#443 Love Shouldn’t Erase You: How to Stop Losing Yourself in a Relationship
Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
4.6 • 849 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ever felt like you completely lost yourself in a relationship?
Like one day you woke up and thought, Wait… who even am I anymore? If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone—and, spoiler alert, it’s not just in your head. There’s real science behind why we fuse our identities with our partners and why breakups can feel like more than just heartbreak—they can feel like an identity crisis.
In this eye-opening conversation, I sit down with relationship scientist Dr. Morgan Cope to break down the psychology behind losing yourself in a relationship, why it happens, and most importantly—how to rebuild your identity after love. Whether you're freshly single, in a relationship that feels too enmeshed, or just curious about how relationships shape our sense of self, this episode is packed with insights, humor, and practical strategies to help you come back to YOU.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Is Losing Yourself in a Relationship a Real Thing?
00:35 - Meet Dr. Morgan Cope & Her Research on Relationships & Identity
01:00 - Understanding Identity in Relationships
03:07 - Attachment Styles and Identity
07:30 - Impact of Breakups on Identity
24:42 - Mental and Physical Effects of Breakups
30:27 - Fear of Being Single
32:02 - Changing the Environment vs Changing Yourself
36:56 - Rebounding and Self-Expansion
39:14 - Identity and Values Assessment
44:11 - Cult Psychology and Group Identity
51:21 - Personal Growth Through Relationship Challenges
Feeling lost after a breakup? I know how hard it can be to find yourself again, so I created something to help you out on your healing journey. Check out my FREE Breakup Recovery Quiz to get personalized insights on where you are in your healing journey & how to move forward so you can begin to feel like yourself again.
And if you’d like to keep this conversation going, I’d love to hear from you! You can find me on YouTube or Instagram. Every week, I drop a new podcast episode dedicated to your personal growth and healing so you can create love, happiness, and success in your life. I hope to see you there!
Xoxo
P.S. Know someone who might need to hear this? Share this video with a friend who’s struggling in their relationship or going through a tough breakup. 💕
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever heard someone say, I felt like I lost myself in that relationship, or maybe you have felt that way yourself? Well, it turns out nobody's just being dramatic about this. There's actually real science behind it. Relationships literally shape our identities and when they end, it can leave us feeling totally lost. Who am I now? How do I'm afford to these lower level details of, you know, who's going to make dinner? |
| 0:38.5 | Like, what should I watch on television? |
| 0:40.6 | You have to rearrange your whole situation. |
| 0:43.7 | Mm-hmm. |
| 0:44.1 | Sometimes we can maybe come to terms with the fact that I'm going to have to move on from this, |
| 0:47.9 | but then we think we see their car driving down the road and we panic. |
| 0:51.7 | Oh, my God. |
| 0:52.5 | Is that them? |
| 0:53.6 | But the good news is that you can rebuild yourself and use this experience to operate differently |
| 1:00.2 | in relationships going forward. And today we're going to talk about how. My guest is Dr. Morgan |
| 1:06.4 | Cope and she has a lot to say on this subject. So trust me, this conversation is going to change |
| 1:12.7 | the way you think about heartbreak and relationships, possibly forever. Dr. Cope, thank you so |
| 1:20.1 | much for doing this with me today. Oh, thank you for having me. It's fabulous to be here. |
| 1:25.1 | When I first found out about you and your research, I got |
| 1:28.5 | genuinely excited because of your focus of research on heartbreak and relationships, but also |
| 1:36.3 | seeking to understand some of those big questions around like, why do I feel the way that I do |
| 1:43.1 | in a really, I think, unique way. So we're going to dive into all of |
| 1:46.9 | that. But first of all, I wonder if you could take just a minute and introduce yourself to our |
| 1:52.9 | listeners because you're up to some really cool stuff. Thank you, of course. I'm Dr. Morgan Cope. |
| 1:58.2 | I'm an assistant professor of psychology at Center College in Danville, Kentucky, and I am also a relationship scientist. So I have a master's degree in psychology and a PhD in experimental psychology from Florida Atlantic University. Graduated 29, oh no, excuse me, 2024, actually. Oh, just last May. Oh, thank you. Yes. |
| 2:20.9 | And I have been publishing research on identity in relationships, so since 2020. And we have been diving |
| 2:30.3 | into, you know, the intersection of the self and how our understanding of who we are |
... |
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