I Gave More Because I Knew I Wouldn’t Be Missed: Understanding Over-giving in Relationships

For most of my life, I overgave in ways that didn’t even look like overgiving.

I didn’t do it to earn love or prove my worth.

I did it because I knew my absence wouldn’t matter.

When you grow up as the reliable one, the peacekeeper, the one who absorbs everyone else’s emotional weather, you learn early that being needed isn’t the same as being valued. People notice when you stop performing, but they rarely notice when you’re hurting.

So I kept giving.

I kept showing up.

Not because it felt good, but because giving more delayed the moment I’d have to face the truth: I wasn’t the person people checked on. I was the person they leaned on.

There’s a complicated grief in realizing you mattered more for your usefulness than your humanness.

The grief isn’t for the relationships you had.

It’s for the ones you deserved.

Step 10 forced me to sit with this.

To see how much self-abandonment I normalized because invisibility felt safer than disappointment.

To see how my overgiving wasn’t generosity — it was survival.

A way of staying tethered to people who wouldn’t have noticed the slack in the rope.

Now I give from clarity, not fear.

I don’t give to stay remembered.

I give because I choose to, and I let my no mean something.

Many of us don’t realize how deeply over-giving in relationships becomes a survival pattern until we finally stop long enough to feel the cost. It's a strange kind of freedom: letting the people who never saw you… miss you.

A Slice of Humble Pie:

Sometimes we overgive not because we’re kind, but because we’re afraid of being forgotten.

Reflection:

Who were you trying to stay connected to by giving more than you had?

Affirmation:

I no longer disappear to be loved. I show up as myself, and that is enough.

Thank you for reading. If this stirred something in you and you’d like to spend more time with this work, you can explore The Humble Pie 12 Steps and learn more about how I support people as a trauma recovery coach.