The Inward Spiral: Why You Should Stop Managing Your Relationship
- Vanessa Harris
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations about dating. Casual ones, thoughtful ones, late night voice notes with friends. It wasn’t until someone asked me for advice recently that I realized how much my perspective has shifted over the past year.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you are managing your relationship, you are not actually learning whether it works
I say this as someone who has spent much of her life carrying the emotional weight of connection. Early on, I learned how to dull my needs to be more easily accepted. I softened preferences, edited reactions, and adjusted myself in real time to keep closeness intact. I thought I was being flexible, more palatable. I thought I was being kind.
Later, that same instinct showed up differently. I was not shrinking anymore, but I was still managing. I initiated the conversations, named the dynamics, and modelled the growth I wanted to see. I took responsibility for communication, reflection, and repair. I told myself this was what commitment looked like.
What I did not see then was how much that effort distorted the truth.
This shift is not easy. Letting go of management means sitting with silence, uncertainty, and the discomfort of not knowing what will happen next. It can feel exposed, even risky, especially if you are used to being the one who keeps things moving, smooth, and emotionally safe.
When you react in ways meant to make someone stay, especially early on, you change the entire experiment. If you clarify your interest so they do not drift, soften disappointment so they do not feel pressure, or fill silence so nothing feels uncertain, you are no longer observing the relationship as it is. You are shaping it to survive.
In doing that, you remove the other person’s chance to show you how they handle space, initiative, and responsibility without guidance. If those qualities matter to you in a partner, you may be missing what they are already showing you. You also remove your own chance to experience being met.
If someone stays because you made it easy for them to stay, a quiet question lingers. Did they choose you, or did you carry the connection forward on your own?
Staying aligned is not about withholding or playing games. It is about responding honestly rather than reactively. It is about letting your natural rhythm exist and allowing the other person to meet it, or not.
When someone is right for you, this does not push them away. It gives them room to step forward. It creates space for mutual effort, initiative, and presence to emerge without instruction.
And if they do not step forward, that is not a failure. It is clarity.
You are not at risk of losing someone who is right for you by staying aligned with yourself. You are finally giving both of you the chance to show up as who you truly are.
With lightness and curiosity,
Vanessa
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