The emotional blackmail I impose on myself for fear of losing

A woman loves to dance. Before her relationship, she regularly got together with her friends, put on music while preparing meals and took advantage of certain family celebrations to dance until she was tired. Her partner likes neither her friends, nor that music, nor the way others may look at her when she dances.

At first, he makes a few remarks to her. Then he becomes cold every time she announces an outing. He does not always clearly forbid her from going. He sighs, closes up, announces an unpleasant evening or makes her understand that a truly committed woman would not want that kind of moment.

She gives it up once. Then a second time.

A few years later, she says:

"He prevents me from going out. He has distanced me from everything I loved."

Part of that sentence may be true. Her partner may have used jealousy, silence, reproaches or guilt to shrink her space. His responsibility must not be erased.

But another question can give this woman back something she has lost: what was she hoping to preserve each time she gave something up?

Perhaps the peace of the evening. Perhaps her partner's affection. Perhaps the image of a couple without conflict. Perhaps the security of a relationship she believed impossible to find elsewhere.

She did not enjoy losing her outings.

Each time, she judged that the hoped-for counterpart was still worth the sacrifice.

This is how we can take part in an inner blackmail without having chosen the external pressure. We tell ourselves we have no choice, when part of us keeps protecting a reward, a promise, a place or a supposed happiness. Understanding this does not prove the other person right. It allows us to check whether what we are protecting still deserves what we sacrifice to it.

A sacrifice always reveals a hoped-for value

A top-level athlete may devote years to preparation for a race that will last a few seconds. He gets up early, turns down certain outings, monitors his lifestyle and accepts pains that many people would not choose.

Seen separately, each renunciation seems heavy.

It becomes understandable when we see the value being sought: the competition, the pushing of limits, the victory, the pride or the fulfillment of a dream.

In a couple, we too accept sacrifices because we associate a counterpart with them. We move, change a habit, sometimes give up a freedom, change how we organize our money or devote time to what matters to the other. This does not automatically amount to abandoning ourselves. Building requires efforts that do not all provide immediate pleasure.

The problem begins when we no longer check the value that justified the sacrifice.

The athlete normally knows which race he is preparing for. In some relationships, we keep training even though the race was cancelled long ago. We deprive ourselves for an affection that no longer comes, for a peace that never lasts, for a promise the other no longer even repeats through their actions.

We keep paying because we have already paid a great deal.

The past sacrifice then becomes a reason to sacrifice again, instead of becoming information about what the relationship costs us.

We do not put up with everything only "out of love"

Saying we stay "out of love" can be sincere and yet incomplete.

We also sometimes stay so as not to lose a status, a house, a habit, an intimacy, a project, a presence or the idea we have of our future. We may fear our family's gaze, the loneliness of evenings, the need to start everything over or the pain of seeing the other person happy without us.

These interests do not necessarily make our love false. They simply reveal that our decision protects several things at once.

A person can deeply love their partner and also appreciate the comfort of the relationship. They can be attached to their history and dread losing the security it brings them. They can want to preserve the children, the habits of the home or the possibility of carrying out a shared project. Love does not need to deny these realities in order to remain love.

But as long as we tell ourselves that the feeling explains everything, we cannot properly examine the price we have accepted.

"I stay out of love" sometimes closes the discussion.

"I stay because I love, because I still hope for this and because I fear losing that" finally opens up the calculation.

This calculation is not shameful. It allows us to know what the relationship really represents for us, and what gives certain demands the power to make us give up ourselves.

The other person's authority sometimes rests on a counterpart

We easily describe our partner as authoritarian when that person demands that we change our outings, our clothes, our relationships, our way of speaking or certain activities that make us happy.

They may indeed be using unjust authority. They may want to organize our life around their fears and their interests. That conduct belongs to them.

But authority does not work only because it gives orders. It also works because we associate obedience with a reward or disobedience with a loss.

We obey in order to receive tenderness. To avoid silence. To keep sexuality, security or belonging. To avoid being presented as the bad people. To preserve the hope of a happiness that seems rare to us.

The counterpart can be important enough that we consciously choose certain renunciations. In that case, we must own them and check their reciprocity. If I reduce an activity that sincerely worries my partner and that person also takes into account what hurts me, we may be dealing with a relational adjustment.

But if one commands and the other always gives in, authority no longer circulates. The counterpart becomes the price paid to a person who distributes peace according to one's obedience.

Understanding this mechanism allows us to stop saying only: "He or she is authoritarian." We can add: "This is what holds me back, this is what I still expect and this is the value I am afraid of losing."

It is from this truth that our room to maneuver begins to grow again.

A counterpart can be real

Not all costly relationships are empty.

A man can live with a very demanding woman, who wants to be consulted on many subjects, handles certain outings poorly and asks for a great deal of presence. Yet he may receive from her deep affection, constant solidarity, an intimacy that matters, a visible commitment to their projects and an ability to be there when he goes through a difficulty.

It would not be honest to look only at what she imposes.

It would be no more honest to look only at what she brings.

This man can decide that certain efforts are worth the relationship he receives. That choice belongs to him. Another person, with a different scale of values, would make a different calculation.

So the question is not whether every concession proves that we are being manipulated. It is whether what we receive still has real value for us, whether the effort remains acceptable, whether the other acknowledges its cost and whether reciprocity exists overall.

A real counterpart does not automatically turn all demands into good requests. A great quality does not buy the right to diminish the other. It simply enters into the complete evaluation of the relationship.

This nuance is essential. Without it, self-respect would become a rule ordering us to leave as soon as the relationship requires a sacrifice. Yet a relationship without any shared renunciation does not build much.

What destroys is not always the effort.

It is sometimes the unilateral effort whose hoped-for value is never delivered again.

A counterpart may exist only in memory

There are relationships in which we keep sacrificing ourselves for a person who no longer exists in the same way.

We remember the beginning. The attention, the long conversations, the desire, the projects told with enthusiasm. We knew a period during which every effort seemed to open up something beautiful.

Then the behaviors changed.

Listening shrank. Projects stopped moving forward. Consideration became rare. Yet, at the moment of refusing a new deprivation, we do not compare it to the present relationship. We compare it to the old reward.

We think: "If I make this effort one more time, maybe we will become like before again."

Hope can be a strength when it rests on visible actions. It becomes a trap when we manufacture it alone in the other's name.

A person may have been wonderful five years ago and no longer show today the will to build. The old moments remain true. They do not constitute a current promise in that person's place.

We must update the value.

What does this person bring today? What do they protect? What efforts do they make when they understand our suffering? What trajectory do their actions trace?

Gratitude toward the past does not oblige us to keep calling "reward" what the present no longer provides.

A counterpart may also never have been promised

We can impose on a relationship a contract the other never signed.

A woman accepts for years a man's repeated absences because she is convinced that one day he will want to build the shared life she imagines. He appreciates their relationship, comes back regularly, perhaps expresses affection, but has never promised the project she is waiting for.

She suffers from his absences. She then reproaches him for not delivering the reward for which she put up with so much.

But had he really promised that reward?

This does not mean he always behaved correctly. He may have taken advantage of the ambiguity, kept hope alive or received a great deal without clarifying what he wanted to give. His part must be examined.

Hers must be too: did she turn her own sacrifices into a down payment on a future that had never been agreed upon?

We can do this with marriage, a particular fidelity, a financial project, a change in behavior or a future acknowledgment. We give today thinking that the other will necessarily understand what this generosity commits them to give us back tomorrow.

When tomorrow arrives, we discover that we did not have the same contract.

A silent expectation can exert a very powerful blackmail on us. We do not want to lose what we believe we have almost obtained. So we keep paying in order not to admit that the reward may never have been promised.

The truth is sometimes less costly than prolonging the down payment.

The hoped-for reward must be distinguishable from a real commitment

We can give for a long time hoping that a presence will become a shared life, that patience will produce recognition or that a sacrifice will force the other to finally choose. If this expectation was not agreed upon, our effort is not enough to turn it into a promise.

This does not absolve the person who deliberately maintains an ambiguity in order to keep receiving. We must look at their words and actions, not only at the absence of an explicit contract. But we must also be able to name what we imagined in their name and what reality confirms today.

The past cost does not oblige the future to repay. We can be sad about what we have committed and nevertheless decide not to add the same price. The question is not to make our old efforts absurd; it is to see which choice now protects what remains of our life. A better-named expectation can become a clear request, a new agreement or the recognition of a limit that desire cannot erase.

What we have already sacrificed does not guarantee what we will receive

After giving up several friendships, leaving a city, changing a career or devoting years to a relationship, it becomes difficult to examine what comes next freely.

Leaving, refusing or simply calling the agreement back into question can give us the impression that all the previous sacrifices become useless.

So we add a new one.

We no longer do it only for the relationship. We do it to give meaning to everything we have already given.

But an old cost does not guarantee a future benefit.

If a path continually takes us away from the destination, the number of kilometers already traveled does not prove that we must continue in the same direction. It proves only that we need to look at the map with more honesty.

We can keep the lessons, the good memories, the qualities developed and the knowledge of ourselves acquired during those years. Not everything disappears if we change method or decision.

The real waste may be sacrificing tomorrow only in order not to acknowledge the price of yesterday.

This does not decide for us whether to stay or leave. It simply takes away from the past the right to vote alone on all our years to come.

Measuring what I give, what I receive and what is useful

We can draw up a list of everything we give and another of everything we receive. But the number of items will not be enough.

A rare attention can have very great value. A daily contribution may have become mechanical and no longer meet the other's main expectation. A flaw can weigh more than several qualities if it destroys what we place at the center of our project.

So we must measure differently.

What do I give? What effort does it require of me? What does the other actually receive? What do I receive? Does this value still meet what I am looking for? Who bears the negative consequences? Does the other protect what I bring?

A love without any sign of reciprocity becomes disproportionate. One of the partners ends up being taken for granted, while the other may convince themselves that they are granting a favor by staying.

Reciprocity does not mean that each must cook the same number of meals, earn the same amount or express affection in the same form. It means that both people must be able to recognize a value for themselves in the relationship and see that their efforts count in the decisions.

When value no longer circulates, sacrifice changes meaning. It is no longer a contribution to shared happiness. It becomes the price paid to keep access to a person.

Loving gradually is not loving coldly

After giving a great deal without receiving enough, we can draw a radical conclusion: never commit again, never trust again, never show our affection before having the guarantee that nothing will be lost.

This protection can prevent any relationship from being born.

Loving gradually offers another path. We give something real, then we observe what the other does with it. We open up more when behaviors build trust, reciprocity and a shared will. We do not turn every gesture into an invoice, but we also do not place our whole life into a relationship that has not yet given us any reference point.

Progression protects our capacity to love.

It does not freeze it.

A woman can be generous, caring and available without giving up, from the first weeks, all her other sources of happiness. A man can invest sincerely in a relationship without immediately committing his entire financial, emotional or family future.

This caution does not mean: "I will give only if I receive exactly the same thing." It means: "I will let our shared actions show me how far this relationship can carry what I entrust to it."

We are not looking for an impossible guarantee.

We are looking for sufficient reasons to keep opening the door.

Reclaiming a joy is not declaring war on the couple

When we have given up friends, music, an activity or personal moments, reclaiming them can seem provocative.

Our partner may say that we have changed, that we think less about the couple or that we now seek to live as if we were single. We may ourselves feel guilt.

We must look at the intention and the measure.

Reclaiming our whole life against the other, without any discussion and by abandoning our commitments, can become revenge. We do not repair an imbalance by brutally removing all relational contribution.

But putting a legitimate joy back into our existence is not necessarily a rejection. It can restore a person who had shrunk themselves to preserve the relationship. A worthwhile couple does not need one of its members to become empty in order to prove their love.

We can explain: "I accepted certain renunciations because I believed they served our happiness. Today, I see that they cut me off from an important part of my life and that they do not produce the hoped-for value. I want to find that balance again without ceasing to do my part with us."

The other remains free to appreciate or refuse this evolution.

Their reaction will give us essential information: does this person know how to welcome our love without demanding the disappearance of everything that does not revolve around them?

Reclaiming my power does not consist in denying what I expect

We do not need to pretend that the relationship no longer matters in order to become free.

We can acknowledge that we are afraid of losing. That we miss the intimacy. That this person's presence brings a rare value. That starting over elsewhere frightens us. That our history still deserves efforts.

Lucidness does not remove attachment.

It only prevents it from falsifying the calculation.

I can say: "This relationship matters enormously to me, but I must check whether what it gives me today still justifies what it asks me to give up."

This sentence condemns neither the other nor the couple. It places our self-respect back at the center of the building. It reminds us that we did not come into the relationship only to protect the other's happiness and that the other did not come only to protect ours.

We are two people seeking to build a shared value without demanding that one continually finance the other's happiness through their own disappearance.

Inner blackmail loses its force when we honestly name the reward, check whether it exists, measure its price and remind ourselves that several doors can still lead to our happiness.

We can choose to stay and renegotiate what we give.

We can choose to reclaim certain joys.

We can choose to wait for actions before increasing our investment.

We can also discover that the hope we were obeying no longer rests on anything visible.

The right decision will not be the same for everyone.

But no reward deserves that we stop indefinitely checking whether it is still being delivered.

We do not become ungrateful by looking at what love costs.

We become responsible by no longer paying eternally for a promise that only our renunciation keeps alive.

The questions that reveal what I still hope to receive

What do I claim I cannot do because of my partner, and what fear, what expectation or what hoped-for reward also leads me to accept this deprivation?

What immediate benefit do I obtain when I give something up — peace, affection, security, status or hope — and is this counterpart real today, old or never clearly promised?

What have these renunciations already cost me in joys, relationships, projects, self-esteem and the ability to imagine other paths to happiness?

What pressure clearly belongs to the other, and what part of my power can I reclaim by ceasing to treat my sacrifice as the only possible price for keeping this relationship?

Can I keep loving while gradually giving back a place to what nourishes me, and what new balance would better protect my dignity without forgetting the part I freely committed to the couple?