Have you ever looked up and realized you’ve been so busy taking care of everyone else that you’re not even sure where you went? In this episode, I’m talking about losing yourself in a relationship, what it really means to put yourself first, and why prioritizing yourself doesn’t make you selfish.
I’ve learned this one the hard way through relationships, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and plenty of moments where I put everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. And eventually, that can turn into resentment, exhaustion, and that feeling of being completely disconnected from yourself.
We’ll talk about how to stop losing yourself in a relationship or marriage, how to recognize when you’ve made your partner, kids, or everyone around you the center of your life, and some simple ways to start coming back to yourself. I’m sharing what putting yourself first in a relationship actually looks like, how boundaries and small acts of self-care can change the way you show up, and why being a loving partner or mom shouldn’t require abandoning your own needs, identity, and desires.
I also share a few of my favorite tools for those moments when you’re overwhelmed or feeling lost, including a five-minute reset, an easy meditation practice, and a simple technique for calming your nervous system. If you’ve been feeling lost in your relationship, losing yourself as a mom, or wondering how to put yourself first without feeling guilty, this conversation is your reminder that you are allowed to take up space in your own life.
We don't want to lose ourselves in a relationship and we can put ourselves first. And when I talk about this stuff on social media, the backlash, oh my God. I mean, it especially is for men, but they are just like, you know, you narcissistic bitch. How dare you say this? And I'm like, how deeply ingrained in us is it this idea that women are here to serve? And if we put ourselves first or even hint at talking about it, it is selfish how dare we. But, you know, it's not the same with we're talking about the kids, if we're talking about men, it's not the same thing at all, not even close.
That's like expected, but not with women. And so when I bring it up on social media, I mean, you can go look, it's like sometimes things go viral for all the wrong reasons and or just like it's a pile on, you know, I've had some things that have turned into a pile on. The people just saying, you know, this is what's wrong with society. How dare you? No wonder you've been divorced, all those kind of things. But I say the reverse is true. If you don't prioritize yourself in a relationship, you can lose yourself and become so resentful that you can end in divorce.
Oh, hi. Yeah. Case in point, right? Two divorces. But now I learned, I looked at those, people love to say to me too. They're like, they're like, oh, who's the common denominator? I'm like, yeah, duh. Me. I was like, pissed. The second divorce really pissed. And I couldn't believe I was going to go through it again. And like, I don't take that lightly. And like, yes. So I did a lot of self work. I'm like, what is going on here that things aren't working out?
And really, truly, I wasn't prioritizing myself. And I know that sounds so counterintuitive. People like you should prioritize a relationship or whatever. Yeah. Like I believe, I truly believe in my husband believes this too, that it's not 50, 50 in a relationship. It's 100, 100. Like you are working toward being your very best self. I am working toward being my very best self. He is working toward being his very best self. And then you meet up and you form this whole new thing.
That's two whole people showing up. It's, it makes the relationship a whole different ball game. And it was not what I was used to. It's not what I'd done in the past. And that's why I'm here talking about this today, right? Okay. So we, like I said, we're, I think trained from birth to think of women as this, like the shud of it, right? Like you have to care for all this. And then I don't know about you, but I got like all this perfectionist tendency, like deeply ingrained in me too, that I had to put on a thing for the world.
Like look at all I'm doing. And he, he, I have everything together when that may not be the case. I learned after my first divorce, like to let go of that. And it felt really good because there's a lot of, I don't know if we'd call it performative, momming, parenting out there, but maybe, maybe you would call it that. But you'd call it, you know, something like keeping up with the jones is right, like keeping up with what everybody's doing. Oh my God, everybody's signed up for camps.
I better sign up for camps. Everybody's got their kid in the school. I better, I better sign up for school. I feel like you sort of like get this anxiety around getting all the shoulds done and being perfect when really it's about spending time with your kids, spending time in your relationships, spending time with your, with the people that matter, right? And we got our priorities out of whack. But I think I'm off on a tangent. Okay, so let's get back to it.
When I didn't prioritize myself, guess what? I got like resentful AF. And ended up divorced. And I'm going to talk about what prioritizing yourself actually means and looks like. But like, it means, it means resentment, like off the charts, you know, because you're stuffing down, we stuff down all these feelings and put ourselves. Honestly, I think it comes down to value. I think it really comes down to valuing people more than ourselves, value others more than ourselves.
And I've been taught that's, you know, what we have been taught by like our grandmothers and everything make everyone else comfortable. And you, you showed for everyone else except yourself. When in reality, you are going to be a better partner, parent, friend, person. If you prioritize yourself and you fill up this cup, it is a recipe for depletion. It is a recipe for resentment, for burnout, martyrdom, right? Look at all I've done for you. Then you feel like shorted when other people are like, yeah, I am more important than you, because that's what we've been telling them.
And then when they don't treat us like we're important, like we're more important, we're surprised. And it's like, why are we surprised? This is what we fucking taught them. Puh, right? All right, so like I and my 20s didn't speak up. This was when I can hindsight, oh good old hindsight. In my 20s and my first marriage, I didn't even know myself well enough to speak up. I deferred so much of like my opinions about the world, my thoughts about things and how they should be to either my parents or my husband.
And I just put myself and my own feelings and my own thoughts on a lower tier. And you know what? I ended up becoming resentful. But I was the one that did it. I was the one that shows it. I did it to myself. And then when I went and did it again, like I was like, like when you start to see a pattern, right, they say a pattern is hardest to see when you're living it. And I believe that that is true. And sometimes it just takes living it enough to where you look back and you go, oh my gosh, look at this pattern that I'm doing over and over and putting myself beneath everyone else.
And I think that like I just didn't value myself either. I think that had come from childhood, from being the youngest. And they've come from a childhood friendship that was that deeply affected me. And she would treat me like shit sometimes. And you know, it was her own things going on. And I didn't know that at the time. Now of course I can see it. That's another story. Okay. So also I was really good at managing everyone, right? And that's part of it too.
That's part of it. You're giving your energy to manage everyone else when you're not managing this. And when we can manage this right here, everything gets better. All ships rise, right? And it probably takes some retraining with the people in your life to get them on board with, hey, I've got to care for myself. Do you remember that old show, What Not To Wear? And maybe you don't remember it. But they would find people who, and then give them like, swap makeovers, you know?
I don't think it stands up to the test of like what's cool nowadays. But anyway, I remember I love makeovers. And so I remember watching this show. But one of the things was there were women in this show that literally wouldn't take five minutes for themselves in the morning. And I can remember the host just being like, you deserve five minutes for yourself to, I don't know. Just like, do your hair a little put on something that makes you feel good. And I'm not saying it has to be all, you know, those kind of things, appearance based.
But, and I'm actually going to get to that. But it was just the fact that they wouldn't take five minutes for themselves in any regard. Instead it was just, I have to do everything for everyone right away. That's what they want. And, you know, there's just this mothering, there's this managing in there. This can get really unhealthy. And just because we're good at it doesn't mean we should be doing it. Other people can figure shit out for themselves. Like your partner is a grown adult.
They can do it, right? They can make their lunch. You know, they can figure it out. Like sometimes I get like an old patterns and I'll think about my old marriages and like how I used to do everything or at least according to me I did. And the other day we had something break in the house and I was like, oh God, I'm going to have to fix it and I told my husband. And then he just took care of it. And I was like, oh my God, how fucking refreshing. Like, you know, just to have someone that feels like a partner.
And I think that part of that is me not trying to manage every single thing and handle every single thing. Even though I can, I've let him know enough that I'm going to care for me and we're equals in this. And you know, no one's, no one, there's no, there's no ranking. Like everyone has value and deserves their own time, their own space to be putting themselves first in their own life. And listen, if you're listening to this, let me just address this. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, but we have to put God first.
I believe that putting yourself first is putting God first because you were gifted this life. And by putting yourself first, you are honoring, oh, I feel strongly. I'm like, Terry, you are honoring this life, this precious gift that you've been given. And so, you know, they say God lives within you. I mean, I've done enough mushrooms to know that we are all connected. And that connection, that is you, right? We are honoring this bigger version of life, of, of souls, of spirit by honoring ourselves, by knowing our value.
So you are by putting yourself first, honoring God, you are putting God first. How about that? Okay. So onward. So when we talk about the five minutes, like just giving yourself five minutes a day, if you don't know where to start or if you're just like, what do I do? Let's talk about meditation. And you know what? You don't have to be intimidated by the word meditation, right? All it is is just sitting in silence with your own thoughts. And this is my favorite analogy of meditation.
It's imagining a jar or a glass with sand and water. And when you stir up that water, the sand is everywhere. You can't see through the water. It's not clear. But when you sit it still and all the sand can fall to the bottom, the water becomes clear. So that's basically a metaphor for your mind. All the sand particles are your thoughts swirling. You can let them fall when you sit still. They're still going to swirl around. Basically, what you're doing is training yourself to slow your mind down enough that you know your own thoughts, that you know yourself, that you know what you need.
And maybe you need a little break. Maybe you need a bath. Maybe you need, you know, a massage. Maybe you need some quiet time outside, a walk by yourself. That's training ourselves just in a short time. You could do this in your car, literally while you're picking someone up. You can do it while you have five minutes in a parking lot if you're running early for something or perhaps you just finish something you can sit and do it, right? Like there are options to find those few minutes for yourself.
And this is just a way to get more in touch with what you need, with what's right here, with because that ultimately makes you pour from a full cup. I used to volunteer for this organization and one of their primary things was making sure that you were taking care of yourself because they were like, you can't pour from an empty cup. You've got to put your oxygen mask on first for that a million times, right? You do. You have to take care of this. You're going to be a better, more giving partner.
That's an irony. That's a paradox in there, right? I get there's so many paradoxes, but that actually makes you a more giving partner. And you're able to speak up your own boundaries if something is angering you. Maybe you're able to sit with it for a moment to understand your own feelings and you're able to speak up because not speaking up is how we lose ourselves. First we maybe don't know ourselves, we don't value ourselves. And then we just lose because we lose ourselves because we aren't speaking up.
Your marriage is going to be so much better, your partnership, your friendship, your relationships with your children is so much better when you can speak up for yourself, when you can express yourself. Because you matter as much as every other person in this whole history of the world. You matter. I matter. We matter. We have to treat ourselves as such. And every, I know it's a paradox, but every relationship gets better because of that. And really truly does.
I promise you. And it is honoring the God in you. Don't fall prey to these, all this nonsense like you're being selfish. Selfish in the best way. Yeah. But like, people love to bring me down when I talk about this or try to, try to bring me down. Absolutely not because I've seen the results. I've seen what it was before and I've seen what it is now. And this can, I promise this can happen. This can happen. It can happen. All right, I just learned this biggest nerve calming things.
Let's do this on the way out. You take like two quick breaths in and then you audibly sigh out. So if you want to do this together, let's just do it twice. Oh, sorry, best step that one. Let's try again. Nothing like an audible sigh. Give yourself that. You can do that anytime. You're awesome. You matter. Remember what I said. You matter just as much as everybody else. So prioritize yourself. And remember, it's a practice. It's not a one and done. This is something you have to learn over time.
Everything is a freaking practice. And so like patterns, all of it, believe me. I have moments where I'm like, what am I fucking doing? And then like, I'm like, oh yeah. I am meditated in a week or whatever it is. So like, and it doesn't have to be anything intimidating. These are all things that can be really easy if we'll just allow ourselves to do them. So anyway, sending you so much love, you matter so much. Keep shining bright. Till next time.