Why Being Detached from a Relationship is Healthy for the Relationship
- Apr 30
- 7 min read
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment & Embodiment Coach and three-time Author who guides women to alchemise emotional patterns, reclaim their inner power, and manifest a life that reflects their deepest truth.
My partner and I have recently started working together, combining our teachings and coaching a new client through a major life transition, from married to single, supporting him to become self-sourced. This particular client was grieving his relationship and expressing how his wife was his “ride or die”, and he followed with, “just like you guys are for each other.”
My partner, Matt, was the first to compassionately reply, “Tara is not my ride or die; I do not rely on her.” I was waiting for him to say it, and it brought a smile to my face. I then shared, “I, too, do not rely on Matt to make me happy, because I know who I am.”
Why we outsource love, security, and happiness
There are multiple reasons we may outsource our happiness and security. We are conditioned in our society to seek partnership, marriage, children, careers, money, a house, for external security and happiness. We are taught that this is how we find it. Every cartoon and movie we watched growing up pointed to the same thing: that life is hard until you find your one and only.
Then, as children, if we grow up never having our needs met by our parents, or never fully feeling secure and loved to the extent we needed at home, we seek this in another as adults. Chasing love, relationships, even if fleeting, to fulfil our unmet needs. This is our inner child reaching for the love and security they still long for, until we learn to give it to ourselves.
How to stop outsourcing
I wrote another article on this that delves deeper: ‘How to stop seeking happiness outside of yourself, and become Self-Sourced’. You can read it here, but in short, we stop seeking love, security, happiness, and wholeness from outside ourselves when we learn to give them to ourselves. When we learn to love every part of ourselves, we stop ‘needing’ love from another. When we learn to feel our emotions fully, we build security within ourselves and stop chasing it through relationships. When we learn that we can gift ourselves everything we are seeking from someone or something else, we become self-sourced.
Why self-sourcing matters in a relationship
When we are in relationships, if we are constantly leading from a place of insecurity, attempting to meet our own unconscious needs, we begin to self-abandon to retain the relationship, to hold on to something to soothe our scared inner child. We abandon our truth, appease the other, lack boundaries, and eventually lose ourselves to keep the relationship. You form an identity based on the relationship, rather than independent from it. It becomes codependent, an unhealthy attachment to which the relationship breaks down over time, whether you’re together or not.
To me, the success of a relationship is not determined by longevity. The success of a relationship is determined by whether you can be authentically you and you both choose the relationship from a place of wholeness, not need it from a place of insecurity.
What is wholeness?
Everyone is innately whole, whether you feel it yet or not. A person who is connected to their wholeness is someone who can fulfil their own needs, who has met themselves fully, who loves and accepts every part of themselves, even the messy, because when you abandon parts of yourself, you begin to disconnect from your wholeness.
Healthy detachment comes from two whole people forming a union, not two people seeking wholeness and a life path from the relationship itself.
Two halves don’t make a whole
When two people who have not connected to their wholeness enter a relationship, they attach to that relationship to feel whole. The problem is, this becomes conditional on this relationship lasting, and the only way for a person to retain their sense of wholeness is through the relationship, forming an unhealthy attachment to the other person.
I have been here many times. I longed for security, so I’d seek it through a relationship. I longed for love and companionship, so I’d seek it through another. I longed for touch, play, and connection, all of which I soon realised I could give to myself.
When I released my fear of abandonment, my insecurities, and my overwhelming feeling of being incomplete, I soon realised that in my essence, the truth of who I am underneath the conditioning is undeniably whole, complete, and loved.
When I said to our client, “I do not need Matt because I know who I am”, what I meant was, I have met myself fully, deeply, wholly, on the other side of the pain I avoided for nearly twenty years. On the other side, I connected to my innate wholeness, my inner power, my connection to myself and life. In that, I no longer needed a relationship for fulfilment, because I was fulfilled within myself by myself.
From that place, I could consciously choose, will this be for my highest growth and expansion? The answer was yes.
Your relationship is your mirror
Feeling discomfort in a relationship happens, conflict happens, and there are moments of disconnection. This doesn’t mean they aren't your person or aren't for your highest expansion. These moments are simply opportunities to look within, reconnect with what’s true for you, and express it from a place of love.
Your closest relationship is your biggest mirror. It will reflect unmet needs, unhealed wounds, and anything else within you that isn’t aligned with who you truly are. Where there is love, anything that isn’t love will be brought to the surface. You can choose to avoid and run, or stay and reflect, or recognise when the relationship is no longer aligned.
5 Benefits of feeling whole and detached from your relationship
You don’t need to be fully healed to enter a relationship, but realising your wholeness doesn’t come from another creates a whole new dynamic. From this place, relationships begin to feel different; more authentic, more real. This is what I’ve noticed in my own relationship and in the people I work with.
True compatibility: Until you have met yourself fully, you won’t truly know what your values are, what you need and desire within a relationship, and importantly, how to express those needs and desires confidently. When you know yourself at this level, you can have an honest conversation with another about their own values, needs, and desires, and find out, from a place of truth, whether or not you’re compatible. If you’re not, you can choose to end that relationship securely. Grief of its ending is inevitable, but you know, on the other side of grief, you get to meet yourself even more deeply than before.
You get to choose: A person who feels whole is no longer seeking security from the relationship and is in it by conscious choice rather than due to unconscious unmet needs. You can authentically decide whether the relationship is for your highest good.
Your highest potential: A person who is connected to themself also knows what they desire for their life, or more accurately, how they desire to feel. When they meet someone, they can discern whether that person will align with this. They can truly commit not only to the relationship's highest potential but also to their own by continuing practices that help them stay connected to themselves as their priority.
Deep, authentic connection: A person who is deeply and authentically connected to themselves can then deeply and authentically connect with another. What that feels like connection before this place is often two wounds recognising each other.
Responding in conflict: Relationship conflict is inevitable. The difference is, will this conflict be used as a tool for growth and deeper connection, or instil further self-abandonment and disconnection? In conflict, two people who are connected to themselves can remain truthful rather than abandon themselves to keep the peace, even when it’s uncomfortable. They understand that anything unspoken creates disconnection. They can be vulnerable because they have been vulnerable within themselves.
Healthy detachment follows choosing yourself first and, as Matt has said to me, “I wouldn’t choose someone who doesn’t choose themself.”
Will you embody wholeness?
The truth is, most of us long for connection, for a partner to ride through life with, and that is fair. Love and connection are basic human needs. You do not need to pretend that the desire for your life does not exist. But be curious about where that desire is coming from, wholeness or outsourcing?
Ultimately, when you finally meet yourself, you can discern which relationships are good for you and which ones aren’t, and from this place, you can choose with certainty which to keep and which to let go. You do this all with the knowledge that you have gotten yourself through the ups and downs. You can hold yourself through it all and no longer rely on another for your sense of wholeness.
You are innately whole, fundamentally worthy, and completely loved, with or without another. These are the foundations for a successful, divine union.
If you’re ready to deepen your connection to your Self and find it within another, Matt and I are opening one coaching space where we combine our teachings to support you in reconnecting with your truth, wholeness, and inner power. Reach out on Instagram for more info.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Tara Swann
Tara Swann, Emotional Empowerment Coach & Author
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment Coach, Author, and Speaker known for helping women alchemise emotional patterns into personal power. She guides women into deeper confidence, clarity, and self-connection through her unique blend of emotional mastery, feminine embodiment, and manifestation work. Tara is the author of You Don’t Have Anxiety, Becoming Her, and The Ocean Is She, and is currently deepening her expertise through formal Tantra Practitioner training. Her mission is to help women remember who they are and consciously create lives that feel aligned, expansive, and unapologetically alive.
