Last week, I shared how a morning of snuggles with my four-year-old daughter, Ella, a driveway full of terrible basketball shots with my son, Max, and a five-movie pirate marathon with my daughter Katie reminded me what it means to step into the world of someone we love. I also shared a childhood memory of my father joining me on the soccer field for twenty minutes, a moment I have carried with me for decades.

Today, I want to make an important distinction, especially for women who have spent much of their lives accommodating other people.

There Is a Difference Between Stretching Yourself and Abandoning Yourself

Many of us have been taught, directly or indirectly, that being loving means being agreeable.

That being a good partner means making sacrifices.

That being a good mother means always putting ourselves last.

That keeping a relationship healthy means doing whatever is necessary to make the other person happy.

And sometimes, without realizing it, we begin to confuse love with self-abandonment.

We agree to things we don’t want.

We participate in activities that make us deeply uncomfortable.

We compromise values that are important to us.

We ignore our emotional or physical needs.

We tolerate behavior that hurts us.

And we tell ourselves we’re doing these things because we love someone.

But stretching ourselves for connection is not the same as abandoning ourselves for acceptance. There is a giant difference.

When I chose to snuggle with Ella that morning, I wasn’t violating a personal boundary.

I wasn’t doing something that made me uncomfortable.

I wasn’t compromising my values.

I love holding my daughter and showing her affection. The stretching wasn’t in the snuggling itself.

The stretching was in my willingness to slow down, shift my attention away from my responsibilities, and meet her in the moment she was experiencing.

I had to step outside my usual go-go-go rhythm.

I had to stop thinking about what came next.

I had to become present.

And that was completely aligned with the mother I want to be.

Likewise, sitting down to play a video game with Max didn’t require me to abandon myself. I might not enjoy video games the way he does, but spending time learning about something he loves is consistent with my values. It is an expression of curiosity, affection, and connection. Playing basketball with him was the same: I wasn’t naturally good at it, but I genuinely enjoyed the experience because I was connecting with my son.

Now compare those moments with doing something that goes against your values, violates your boundaries, compromises your safety, or leaves you feeling that you have betrayed yourself. Those are not the same things.

Love may invite us beyond our preferences, but it should not require us to betray our principles.

Learning to discern the difference is essential, because sometimes, especially when we’ve spent years accommodating others, we can mistake the discomfort of trying something unfamiliar for the discomfort of violating our own boundaries.

But not all discomfort means the same thing. There is discomfort that comes from growth, learning, vulnerability, or stepping outside our usual routines. And there is discomfort that comes from ignoring ourselves, suppressing our needs, or participating in something that conflicts with our values.

The first can expand our lives. The second can slowly diminish our sense of self.

Stretching ourselves should create room for connection, not require us to disappear.

How Do We Know the Difference?

I’ve been thinking about how we can recognize whether we’re stretching ourselves in a healthy way or returning to old patterns of self-abandonment. For me, the distinction begins with asking myself a few questions.

Am I choosing this freely, or am I doing it because I’m afraid of someone’s reaction?

Does this align with my values, even if it isn’t my personal preference?

Am I showing interest in another person’s world, or am I ignoring my own needs to keep them satisfied?

Can I say no without being punished, threatened, manipulated, or made to feel that my boundaries are unacceptable?

Will this experience create connection, or will it leave me feeling that I have disappeared from the relationship?

And perhaps most importantly:

Am I moving toward someone I love, or am I moving away from myself?

That last question matters deeply to me, because for a long time, I confused accommodating other people with loving them. I believed that if someone was upset with a decision I made, I needed to do something to make them feel better. I often treated their emotional reactions as responsibilities I had to resolve.

But I’ve been learning that I can care about someone’s feelings without becoming responsible for regulating them.

I can be compassionate without surrendering my boundaries.

I can show interest without pretending to be someone I’m not.

And I can love someone deeply while remaining connected to myself.

Connection Requires Mutual Interest

There’s another part of this realization that I find important. I don’t want relationships in which I am the only person making an effort to enter someone else’s world. I want mutual curiosity. I want to know what matters to the people I love, and I want them to care about what matters to me.

For example, I love walking. I love being outside, moving my body, and enjoying the world around me. It would mean a great deal to me to have someone occasionally join me on a walk, even if walking wasn’t naturally their favorite activity. Not because I want them to change who they are, but because I would love to share something meaningful to me with them.

And I want to offer that same consideration in return.

Maybe they love video games.

Maybe they love music I wouldn’t normally listen to.

Maybe they enjoy an activity I haven’t explored.

I can become curious, participate occasionally, and discover something about them I wouldn’t have known otherwise, all without losing myself.

Of course, healthy relationships don’t require identical interests or equal participation in every activity. They require something much more meaningful:

A willingness to care about what matters to each other.

In adult relationships, that willingness should move in both directions over time. It should never become a demand that one person continually sacrifices while the other remains unwilling to reciprocate.

With children, the responsibility is different. As parents, we are the ones helping them learn what connection, consideration, and love look like. And sometimes that begins with something as simple as a few minutes of snuggling.

The Life I Want to Look Back On

A few months ago, I had a frightening medical experience that involved being transported in an ambulance while feeling that I might die. During that experience, I found myself thinking about my life.

About the relationships I had maintained.

About the ways I had accommodated others at the expense of myself.

About the things I had wanted to do but kept postponing.

And about what I would regret if my life were coming to an end.

That experience stayed with me because the weight of regret was heavy. And to my surprise, my regrets weren’t primarily about things I had done wrong. They were about things I hadn’t done.

The boundaries I hadn’t established when they were necessary.

The relationships I continued maintaining by abandoning myself.

The times I put myself last.

The conversations I stayed in long after they had become toxic and insulting.

The moments I allowed fear, obligation, or the desire to keep someone else comfortable to determine my decisions.

I didn’t want to continue living that way, so I made a commitment to myself to live differently. I want to reach the end of my life knowing that I truly lived, without the weight of regret I felt in that ambulance.

I want to know that I pursued the things that mattered to me.

That I honored my values.

That I loved the people in my life without losing myself in the process.

That I contributed something meaningful to the lives of others.

And that I didn’t spend my life waiting for the perfect moment to begin living it.

I know I won’t get everything right. I will make mistakes. There will be moments I miss, and times when responsibilities demand my attention and I cannot be fully available to everyone.

But I don’t need to live perfectly to live intentionally.

I can recognize an opportunity to connect with someone I care about and choose to take it.

I can learn from the past without remaining trapped in regret.

I can become more present without adding another impossible expectation to my life.

And I can remember that sometimes the moments that matter most are surprisingly small.

My father played soccer with me for fifteen or twenty minutes, and I have carried that memory for decades.

I stepped outside to play basketball with Max, and what I remember most isn’t whether I made a single basket. It’s how much we laughed together.

And that morning, I held my daughter against my chest and gently tickled her back, her arm, and her little leg. I wonder whether someday she might remember moments like these.

Not because they were extraordinary.

But because, for those few minutes, she had my undivided attention.

Loving Others While Remaining Ourselves

I used to think that honoring myself and accommodating others were opposing choices. Now I’m beginning to understand that there is another possibility.

I can honor myself and still be flexible.

I can have boundaries and still be generous.

I can value my time and still slow down for someone I love.

And I can recognize that another person’s preferences are different from mine without treating those differences as inconveniences.

The goal isn’t to become so independent that we never adjust ourselves for anyone. Nor is it to become so accommodating that we disappear into the needs of others. The goal is to develop the discernment to know the difference.

To recognize when love invites us to stretch and when fear pressures us to shrink.

And to remember that the people we love don’t always need us to do more for them. Sometimes they simply want us to be with them.

That morning, Ella didn’t need another activity, another appointment, or another trip to the park. She wanted snuggles. And when I slowed down enough to meet her there, I discovered that I needed that moment of connection, too.

We don’t have to lose ourselves to love others. Sometimes, by remaining connected to ourselves, we become more capable of genuinely connecting with them.

And perhaps that’s one of the most beautiful things about healthy love.

It makes room for both of us.

A question to reflect on:

When you step into the world of someone you love, are you stretching or disappearing?

And just as importantly, are the people in your life willing to step into yours?

Did this speak to you?

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