The You, The Me, The We. What Happens When We Lose Ourselves in Love

You didn't lose yourself all at once. You said yes to one thing that wasn't yours, and

then another, and then another.

Shoutout to James Sexton, NYCDivorceLawyer on IG for the inspiration for today's episode!

This is the episode about how that happens — and how you come back.

→ Work with me, one on one: https://theloomlife.com/coaching (open to men and women)

If you retired tomorrow, or your kids moved out tomorrow, or your relationship ended,

would you still know who you are? Not what you do. Not who you take care of. Leslie

opens with a question she couldn't stop thinking about after hearing it secondhand: do

you have a place to go, a thing to do, and something to be passionate about? Lose

those three and you lose your inner compass. And once your sense of self goes blurry,

the relationship goes blurry too — because every relationship is the you, the me, and

the we. If the me falls apart, there is nothing left to hold the we together.

This one is personal. Leslie tells the story of the years she stayed home with her two

youngest, when her place to go became their school, her thing to do became their

schedule, and her passion became photographing their lives. She talks about not

recognizing the woman in her own photographs from that decade, and about the women's

retreat in Costa Rica where she was asked to write something about herself and

couldn't think of anything to put down. Then she tells a harder, more recent story:

the stretch after her divorce when an old abandonment wound woke up inside her

relationship with her partner Frank, and she lost months to worrying — along with her

friends, her family, and the attention her new business needed. What Frank told her

when she finally came back to her own life is the turn the whole episode rests on.

Along the way: what the research says happens to your sense of self after a

relationship ends, why people in relationships tend to have fewer close friends than

single people, self-silencing and what it appears to cost the body, the friendship

numbers that make retirement so much harder on men than anyone expects, and why family

systems therapy holds that a real "us" needs two whole people in it — not two halves

looking for completion.

For women in the middle of motherhood, marriage, an empty nest or a divorce. And for

the men in their lives, who are living the same story from the other side.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Would you know who you are?

03:00 Why we lose ourselves — and why it isn't weakness

06:15 The three anchors: a place, a thing, a passion

07:50 What the research says about a blurry sense of self

10:00 When I disappeared into motherhood

14:10 Self-silencing, and what it costs the body

15:40 For the men: when work is all three anchors

18:00 Retiring into nothing

19:20 My abandonment wound, and what Frank said

22:20 Two whole people: differentiation and the real "us"

24:40 Why good, loving people hand themselves over

26:30 Coming back

MORE SUPPORT

Going through a divorce, or rebuilding after one — THROUGH:

https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

Ongoing support and community — Mindful Untangling Membership:

https://theloomlife.com/membership

Instagram: @the.loom.life · @loom.life.therapy

This channel is educational content and is not therapy. Watching does not create a

clinician-client relationship. Leslie is a licensed therapist in Florida only; Florida residents seeking therapy can find that at loomlifetherapy.com. If you are looking for coaching, the link above is the door.