How to Create Loving Relationships Without Losing YourselfHow to Create Loving Relationships Without Losing Yourself
Inner Bonding
Dr. Margaret Paul talks about how self-abandonment blocks true intimacy and why loving relationships depend on staying connected to your own needs and truth. She contrasts attachment with love and shares practical examples of boundaries and self-responsibility through the Inner Bonding approach.
12:35•4 May 2026
Keeping Your Sense of Self While Loving Deeply
Episode Overview
- Real love does not require you to give yourself up; it needs two whole people who care about both themselves and each other.
- Self-abandonment often stems from childhood beliefs that love requires pleasing others and avoiding conflict.
- Attachment is driven by fear and the need for approval, while love is based on mutual care, openness, and growth.
- Caretaking and giving yourself up can attract dominating, resistant, or emotionally unavailable partners.
- Becoming a loving adult means meeting your own emotional needs, defining your worth, and speaking honest boundaries like saying yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no.
“Real love does not require self-abandonment.”
What drives someone to seek a life without losing themselves in love? This episode of Inner Bonding centres on a pattern many people quietly live with: disappearing inside relationships. Dr. Margaret Paul talks directly to anyone who gives too much, avoids conflict, and feels anxious about upsetting others, only to end up resentful, exhausted, or empty. She explains self-abandonment in clear, everyday terms.
Instead of asking, “What’s loving to me and to my loved one?”, many people slide into, “What do I have to do to be loved or stay safe?” From there, they adapt, please, and shrink. As Dr. Margaret puts it, "Real love does not require self-abandonment." You’ll hear her contrast attachment with love in a way that’s easy to relate to.
Attachment says, “I need your approval to be okay,” while love says, “I care about you and I care about me.” She stresses that love needs two whole people, not one person caretaking while the other takes. That dynamic often shows up as caretakers attracting dominating, unavailable, or resistant partners. Dr. Margaret also shares from her own life, including how years of caretaking left her very ill before she created the Inner Bonding process with Dr. Erika Chopich.
That experience grounds her message: abandoning yourself for others isn’t loving, it’s a form of control driven by fear. The episode is especially helpful for people in recovery from addiction or codependency, where people-pleasing and self-betrayal often run deep. You’ll hear practical examples of loving adult behaviour, like saying, “I’m not comfortable with that,” or “I need some time to think about this,” and why defining your own worth is crucial for healthy intimacy.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you have to choose between love and yourself, this conversation offers a different way: stay present with your own feelings so that you actually have love to share. Where might you be giving yourself up, and what would it look like to stay true to yourself instead?
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