something and you have gained something too. You realise you’ve lost yourself, and you realise that you can see clearly now.
And that clarity - as painful as it is - is the beginning of something important.
You can't unsee what you've seen. And as hard as that is, it's also the most powerful thing that could have happened. Because you can't find your way back to yourself without first knowing you've been gone.
The version of you that put the cereal back, that stopped hoping he'd look up when she walked in, that learned not to expect to be asked how your evening was - she was doing the best she could with what she had. She deserves compassion, not judgment.
What comes next doesn't have to be dramatic. It starts small. Noticing. Choosing the cereal. Letting yourself feel angry when the anger comes. Slowly, gently, learning that taking up space isn't something you need to earn.
If you recognised yourself in any of this and you're ready to start finding your way back, I'd love to talk. You can book a free 15-minute chat at the link below - no pressure, no commitment, just a conversation that's entirely about you, for once.
