We are constantly adapting to other people.
We speak differently to our boss than we do to our best friend. We notice when someone is tired. We compromise. We let things go. We choose our battles.
This is part of being in relationships.
So when does adaptation become a problem?
Not as Simple as “Never Change for Anyone”
I don’t think it’s as simple as “never change yourself for other people”.
That sounds good until you try having an actual relationship.
Sometimes you should change your plans for someone you love.
Sometimes you should listen instead of insisting on being right.
Sometimes you realise that the way you have been behaving isn’t fair, and you need to do something differently.
That isn’t self-betrayal.
It’s being a person who exists alongside other people.
Research backs this up, with an interesting twist. In a study of couples’ daily lives, the psychologists Bonnie Le and Emily Impett looked at what happens when people make sacrifices for their partners and keep their negative feelings about it to themselves. For people whose sense of self is closely bound up with their relationships, holding back felt authentic, and it was linked with greater wellbeing and a better relationship. For people with a more independent sense of self, the same holding back felt false, and was linked with worse outcomes.
So it isn’t the adapting itself that matters. It’s whether, when you adapt, you still feel like yourself.
The Adaptation That Feels Different
But there is another kind of adaptation that feels different.
The kind where you are always the one adjusting.
You stop saying what you want because it will probably cause an argument.
You become very understanding of other people’s behaviour while finding very little room for your own reactions.
You tell yourself you don’t mind.
You genuinely don’t know whether you mind anymore.
You become so good at anticipating what everyone else needs that your own preferences start arriving several hours late.
For some people, especially those who have spent years adapting to fit in, that delay will feel very familiar.
Tiny Decisions
And because nothing dramatic is happening, it can be difficult to notice.
There is no obvious moment when you betray yourself.
It happens in tiny decisions.
It’s easier not to say it.
It’s not worth making a thing of it.
They’ve had a difficult week.
I’ll just go along with it.
I don’t really mind.
And perhaps you don’t.
Until you do.
The psychologist Dana Crowley Jack gave this pattern a name: “silencing the self”. Through her work with women experiencing depression, she described how people can gradually stop expressing their thoughts, needs and feelings in order to keep a relationship safe, and how, over time, this can leave them feeling lost inside their own lives. Research using her scale has linked self-silencing with depression, and while her original work focused on women, it’s a pattern people of any gender can recognise.
It’s also worth knowing that holding back doesn’t always protect the relationship in the way we hope. In a later study, Emily Impett and her colleagues found that when people sensed their partner was hiding their feelings while making a sacrifice, it left them less satisfied with the relationship, not more. We often notice more than we think.
Where Boundaries Can Become Too Simple
I think this is where the idea of boundaries can become too simplistic too.
We can turn every act of compromise into a question of whether we are “honouring ourselves”, as though a healthy relationship involves two people maintaining perfectly intact personal borders at all times.
That doesn’t sound much like intimacy to me.
Being close to someone means being affected by them.
The family therapist Murray Bowen had a name for what I think is important here: differentiation of self. It describes the ability to hold onto who you are while staying emotionally connected to the people you love. Bowen saw two ways it can go wrong. One is losing yourself in the other person, until you can’t tell where their feelings end and yours begin. The other is protecting yourself by pulling away, keeping people at a safe distance.
Rigid boundaries can be a version of the second. They can look like strength, while keeping closeness out.
Still in the Relationship as Yourself
The question, perhaps, is whether you are still in the relationship as yourself.
Can you disagree?
Can you disappoint them?
Can you have a need they don’t particularly like?
Can you change your mind?
Can you say no without immediately needing to explain why you are still a good person?
Maybe adaptation becomes self-betrayal not when we change for someone, but when we become afraid to find out what would happen if we didn’t.
That feels like a more difficult, and more useful, question.
Because sometimes the thing we need to protect isn’t our independence.
It’s our ability to remain present in the relationship without disappearing inside it.
Finding Your Way Back
If you recognise yourself in this, it isn’t a sign that you’ve done something wrong. Adapting is often something we learned for good reasons, sometimes very early on, when keeping others happy felt like the safest way to stay connected. I’ve written more about that in The No That Costs Less Than You Fear.
Therapy can be a place to notice the moments when you disappear, to find out what you actually feel and want, and to practise staying present with others as yourself.
At Trueform Therapy, I offer one-to-one sessions in person in Cardiff and online across the UK and EU. If you’d like to explore this together, you’re welcome to get in touch for an initial conversation.
If You Want to Explore These Ideas Further
Harriet Lerner’s The Dance of Anger (1985) is a classic on how people, particularly women, lose themselves in relationships to keep the peace, and how to find a clearer voice without damaging the connection.
If the idea of staying yourself while staying close speaks to you, David Schnarch’s Passionate Marriage (1997) builds on Bowen’s ideas about differentiation, and applies them to long-term relationships.
Dana Crowley Jack’s Silencing the Self: Women and Depression (1991) is where the idea of self-silencing began. It’s based on her research with women, but much of it rings true more widely.
And if you’d like to look at the research directly:
Dana Crowley Jack on silencing the self: Oxford University Press blog
Le and Impett on holding back feelings during sacrifice (Psychological Science, 2013): Association for Psychological Science
Impett and colleagues on what happens when partners sense suppression (2014): study (PDF)
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