Why do we sacrifice ourselves?

Why do we sacrifice ourselves?

Today i was walking hand in hand with my beloved. Both of us has three grown up children. And somehow we started to talk about our x-es (exhusband/exwife) with compassion. ( Partly because these unions produced sex beautiful human beings.)

And that made me think of my first husband, the father of our children. I remember how I, on the wedding night knew I had made a foolish decision, regretting it after the second hour, and then decided that marriage as a ”work” already had started.

I had the idea, next to a fix idea, that I would live with my husband until my death. By doing that, I would heal the wounds after mums and dads divorce. This was something that lead my through the years. This was my destiny, and I had to do the best of it.

And that is one major reason why i stayed another 16 years. I had promised myself, my parents, the world, that I would be strong enough to live in a marriage and get what I wanted from the marriage. (I was wrong).

And today I got an sudden insight. It felt like I got struck by a little lightning. And I heard: ”Charlotte, you were sacrificing yourself.”

and then

”You sacrificed yourself, not just for your parents divorce, also for your grandparents divorce…”

And I needed to just stand still for a while. Embracing the younger me, the stubborn and strong younger me ready to stand up for what she believed in… even ideas that might have

I whisper to younger me:

”You were really really strong, you did all you could, and then you understood that you also needed to take care of yourself, and then you left. I love you. Always.

Question on the journey:
Does it happen that you sacrifice yourself?
What do you do then?
How does it feel?