Losing Yourself –in that New Relationship–

I’ve noticed, increasingly, that my friends – both new and long term- are losing their identity when they enter a new relationship.  No, I’m not bitter, I’m very happy in my own marriage.   I understand the  primal desire to mate, I understand that the heart goes thumpity thumpity w00t w00t when we meet that new person.  After four years my heart still does that ( most of the time ).  It’s happened to all of us, you have a friend who you talk to on a regular basis and suddenly they drop off the face of the earth, only to resurface a couple of months later and want to cry on your shoulder that their heart has been broken, or long enough to tell you they’ve found the love of their life and are getting married, then they go back under, until they call to ask you your mailing address, or, worse depending on how close you were in the first place. And this is when you realy know you’ve lost them, to call long enough to breathlessly tell you they’ve gotten married.

What’s hard for me to watch, is watching “I” slowly slip into “we” and watch “John smith” become “john judy” or “john’n’Judy” or worse “judy’n’john”  and by the time my friends realize that they’ve lost themselves in these new relationships of theirs, their identity is so intertwined with that of their new “love” that they don’t even knew who *I* is anymore.

I beg of my friends. Keep the “I” in “WE”!!