Shrinking for Love

I’ve been married for over twenty years now. It hasn’t often been easy. Obviously, there has been enough good during all of the trials and tribulations that has kept us together and deepened our love. But overall, life has been both deeply blessed and really fucking hard for much of those twenty years.

Some of it was self-inflicted. Some came from circumstance. Some was entirely beyond our control. That’s life, I suppose. Messy, beautiful, exhausting life.

Thankfully, we don’t fight as often as we used to. For a long time, I thought that meant we had finally learned to understand each other better. More recently, though, I’ve started wondering if maybe it’s because I’ve simply learned to give more grace. More patience. More understanding.

When my husband needs to yell, vent, curse, stress, or unload the weight of his emotions, I give him space for it. Even when his words sting unintentionally, I contextualize them. I remind myself he’s overwhelmed, frustrated, hurting, human. I absorb the impact because I know it isn’t truly about me.

And honestly, I don’t only do that for people I love. 

I’ve had strangers direct anger at me unfairly, and even then, my instinct is grace. Understanding. Space. Humanity.

So, is it really wrong, stupid, or naive to hope for the same grace in return? Especially from those who love us most?

Because I am human too.

I will have moments when my frustration builds up and leaks out sideways. I may grunt in irritation when I open a clean dishwasher that still hasn’t been emptied, or sigh loudly when the recycling wasn’t taken out. I’m not screaming at anyone. I’m not withholding love or lashing out cruelly. I’m simply existing visibly enough for my frustration to be noticed.

And if my frustration makes someone uncomfortable - if it triggers guilt, annoyance, defensiveness, or shame in them - am I automatically responsible for those feelings too?

I don’t think I am.

So why, then, do I so often feel punished for having emotions that others are freely allowed to express around me? 

Why does my frustration become unfair, while theirs becomes understandable?

And perhaps more importantly, why have I accepted that dynamic for so long?

The last couple of fights my husband and I have had - both sparked by this exact issue - have been particularly difficult for me. Not because of the conflict itself, but because of what comes afterward.

Distance.

Withdrawal.

Silence.

After making his position known, my husband tends to leave me alone for the next twenty-four hours or more.

To him, it’s space.

To me, it feels like abandonment.

Now, I fully understand that not everyone experiences conflict the same way. Some people genuinely need distance to process their emotions. Boundaries matter. Different coping styles matter.

But I’ve tried to explain to my husband many times that being left alone after emotional conflict is deeply painful for me. Dangerous, even.

Because when I’m left alone with hurt, my mind doesn’t rest. It doesn’t tell me to breathe, relax, calm down, or take it easy.

It accelerates.

My brain starts scanning everything at once - analyzing, dissecting, rationalizing, tracing patterns backward through my entire life. It reaches into my childhood memories, old wounds, past traumas, failed relationships, moments I thought I’d healed from years ago. It tries desperately to make sense of the pain so I can protect myself from ever feeling it again.

And eventually, if left there long enough, my mind hardens around those conclusions.

It builds walls.

At first glance, that might sound protective. Healthy, even. I’d like to think the walls being built would translate to strength, a better understanding of my boundaries and ways to protect myself.

But those walls don’t actually protect me.

They convince me to disappear.

They tell me to give more grace, more patience, more empathy, more understanding. To accommodate more. To endure more. To prioritize everyone else’s comfort before my own. To become quieter, easier, softer, smaller.

They convince me that if I can just be kind enough, understanding enough, selfless enough, then eventually people will recognize my value and treat me gently in return.

But unfortunately, the opposite is often what happens.

The smaller I make myself, the more people unconsciously adapt to my smallness.

Over time, I’ve become incredibly skilled at contextualizing other people’s behaviour while diminishing my own needs. I’ve become excellent at carrying emotional weight that was never fully mine to carry. I become the peacekeeper. The emotional container. The safe landing place for everyone else’s discomfort.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I was allowed to take up emotional space too.

So now, when I do - even in tiny, ordinary ways, like grunting at a full dishwasher - it completely disrupts the space and I’ve stepped out of the role I’m expected to fill.

The calm one.

The understanding one.

The emotionally responsible one.

The one who absorbs.

And I think that’s what I’m finally starting to understand: I didn’t just teach people how to treat me. I taught myself that love was something earned through self-erasure.

That realization has been devastating.

Because now I’m left trying to figure out how to break a pattern that has existed for most of my life.

How do I stop disappearing without becoming hardened?

How do I remain kind without abandoning myself?

How do I learn to express needs before they become resentment?

How do I stop over-accommodating without overcorrecting into bitterness?

And maybe the hardest question of all: What happens to a relationship when one person finally starts taking up space after decades of shrinking themselves to fit inside it?

I don’t fully know the answers yet.

But I think I’m finally beginning to ask the right questions.

Through many conversations with my husband, and through a great deal of self-reflection, I’ve come to realize there is no villain here. No bad person. No good person. We’re just people. Human beings carrying the weight of all the experiences, wounds, coping mechanisms, expectations, and lessons life handed us long before we met each other.

And in carrying all of that, we create patterns.

The quiet ways we teach people how to love us. The roles we unintentionally settle into. The assumptions we stop questioning because they’ve existed for so long they simply begin to feel true.

Maybe I feel like I’m making myself small. But how is my husband feeling during these exchanges? Does he genuinely feel bigger? More entitled to space? I highly doubt it. I know him, and that’s not who he is.

So, is it possible he’s making himself small too? And if that’s true, how is that even possible when we’re experiencing the same moments so differently?

What are we missing? What are we not saying?

More questions…

Ⓒ May 2026. Beki Lantos. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author.