One size does not fit all, so make your own choices—I do subscribe to some of the underlying principles of the advice, one of which I think of as “you can’t take care of someone else if you aren’t taking care of yourself”.
If you’re consistently failing with points 1 and 2, it’s worth setting some hard limits on when to abandon this project in search of a better one. I often recommend a book (The Dip)[http://smile.amazon.com/The-Dip-Little-Teaches-Stick/dp/1591841666] for work-related decisions of this form, but it applies to relationships as well.
Those feedback loops are real, and being mutually aware and communicative of them is necessary—it doesn’t remove the temptation to sacrifice for your partner (IMO, that’s a feature, not a bug), but it does let you see the reinforcement cycles and help you to choose which ones to damp and which to drive.
One size does not fit all, so make your own choices—I do subscribe to some of the underlying principles of the advice, one of which I think of as “you can’t take care of someone else if you aren’t taking care of yourself”.
If you’re consistently failing with points 1 and 2, it’s worth setting some hard limits on when to abandon this project in search of a better one. I often recommend a book (The Dip)[http://smile.amazon.com/The-Dip-Little-Teaches-Stick/dp/1591841666] for work-related decisions of this form, but it applies to relationships as well.
Those feedback loops are real, and being mutually aware and communicative of them is necessary—it doesn’t remove the temptation to sacrifice for your partner (IMO, that’s a feature, not a bug), but it does let you see the reinforcement cycles and help you to choose which ones to damp and which to drive.