The Compromises You Made Before You Realized You Had a Choice
From my heart to yours as I navigate a life change that has changed me forever, and I know many women can relate!
After 16 years of relationship, the longest relationship of my life, and 9 of marriage, I have come to see that the compromises we make for love may become some of the greatest barriers to connection, pleasure and agency as women move through their 30s and beyond.
And the impact of those compromises will not necessarily show up in our labs when we don’t feel well! But it does show up in how we feel nonetheless.
As I review my lawyer’s draft of my divorce agreement, I realize that what I am ending is not only a marriage. I am ending the compromises I made for love, and the compromises I had been making since childhood.
I had learned to place my happiness inside a box built from a belief system that was never truly mine.
I married at 36. Although I did not feel ready, I persuaded myself that it was the right decision. We had already been together for years. He had left the job that sponsored his right to remain in the UK, and he seemed ready to walk the same path as me.
Surely getting married made sense?
So I compromised with myself.
There had never been a proposal. Deep inside, I felt that, once again, I had not truly been chosen. I was the safe option for a man who was frightened of change and deeply attached to the comfort of his habits.
But I could not see that then, and I had no idea how quickly I would begin paying for that compromise.
By then, I had left banking and was teaching yoga full-time while continuing to coach and study. I was building the life that felt right to me, yet I carried tremendous guilt because I knew my partner resented the steps I was taking.
Somehow, he began believing that I owed my transformation to him, that without him, I would never have changed my life, even if I did know that was only partially true.
Living together certainly made some things easier. But had I been single, I would still have found a way.
One thing about me is that when I decide to do something, it happens. Perhaps not as quickly as I would like, because I have fears too, but it happens.
When I met my husband, I thought he was brilliant. He was , however, emotionally unavailable and true to being an only child, very focused on what HE wanted!
He struggled with commitment. So when, after six months, he called me his girlfriend in public, I was ecstatic.
Here was this emotionally stunted man, and somehow I had managed to become his girlfriend simply by being myself.
Or so I thought.
In reality, I had already begun making myself indispensable by fixing everything and caring for everything.
Yay, me!
I saw nothing wrong with being the carer. People needed care, didn’t they? My parents certainly had.
We saw each other when it suited him. The relationship fitted around his life, and I convinced myself that this was acceptable because I cared for him.
I said yes to all of it.
Not because it was what I truly wanted, but because somewhere inside me, I believed that asking for more might cost me the relationship.
So I settled for breadcrumbs.
Yes, I felt that I was never his number one. But at least I was a number, right? I existed in his life. I was making his life better, and he was helping me relax, slow down and become calmer, too.
On the surface, anyway.
For years, I was terrified of losing him and the relationship. Even when he cheated, I forgave him.
And I truly did forgive him. I do not resent the act itself anymore.
What I now regret is that I did not forgive him and still walk away.
Forgiveness does not require us to remain in a situation that has betrayed us. We can release our anger without abandoning our boundaries.
The first time it happened, he did not ask for forgiveness. Instead, the conversation became about his trauma and the healing he needed to do.
And so we began working on him.
I became the therapist, the emotional support system and the endlessly understanding partner. He shared some things and changed a little, but the focus remained on him.
The second time, he apologized, but not because he appeared to understand the depth of the pain he had caused me. He was sorry because he had decided that he needed to become a better version of himself. for himself and for God.
I did not yet understand the magnitude of what would follow, but ultimately, that realization began to unravel everything.
Nothing was about me.
But how could I expect him to make it about me when I did not even make it about me?
The Pattern Beneath the Relationship
This is not only my story. It is one of the oldest stories women carry, and it is rarely limited to romantic relationships.
We compromise our bodies, careers, time, pleasure and sense of worth.
Our attachment patterns can amplify those compromises. Mine were an entangled mixture of insecurity, avoidance and almost nonexistent boundaries. My childhood had shaped me that way, and since 2023, I have worked every day to heal those parts of myself.
The realization landed like a giant drop of water hitting a still lake, sending ripples across everything I thought I knew:
I was the common denominator in everything I disliked about myself, my life and my relationship.
That does not mean I was responsible for another person’s choices or behaviour. It means I had to acknowledge the ways I had abandoned myself, tolerated what hurt me and remained where my needs were repeatedly dismissed.
I had voiced my needs and concerns, but they were shut down. So, little by little, I shut them down too.
When I was physically unwell, I did not receive the support I needed. My behaviour was questioned and invalidated, and very little care was offered in return. When I asked for help, the response I often received was, “Ask God for guidance.” or, gaslighting! Who doesn’t love a sprinkle of gaslighting?
But I did not need spiritual instructions. I needed my human to hear me. I needed my partner to care.
Perhaps that was simply too inconvenient.
Yet as I began healing physically, something else started happening: the internal healing began too. I could finally see the patterns I had been repeating.
Then I began noticing how many other women followed similar patterns, not because there was something inherently wrong with us, but because society has spent generations teaching women to be agreeable, accommodating and easy to manage.
Patriarchy cannot comfortably coexist with powerful women who know their worth, trust their intuition and refuse to disappear.
So we are taught to become smaller.
As I listened to the compromises other women shared, I recognized so many of them in myself.
These are the ten I can finally see clearly:
1. The Compromise of Productivity
“I can only rest when I have achieved enough and cared for everyone else”
The problem was that moment rarely came. There was always another person to help, another task to finish or another qualification to pursue. Rest was never something I deserved simply because I was human. It was a reward I had to earn, and I was constantly moving the finish line. Moreover, it was something I needed permission for. I grew up in a household where rest meant laziness.
2. The Compromise of Looking Great at all times
"If I remain thin, attractive, youthful and disciplined, I will be safe from rejection"
I am almost 45. I am thin but also strong, disciplined and attractive, and I am choosing to be single.
I now understand that no version of my body can guarantee that another person will value, respect or remain faithful to me. My appearance is not an insurance policy against abandonment. I just look the way I personally like.
3. The Compromise of Being Easy Going
“Keeping the Peace matters more than telling the truth”
But false harmony tore me apart inside.
Whenever I silenced what I really felt to preserve the peace, I created conflict within myself. It did not feel peaceful. It felt like lying, to him and to myself.
4. The Compromise of Self-Abandonment
"If I reject my needs first, perhaps it will hurt less when somebody else does”
This was neither deliberate nor conscious, yet it ran my life for years.
I became so skilled at anticipating what everyone else needed that I stopped asking what I needed. When others eventually failed to show up for me, the abandonment felt familiar, because I had already abandoned myself and experienced since childhood! I still, to this day, don’t alleyways know what I like.
5. The Compromise of Silence
"If I do not ask for too much, I will not lose the relationship"
I lost myself instead.
Silence did not protect the relationship. It simply protected it from the truth. When I did voice anything it was rejected and contradicted with prophecy, scriptures and beliefs.
6. The Compromise of Competence
"If I can manage everything alone, I will never have to experience the vulnerability of needing someone."
My competence became both my strength and my armour.
The more capable I appeared, the more difficult it became to ask for help. Eventually, everyone assumed I needed nothing, including me. But the one time I asked for help, as I was drowning, I was let with resentment and bother.
7. The Compromise of Accommodation
"If I make myself easier to love, love will stay."
I adjusted, excused, forgave and made space. I tried to understand every wound behind every behaviour.
But love that requires one person to become smaller is not secure love. It is an arrangement held together by self-erasure. This is typical between insecure and avoidant attachment styles too
8. The Compromise of Being Chosen
"If somebody chooses me, perhaps I will finally believe that I am worthy.”
That person eventually chose me, yet the invalidation within the relationship left me feeling more unseen than ever.
Being chosen by someone else cannot heal the wound of not choosing ourselves. We can choose ourselves though.
9. The Compromise of Emotional Labour
"It is my responsibility to anticipate everyone’s needs, regulate their emotions and hold everything together.”
I carried the emotional weight of the relationship, translated feelings, searched for explanations and tried to create opportunities for healing.
Yet when I needed that same care the most, I felt alone and unheard.
10. The Compromise of Certainty
"If I can find the perfect diet, protocol, qualification, relationship or answer, I will finally feel safe inside my body and my life."
Yet even now, I sometimes punish myself when life does not look the way I believe it should.
Healing is also learning to remain kind to myself when there is no perfect answer—when life is uncertain, unfinished and beyond my control.
What No Laboratory Test Can Measure
As a naturopathic practitioner, I spend a great deal of time thinking about hormones, inflammation, metabolic health and the nervous system. These things matter deeply.
But I am becoming increasingly curious about something no laboratory test can measure:
How many times does a woman override herself in a single day?
How many times does she feel a “no” inside her body but say “yes” to keep the peace?
How much joy and pleasure disappear, not because her body has failed her, but because she has been taught that belonging requires her to become smaller?
Our compromises can shape our stress, our behaviour and how safely we inhabit our bodies. But not every emotional truth needs to be turned immediately into a diagnosis.
Some truths need to be witnessed before they can be explained.
I do not have every answer. I am still learning every day as I navigate emotions that move from sadness to anger, from frustration to gratitude.
Yet I am happier than I have been.
I have pleasure in my life. Although I am single, I feel blessed rather than alone.
Pleasure begins long before the bedroom.
It begins when a woman listens to herself and acknowledges what she wants and deserves.
It begins when she stops negotiating away her needs and starts trusting her God-given intuition.
It begins when she understands that boundaries do not make her difficult, honesty does not make her unlovable, and choosing herself does not mean she has failed to love somebody else.
Sovereignty is not the opposite of love.
It is what makes honest love possible.
Millions of women inherit an agreement that nobody formally writes down or teaches us: surrender small pieces of yourself in exchange for approval, harmony, security and belonging.
We rarely notice the cost because we pay it gradually, depleting our fund till we run on empty.
Until one day, perhaps while reading a divorce agreement, or meeting our Dark Knight of the Soul, we realize that we have become experts at caring for everyone except the woman living inside our own body.
I am ready to end that agreement! I am ready to release the old trauma, expectations and beliefs that never belonged to me in the first place.
What agreement are you ready to break?
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