Member Article

Outgrowing Relationships: A Quiet Celebration of Self

Joanna Poppink, LMFT

Outgrowing relationships brings us to a need for courageous and honest reflection. We often hear: “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you.” But what makes that okay? For many women—especially those raised to put others first—the idea of outgrowing people they once tried to please feels like betrayal, abandonment, or failure.

But what if your letting go isn’t an act of rejection, but one of truth?

What if you’re not discarding anyone, but reclaiming yourself?

This shift in perspective is not merely intellectual—it’s rooted in emotional repair, moral clarity, and cultural awakening. It reflects a return to inner authority.

Letting Go Isn’t Cold. It’s Clarifying.

Many of us have been taught that loyalty means staying—no matter the cost. We were conditioned to normalize emotional neglect, tolerate mistreatment, or explain away why someone couldn’t love us the way we needed.

But from a psychotherapeutic perspective, letting go is often essential for healing. Staying in a relationship where love is consistently absent or unsafe reinforces internalized beliefs that you’re the problem, that you’re too much, or not enough. These are not harmless assumptions. They shape the core of how you live and love. The idea that you have outgrown the relationship doesn't occur to you.

The act of letting go, then, becomes an act of psychic self-preservation. It's not selfish. It’s necessary.

Depth psychotherapy supports this process as part of what Jung called individuation—the slow and courageous journey into the self. As you begin to listen to your own emotional truth, you naturally outgrow dynamics that ask you to stay silent, compliant, or emotionally invisible.

Outgrowing Relationships Isn’t Abandonment. It’s Evolution.

Some people didn’t know how to love you—not because you were unlovable, but because they couldn’t meet you where you were. Others didn’t even try. When you stop waiting for someone to become who they’re not, you interrupt a painful loop: the endless longing to be seen by someone unwilling or unable to see you.

Moral clarity supports this shift. Prioritizing your well-being is not a betrayal of others. It’s a rebalancing of dignity. The morality we were taught—especially as women—often equated goodness with self-sacrifice. But true ethical living includes compassion for yourself. It includes the courage to stop participating in relationships that require your diminishment.

Staying small does not serve you.

And it doesn't serve them, either.

When you choose to grow beyond a harmful dynamic, you’re not rejecting the person—you’re refusing to reject yourself.

What Fills the Space When You Stop Trying to Be Loved?

When you recognize that you are outgrowing your relationships, at first, what arises may be grief.

Then silence.

Then, something unexpected—relief.

And with that relief, space.

Into that space, something sacred can emerge: self-love. Not just the self-care rituals that we associate with wellness culture, but the deeper, more honest kind—born from treating your own soul as worthy.

Psychologically, this is what healing requires: room to become real.

This kind of growth means speaking more kindly to yourself.

It means choosing people who meet you with reciprocity.

It means no longer twisting yourself into someone else's version of lovable.

It means belonging to yourself first.

Outgrowing Relationships: Why It's More Than Okay to Leave—It's Necessary

From a cultural perspective, the permission to walk away from harmful ties is relatively new. Earlier generations were expected to maintain appearances, uphold family loyalty, and endure mistreatment in silence. But today, we are part of a cultural awakening—one that names emotional abuse, honors trauma healing, and redefines what it means to be “a good woman.”

You are no longer obligated to carry someone else’s emotional limitations.

You are allowed to leave the space where your love went unreceived.

You are entitled to grow, even if it means growing beyond them.

Letting go is not failure.

It’s an expression of emotional integrity.

It’s an act of moral courage.

It’s a step toward cultural maturity.

And it is absolutely okay.

A Quiet Celebration

Outgrowing people who couldn’t love you isn’t about triumph. It’s about truth. It’s about saying: I am no longer willing to disappear inside a relationship. You’re not being disloyal. You’re being faithful to your own becoming.

This isn’t a loud celebration. It’s a quiet honoring.

It might look like lighting a candle at your kitchen table, whispering a thank-you to the part of you that stayed alive inside.

It might be a silent walk under trees, where you feel your own breath and say, Yes, I’mstill here.

It might be a new beginning in psychotherapy, where—for the first time—you stop fighting for someone else's love and start claiming your own.

You are growing into you.

That is more than okay.

That is worth celebrating.

Reflection Questions:

• Who have you held on to out of guilt, fear, or obligation?
• What parts of yourself were silenced in that dynamic?
• What belief tells you that letting go is wrong?
• What becomes possible when you allow yourself to grow?

Joanna Poppink, LMFT, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, is in private practice and specializes in Eating Disorder Recovery for adult women and with an emphasis on building a fulfilling life beyond recovery. She is licensed in California, Florida, Oregon, and Utah. All appointments are virtual. Website: EatingDisorderRecovery.net