When Obligation Becomes Self-Abandonment

You are not obligated to give anyone access or connection to you if it doesn’t align with your morals, values, or integrity.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a friend you’ve known for decades, a family member, or someone who once felt like home. The more you choose relationships out of obligation, the more you abandon yourself.

Just because a friendship carries shared history, shared laughs, and shared memories doesn’t mean it earns a lifetime pass into your present.

Healing asks you to look deeper and to ask what kind of value these relationships bring to your life.

• Is there reciprocity?

• Can they meet you with the same level of depth you’re seeking?

• Can they hold space for your growth without resenting the version of you they no longer recognize?

This isn’t selfishness. It’s self-respect.

I used to hold on to friendships long after I knew they didn’t align with who I was becoming. I told myself I was being loyal.

And I’ve done that more times than I can count where I’ve held onto people I’d outgrown. Not because they were bad people, but because I was afraid to let go of the familiarity.

• Friendships I outgrew when my career began to take off.

• When my financial, emotional, and mental world expanded.

• When I started making choices that felt grounded instead of reactive.

I once had a friend I’d known for over 20 years.

Through college and our 20s, I spent most of that time overgiving to her. Because she wasn’t financially able to, I carried much of the weight like treating her to dinners, picking up tabs, and covering what I could without hesitation.

At the time, it didn’t feel like sacrifice. It felt like purpose. I wanted to help. I wanted to feel needed. And somewhere in me, being the dependable one felt safer than being the one who might disappoint.

When she had her first child, I remember showing up at her house with cleaning supplies to deep clean, wanting to make things easier.

At one point, we lived near each other, and I’d cook meals and bring them over. Later, when we both had two kids of our own, I was always the one hosting dinners, opening my home, sending her home with leftovers, and giving whatever I could.

But over time, I started to see the cracks in our friendship… the imbalance, the unspoken expectations, and the projections.

She once told me I “acted like my marriage was perfect” as she was in the midst of marital issues.

But I wasn’t pretending. I was just doing the work. My husband was too. We were both committed to growing emotionally and staying aligned—in business, in life, in parenting, and in our future together.

What I eventually realized was that she wasn’t judging my marriage; she was reflecting her own. Her own pain. Her own unhappiness.

I had outgrown the dynamic. The version of me that needed to overgive to keep love alive no longer fit.

When my grandfather passed, she told me she couldn’t find it in herself to be there for me because I wasn’t able to meet her where she needed me to.

I remember telling her, “Friendships ebb and flow, and we all have our own families and growth to focus on, but death is permanent.”

That moment told me everything I needed to know about how differently we saw life, grief, and loyalty.

This week’s podcast episode 🎙️

This week’s episode is about overgiving and unavailable love.

It’s one of those patterns that sneaks up on you. You give because that’s what you’ve always done. You stay because it feels familiar. You call it care when, really, it’s survival dressed as love.

I’ve been there.

That ache of wanting to be chosen, seen, appreciated.

The quiet hope that if you give enough, they’ll finally meet you where you’ve always met them.

But overgiving isn’t love. It’s a reflex. A leftover instinct from when love had to be earned.

In this episode, I talk about where that reflex comes from and how to start finding your way back to yourself, and much more.

👉 You can listen here. 🎧

The truth about growth and space

You are going to evolve. You are going to grow. You are going to heal.

And as you do, not everyone you share a history with can come along, which is why you will need to make space for people who are doing the same emotional work… people who have the capacity to expand with you.

When you cling to relationships that no longer align, you teach your nervous system to tolerate contraction. When you let them go, you teach yourself that alignment matters more than history.

Boundaries are what you set when you still want connection but need it to exist safely.

Letting go is what you choose when you realize the connection itself no longer honors your growth.

Both are forms of self-respect. Both are love… just expressed differently.

You don’t have to hate someone to outgrow them. You just have to love yourself enough to stop shrinking to make them comfortable.

And not everyone deserves access to the version of you that’s healing, growing, and finally choosing peace.

Ready to start your own work? 

If this newsletter hit something in you… the part that knows it’s time to stop abandoning yourself, then my 4-Week Healing Workbook is where you begin.

It’s the exact framework I use with clients in my $2,000 1:1 work, distilled into something you can move through at your own pace.

Inside, you’ll find prompts that help you untangle what’s been keeping you stuck, rebuild trust with yourself, and create a foundation for real healing.

👉 If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start, this is it. Get the workbook →

See you next Saturday,

Suttida ❤️