Why Does Love Feel Like Losing Yourself?
Exploring The Love Paradox: Can We Have It All?
By Natalie McCarty
I’m someone my friends would describe as fiercely independent. Stubborn to a fault. I know exactly who I am, what I want, and how to get it. The only time this description falters? When I’m in a serious relationship.
And it’s not just me. It’s something that’s in so many of us. It’s not our fault, nor is it entirely the media’s. But there’s certainly something to be said about society. We’re told to choose—a family or a career, the dream man or the dream job, love or autonomy.
I’ve come to realize that a defining paradox in my life is this: I’m either independent, or I’m in love. Never both at the same time. Never fiercely independent while being emboldened by love. Always one or the other, as though these two states can’t coexist—as though choosing one means sacrificing the other.
And isn’t this the same paradox we see played out in the relationships we idolize? Carrie and Big in Sex and the City. Hannah and Adam in Girls (let me have my fun). Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Even Sebastian and Mia in La La Land. Love and ambition are tangled together, but they’re also what tear these pairs apart.
Still from La La Land (2016)
Is it a single, transformative moment that binds these couples together, or is it a gradual, almost imperceptible shift that occurs over time? A slow merging of days, weeks, or even years when you begin to sense, with a quiet certainty, that two lives have seamlessly intertwined into one. It’s in the subtle details—when you’re out with friends, and your answers to their questions effortlessly turn into “we” statements, even in your partner’s absence. And honestly, why would he even need to be there? Oh, boy.
Where does “I” dissolve into “we”? How does it happen so quietly that you don’t even realize it until one day, it’s undeniable? The identity you once held as your own has been absorbed, redefined by the relationship that now encapsulates you both. And when the relationship ends—or even falters—how do you find your way back to yourself? Can you?
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So far, my twenties have been a constant oscillation between seasons of liberation and emotional entanglement. Between stretches of swearing off men entirely and marveling at the freedom of building a life that feels wholly my own, there’s always a persistent, crashing wave of “Well, wouldn’t it be nice to share this with somebody?” This cycle is often soothed by my love for unapologetic independence—until, inevitably, it isn’t.
It only takes a random Tuesday and a scene from a movie, like the bar scene in Past Lives or the moment in A Complete Unknown where they’re singing in Bob’s apartment, to dredge up emotions I thought I’d buried.
And then comes the injustice of it all: being forced to revisit an old self, a version of me consumed, obsessed, and defined by a relationship I fought so hard to escape. The frustration of realizing that even after all that effort, fragments of that person linger.
Still, I have to ask myself: if I refuse to acknowledge those memories, do they haunt me forever?
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Perhaps the true freedom isn’t just in leaving—it’s in letting go. Letting go of the patterns that held me captive, the expectations that confined me, and the parts of myself I’ve outgrown.
That’s where real liberation lies: not in denying the past, but in loosening its grip, allowing me to move forward.
Of course, I describe this as though my dating life is behind me. It’s not. But it’s different now. The thrill has been replaced with a sharper awareness of what I’m willing to accept and what I’m not. The naivety is gone, along with the patience to excuse red flags or endure mismatched expectations.
Now, there’s no slack to cut. I don’t wait around to see if smoke leads to fire. The me who once entertained the quirks of a wannabe musician for years now simply doesn’t have the time. What was charming at 17 feels exhausting at 20-something.
At some point, dating shifts. You stop dating for love alone and start asking harder questions: Do we have what it takes to mesh our lives forever? Is this sustainable? Or is it time to let go?
That transition probably happened with your last ex. With them, you learn the weight of compromise. You lay out the puzzle pieces of your life, desperately trying to make them fit.
It’s with that person you realize the quiet erosion of self that love can bring. The suffocating realization that sometimes, by consquence, loving someone might mean losing yourself entirely. And then, when it ends, you’re left not as the person you were before but as a ghost of who you became with them—a hybrid of their influence and your sacrifice, carrying not just the memory of what was but the haunting specter of what could have been.
Why does love demand this of us? Why is it so hard to reconcile the two seemingly opposing forces of independence and connection? And what if you’re simply not willing to let either go?
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I think about the moments of clarity I’ve had in both phases of my life.
Independence has a beauty all its own with its sharp, defined edges of living for yourself. And love, too, has its magic with the way it softens those edges and makes room for someone else to be integrated into your sense of self. But why does one so often threaten the other? Is it not possible to nurture a career or your own life while feeding a great love?
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Perhaps the problem isn’t love itself but the way we’re taught to approach it. Love, we’re told, requires compromise. It asks us to bend, to shrink, to make space for someone else. Independence, on the other hand, is framed as an invulnerable fortress, something we build by shutting ourselves off from the vulnerability of connection.
What if neither is true? What if love doesn’t have to mean losing yourself, and independence doesn’t have to mean shutting yourself off?
Is there a way to hold both? To love fiercely while staying fiercely ourselves? It is possible to build partnerships that feel like collaborations, not surrenders. I just don’t have the answers on the longevity of that yet, but I think they lie somewhere in redefining what love means—not as a loss of self, but as an extension of it.
Still from La La Land (2016)
