Dear Mina:

You asked if I think that you are sacrificing yourself for your boyfriend, that is, if you are giving yourself away for the benefit of your boyfriend. The answer is in your June 23 thread. Here is your answer to your own question: “I wasn’t living my own dream.. I was living HIS dreams instead in order to be with him.”

So yes, you did sacrifice yourself so to maintain a relationship with your boyfriend.

This sacrifice is the reason you wrote in that thread: “I have become a stranger, even to myself. The process of the break up CHANGED me.”

During the relationship your focus was on him, his concerns, his pain, his secrets. That was one kind of living. Following the breakup, your focus (him) is gone. When a person’s focus is gone, a person naturally feels lost.

The fact that you sacrificed yourself so to be with him does not mean that he encouraged it, or that it was good for you, for him, or for the relationship. What it means is that you learned this thinking and behaving before you met your ex boyfriend. Because of your age, it is most likely that you learned this in your relationship with a parent or parents.

anita