A powerful metaphor from Ingrid Clayton’s book helped me finally understand the quiet erosion of my identity—and begin to reclaim space for myself.
Many of us have learned to shrink ourselves just to survive—especially in relationships where love is conditional or controlling. In reading Ingrid Clayton’s book on fawning, I found language for experiences I never knew how to describe. One metaphor in particular—the “cup”—helped me understand just how imbalanced things had become.
“Nobody wants to make themselves small, minimize their feelings, or tolerate abuse. We do it out of necessity, to preserve our relationships or survive our environments.”
—Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back
“Fawning is proportional. The relationship is a cup.”
—Ingrid Clayton
Imagine the relationship as a cup. In a healthy dynamic, both people have space to be seen, heard, and take up emotional room. But in abusive or codependent relationships, one person swells to fill most of that space, leaving the other compressed into whatever’s left.
In abusive relationships, the abuser takes up most of the space—85/15—and we learn to live in what’s left. We minimize reality. We have toxic hope, thinking that if he would just do this, then it would be different. For me, I held on to the hope that if he just got a job, we would no longer be in poverty.
But when he got a job, it didn’t change his spending habits.
I held on to the hope that if he could control his anger, then everything would be better and we would get along. But when he stopped using his voice to yell, he still used it to diminish me. His anger looked “controlled,” but it was still there—in his eyes, his tone.
He no longer had to yell to get me to do what he wanted; I was already trained and conditioned to be his little submissive, fawning wife.
His “controlled” anger didn’t change the dynamics of the relationship.
I was little. He was big. And he had no intention of giving up any of his space in our relationship cup.
We can’t change someone else’s need to control, but we can start to question why we believe we must shrink to survive. Realizing this dynamic was painful, but it gave me language to begin reclaiming space in my own life.
Have you ever felt like you were living in just 15% of the relationship cup—shrinking yourself to fit someone else’s world? If so, you’re not alone. I’d love to hear your story.
If this resonates, I recommend checking out Clayton’s book, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back—it’s been a lifeline for me.
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