Am I Losing ‘Me’, When I Become a ‘We’?

Before I Said Yes #2 — A modern woman’s identity crisis, brought to you by the word ‘wife’.

Hello and welcome to Love From, Imi!

Whether you’ve read my Before I Said Yes series before or you’re just joining now, this chapter dives into those big life decisions we make, the weight of the expectations that come with them, and how to hold onto your messy, brilliant self through it all.

This week, I’m zeroing in on the labels we take on—the one that freaked me out, boxed me in, and then surprisingly, helped me grow.

Labels are strange, aren’t they?

They help us belong. They tell the world who we are, or who we want to be.

Mother. Father. Wife. Husband. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Partner.

We tick them as boxes forms, add them to bios, use them in introductions. I think there’s a comfort to them. A bit of a shortcut this is who I am, without having to explain ourselves any further.

They kind of remind me of elevator pitches in business. Neat and tidy, but rarely the whole story.

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

I struggle with labels, but I can’t seem to run away from them (no matter how hard I try). And the older I get, the more they seem to pile on.

The biggest one I’ve encountered so far was in the lead up to my wedding, when I was about to become a ‘wife’.

A joyful shift to many. A celebration.

But when people asked how I felt about stepping into that new identity, I froze. My eyes widened.

Why?
Why was I struggling so much to come to terms with my identity changing?

Honestly, I never really thought about it in that way before. Not in the personal, identity-shifting way, until someone asked me:

“How do you feel about becoming a wife?”
And I was like, “sorry — what?”

You might be reading this thinking: Did she not think about this before getting engaged?

And I can tell you that no, I didn’t. Not really.

It might sound silly, but I had no doubts when we got engaged. I was swept up in the excitement of it all, of someone choosing me forever.

I wasn’t thinking about the label.

I guess I didn’t really consider the gravity of the word, of the impact that it could have on who I am as a person until it was about to happen, and until people started going on, and on about it.

I’ve always wanted deep connection, a partner, someone to share my life with. But once the word wife starting flying about, I began to question it.

Would it cost me something?
Would the merging of me with someone else, cause me to forget who I am?

It wasn’t a word I recognised myself in. And I looked at the people around me and couldn’t necessarily relate to them either.

I remember a friend sending me an Instagram in January saying 2024 Brides!! This is the year you become a wife!! It sent me into major panic. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like it fit.

“Wife” felt loaded. A role with centuries of weight, of baggage. Domestic, devoted, respectable, self-sacrificing. The kind of word that women have both aspired to and resisted. It didn’t sound like me. Not fully.

I remember being in a workshop, choosing what ‘made me, me’ from a list. To my horror, it included marital status. I was baffled that it was on the list.

Surely my identity is built from my values, my mind, my weird little quirks. Not whether I happen to be in a relationship?

The workshop was just a workshop. But anything can become a mirror, depending on what you're carrying.

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Just “a wife”

I think a core problem was that I didn’t want to be seen as just a wife, to become invisible, to be reduced to being part of a pair, not my own person.

These feelings came from many places in my life.

For one, the media. Sure, things have gotten better, we get more senior roles, even sometimes the breadwinners (shock horror!). But let’s be honest, we still often see wives in relation to their husbands — particularly when it’s a man who’s powerful or wealthy. I don’t know her name, she’s so-and-so’s wife.

Closer to my own world, I saw it in people I knew. Not necessarily because they got married, but because they would disappear into their relationship.

Some friends found their life partner and that was that. Vanished into coupledom. One friend I had, stopped making any effort with anyone outside of her relationship once they’d moved in together. She was always busy, always cancelling. Her whole life revolved around him.

I so wanted her to build her own world. To form new friendships, pick up a random hobby. Anything that was just hers.

And in the back of my (very anxious, to be fair) mind I had the question:
What if something happens to your partner?
Who will you be without them?

I also noticed how often getting married seemed to trigger the next expectation — babies.

Like once you’d collected the “wife” badge, it was straight onto the “mother” one.

I didn’t want that either. Not right away.

Honestly, I’ll admit that I was judge-y. I still believe very strongly in encouraging identities outside of our own relationships. But in hindsight, I dramatised it. It was probably a projection, reflecting my own fears of disappearing.

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The Vanishing Bride

The expectations and social conversation around labels is high.

When you’re engaged, people stop asking about you. The default becomes: “How’s the planning going?” “Have you done the seating plan?” “Got the dress yet?”

When I asked my husband, he said he barely spoke about the wedding to his male friends when they met up.

Wild, right?

Meanwhile, a bride is already drowning in 200 decisions — and 200 tasks to match. And in that blur, she becomes reduced to her shoes, her seating chart, her table runners.

I wanted to scream: “I am not this one wedding day!! I’m still me!!”

You know how women used to be addressed with the man’s name? Mrs George Wellington, like their own name didn’t matter?

We don’t do that anymore (thankfully), but the sentiment still lingers. It’s still uncommon for a groom to take his bride’s surname. And if he does? We act like it’s heroic.

I remember congratulating someone at work on behalf of her husband. I was all like “wow! good for him! well done him!”

And then I was like “what the heck. When would I ever congratulate a woman for doing that?”

To be fair, he went against the grain. I respect that.

But why do we congratulate men for the exact same thing that’s expected of women?

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Losing Myself To Prove I’m Still Me

Looking back, I see that my panic wasn’t really about not wanting to be married. Or be with my husband. Or take a new label on. It was about not trusting myself to hold on to me while becoming a new version. Not trusting that I could shape who I am as a wife. Find my own meaning.

At the time, I didn’t really know how to define myself. I hadn’t thought much about what I valued most, my career was shaky, and my confidence was low. So I rejected anyone else trying to define me.

I didn’t feel unique, so stepping into a role that felt very common—wife—was scary.

These insecurities made me desperate to prove that I still existed. So, I looked to other areas of my life to grow in, and I picked my career to latch onto, because it felt like something I could control.

Naturally, I chose the four months before my wedding to try changing job roles within my company. Brilliant timing, right? I ended up juggling two roles, trying to prove I was good enough at both.

Three days before our wedding, I presented (in the role I wanted) to a director. I was shaking. My eyes were wide. I’d taken sleeping tablets the night before after a week of no sleep, but it’d only made me feel worse. I should’ve taken the week off, but I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t capable, just because I had a wedding that week. (I know, I know! Not good, people.)

I desperately wanted to be seen as something other than the future bride, and since no one at work knew my fiancé, this felt perfect.

The funny thing was, in doing this I completely lost grip on my sense of self.

I didn’t write a single thing from the day I got engaged to a couple of months after we got married. I think I was scared of what my own mind would come up with.
I barely read.
I clung to new friends and burnt myself out over getting a new job title.

In trying to escape the new version of me, I lost the old one. I didn’t even consider that they could co-exist.

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Labels can be an anchor, not a cage

Now, I see it differently.

Life choices do define us. I wouldn’t have acknowledged that a year ago, because my brain was helpfully dramatising everything. But they do. Not just marriage, many things — having a baby, career choices, moving countries.

And maybe it isn’t a bad thing. Maybe I don’t need to fight against it.

Maybe a label is just what you make of it.

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Becoming More, Not Less

For a long time, I wasn’t proud of getting married. I didn’t feel like it said anything about me or worse, that it said the wrong things.

Now? Writing “wife” makes me smile. And, it’s a part of my identity I’m really proud of. Look at me! Growth.

I’m so proud of my relationship. How we’ve grown together. The impact we’ve had on each other.

We bring out different sides of each other and to be honest, he’s brought out the less fearful side of me. The one that commits. The one that trusts herself and her choices more. That is incredible.

Becoming a wife hasn’t overwritten my identity.
I’m still me.
I’m just evolving.
And it’s helping to shape who I am.

We come as a pair but mostly, we come as ourselves. I love that.

I used to roll my eyes at people saying “you’re my entire world.” Too much. Too dramatic. Too dependent.

But now? I get it.

Because he can feel like my whole world — and I can be mine too.

I don’t think we were missing pieces to the puzzle of each other’s lives. But I do think we were the little bonus gifts. The surprises you didn’t need, but when you got them, you realise how much they add.

And once I could see it as that, I was able to unlock this whole new level of excitement.

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A Final Note

You’re still you, even when you add layers.

I wish someone had told me that. I wish I could tell that version of me that it is okay to feel anxious and nervous about adding another layer to her identity. I wish I could tell her that yes, it would change things. But it wouldn’t fundamentally change her.

In all of this panic, concern, I wonder now if perhaps the fear of losing yourself is actually a sign of how much you care about staying connected to who you are?

And if so, can we take this worry and turn it into something good? A reason to motivate. To throw ourselves into what makes us feel like us.

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I wanna know about you now.

What labels have you struggled to fit into at first?

Please share in the comments if you’re happy to!

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And if you reeeeally liked this post…

Then you are most welcome to Buy me a coffee ☕ to fuel the next round of chaotic reflections and heartfelt ramblings. No pressure—I’ll still be here, overthinking for free. But if you fancy it, I’ll raise my mug to you with gratitude!

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And if you want even more…

Here is the first in the series: