You have no voice in your relationship
Do you feel like your relationship is spinning out of control? You may have lost your voice.
by: E.B. Johnson
Do you feel as though your voice is heard and valued in your relationship? When you speak up about something that matters to you — are you listened to? It’s important that we are secure enough in our partnerships to stand up for ourselves and express our needs and expectations. If you feel as though you’ve lost your voice, it’s time to question where you’re really heading.
Relationships require an equal voice.
Finding love in today’s world can be a tricky process, and holding on to it can be even trickier. We have more freedom and more choice than ever before when it comes to our relationships. We decide who we want to fall in love with, and we can decide how we want to build our lives together. For any intimate relationship to thrive, though, both partners have to come to the table with an equal voice and an equal vision for their future.
You are the only one who can give a voice to your needs.
Do you hold an equal voice in your relationship? Do you feel as though you have an equal say in the decisions that get made, or the pathway that you’re setting yourselves on? We need this equality in our relationships in order to feel as though we are valued within them. Any partner who shuts out our point of view is not one who is truly interested in loving us the way we want to be loved. Has your partnership gotten off balance? Have you lost sight of what matters to you or what makes up your own happiness? Now is the time to find and reclaim your voice.
Knowing when you’ve lost your voice.
Have you lost your voice? Has your relationship become one-sided and tiresome? When you lose your voice, you lose yourself in your relationship. You may also notice increased stress, resentment, physical erosion, and even an increase in your own passive-aggressive behavior. All of these manifest from a result to lead your life honestly. Want to find peace? You’ve got to find your voice.
Total loss of self
Losing our voice and presence in a relationship is dangerous, primarily because it signals a loss of self. When you know who you are, you stick up for yourself and go after what you want. When you don’t, you can fall prey to the whims and wishes of other people. Have you become a faded copy of your partner? Do mold your life around theirs and feel like there’s a big hole in the middle of it all? This could be a sign that you’ve lost touch with your authentic self.
Physical erosion
Has your physical health started falling apart? Have you noticed that you’re anxious all the time? Having a hard time sleeping? Dealing with lack of appetite or maybe even aches, pains, and weight gain? All of these bits of physical erosion can result from your struggling relationship. Your physical body is a direct reflection of your mental and emotional one. When you experience turbulence there, you’re going to experience it in your body too (thanks to stress and all the related hormones).
Settling for less
Do you ever look around and think, “Wow, I could have done so much better.” If you answered yes, then you may be facing a loss of power in your relationship. When we have low self-esteem or low self-worth, we very often settle for partners who we know won’t fulfill us. It’s a form of self-punishment, but it can leave us trapped in dangerous and toxic situations with people who take our voice from us…and even our joy.
Indirect aggression
Passive aggressive behavior is common in an off-balance relationship. If you can’t stand up for yourself, you indirectly lash out at the world around you with passive-aggressive behavior. This behavior, though, does anything but set you free or reveal truth. It muddies the water and makes it harder to make sense of who’s at fault and who wants what within the relationship. It’s the equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum until someone figures out what they want. Everyone ends up upset. It’s not very effective.
Shutting down
How would you describe yourself in your present state? Would you say you’re lively? Excited about life or prepared to act on any opportunity that comes your way? Are you still looking for an opportunity at all? Toxic and off-center relationships make it hard to stay excited, because they make us so unhappy. Rather than confronting the hard truth, many of us shut down and shut the world out instead; becoming stuck in a place that doesn’t suit us with a person who doesn’t love us.
Curdling resentment
Are you being eaten up with a resentment that curdles the love you have for your partner? Is the negative emotion building up to create a wall that prevents more honest love? This resentment is always the result of unaddressed issues in our relationship, and a sign that it’s time to sit down and talk about what‘s going wrong. Rather than looking inward to solve your own problem first, you look outward and focus your anger on your partner. You come to resent them because you resent yourself.
How to take it back.
If you’ve lost your voice in your relationship, now is the moment to take it back. By returning to your sense of self and building on your self-confidence, you can remember what you want and what you’re willing to settle for. Focus on small acts first. No great change was made overnight. Build up your courage slowly and lean into those who support you most. Then you can start making space for yourself and start valuing your relationship needs.
1. Return your sense of self
Sense of self is so important in any relationship, but so many of us sacrifice it in an attempt to foster shallow, unfulfilling connection. When someone truly loves us, we don’t have to hide ourselves. We don’t have to shrink who we are, or change in ways that are foreign and uncomfortable. Have you lost yourself? Have you lost touch with what matters or what you want most from your life? You’ve got to reclaim your authentic self, to reclaim your voice.
Take some time and figure out who you want to be, away from your partner and outside of your relationship. Picture yourself as you want to be. How far away is this person from where you are now? Are they someone who settles for the bullying or dismissal of others? Do they make themselves small so that others can feel big?
You’ve got to return to that core sense of self that guides you. You’ve spent so long hiding under the shade of someone else’s tree, that you’ve forgotten all those special parts that make you powerful and unique. In order for you to stake a place in your relationship, you need to figure out what you want and what matters most to you. Then take a good look at yourself. Are you getting what you want? Are you getting what you need? Stop settling for less.
2. Build on your self-confidence
Your self-confidence is one of the foundation stones on which you build the rest of your life. When you believe in who you are and what you want, you don’t settle for people who don’t also want those things. Finding the power to stand up for ourselves is the key to reclaiming our voices and making room for ourselves in relationships that have become one-sided.
Without self-confidence, you will never have the strength or the courage to stand up for that ideal vision you’ve been building. You’ve got to believe in yourself and you’ve got to believe in your right to be the person you want to be — in every facet.
Build up your self-confidence. Make it the jumping off point from which all other adventures and declarations stem from in this life. Accept yourself. Love yourself. Learn to celebrate yourself when you get it right and fall in love with your body. Love yourself inside and out and know that you are worthy and deserving of a life that is defined entirely on your own terms. Love or not, you are the one who sets the course of your life. Take charge and build on your belief in self.
3. Focus on small acts first
As with any change, reclaiming our voices is not something that should be jumped into lightly. It has to happen overtime, as we realize our own power and become more sure of ourselves. Rather than throwing a newfound independence in your partner’s face, take it slowly. Feed your new sense of confidence as you slowly step into the shoes you left behind when you settled for a relationship that was unrewarding.
Take small first steps as you step back into yourself and the things you want for your relationship. If you’ve spent a long time not sticking up for yourself, you may not remember how your partner reacts, and they may be uncertain too. Claim space for yourself in small ways. Stake little victories where you can.
By standing up for yourself in small ways first, you will build your courage and make it easier to tackle the big issues. Deal with the lowest priority or most inconsequential things first. Maybe you make your own dinner or buy yourself a small treat you wouldn’t normally spend on. As you get more comfortable, move into bigger acts of self-declaration. Take a class. Go get coffee with your friends. Cut your hair or change your style. Take small steps in reclaiming yourself and do it safely.
4. Call up support systems
Re-staking your claim on your life isn’t something that has to be done alone. Rather than floundering on your own, call up those people you love most and ask them for that same love and support. Our support systems are here for moments just like this. Instead of allowing your guilt and your shame to have the day open up to people you can genuinely trust now. The people who want to see you live your best and happiest future.
Call up your support systems and allow them to be there for you. Explain how you’re feeling and where your relationship is at. Really open up to them and try to see yourself the way that they see you. Embrace the bravery and the motivation that heap on. Let their encouragement give you courage to act.
When we surround ourselves with good people, we find these moments in our lives to be that much easier to navigate. Ask your friends and loved ones for advice, and take the advice you can see yourself in. Be honest and willing to to be vulnerable so that they can help you to be strong again. There is no shame in coming to others with our relationship troubles. No one gets is right 100% of the time in love — and no one ever will. We’re all works in progress; doing the best we can to survive and love with what we have.
5. Make room for yourself
If you don’t make room for yourself in your relationship, no one else is going to do it for you. We have to be brave enough to take up space. No one is going to give us more room after we’ve already conceded the entire relationship to them. So, make taking your voice back a priority. Then actively make room for yourself in your relationship — both physically and emotionally.
Make room for yourself, your passions, and everything else that you love in your life. This may take the form of signing up for an online class, or it may just come down to taking an afternoon off for self-care every week.
Allow yourself to take up space. Do things you want. Pursue your interests. Spend more time with your friends and the people who value and support you. The more you step into this additional space, the easier it will become for you to see where you want your relationship to go. Embrace a life that is entirely yours, and know that you don’t have to sacrifice any part of yourself when you’re in a solid, stable and supportive relationship.
Putting it all together…
Does it feel as though you’ve lost your voice in your relationship? Have you stopped speaking up for yourself? Have you stopped making room for yourself or doing the things you enjoy? We should feel confident enough to speak up and speak out when it comes to building a mutually beneficial partnership. When you feel as though you’ve lost your voice — you probably have. To get it back, you have to take action and learn to focus on yourself.
Return to your sense of self and re-imagine your life as you want it to be. Remember who you are and what you really want from life and love. Then, you can begin building a base of self-belief that allows you to pursue that with confidence. As you come more into yourself, start using small action to create more space for you in the relationship. Stick up for yourself in bigger and bigger increments until you’re certain of how your partner will react, and what you need to do. Call up your support systems. Lean into them and let them know what’s going on. Above all else, though, make more room for yourself, your needs, and your passions in your relationship. No one else has a right to take your joy from you. Create room for it and nurture it every day.
- Paterson, R., 2000. The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up For Yourself at Work and In Relationships. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.