The Loyalty Trap: When Staying Costs You Your Self

Loyalty is often romanticized as endurance. As staying no matter the cost. As proving love through suffering.

Loyalty is often romanticized as endurance: staying no matter the cost, proving love through suffering, and mistaking silence for strength. We are taught that the person who stays is more moral than the one who leaves—even when staying requires neglecting needs, suppressing truth, or slowly disappearing.

In this episode of Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael explores how loyalty becomes a psychological trap when it is confused with self-sacrifice. Drawing from somatic trauma work, relational psychology, and lived experience, Ana examines how people—especially women—are conditioned to remain loyal in romantic relationships marked by emotional neglect or regression, in families shaped by abuse, addiction, or secrecy, and in cultural or religious systems that reward obedience over integrity.

Transcript

Who benefits from your loyalty?

What does that loyalty cost you?

If loyalty requires secrecy,

Shrinking,

And no self-betrayal,

It is not a virtue.

It is a mechanism of control.

It means power over you.

True loyalty,

Healthy loyalty,

Does not demand that you disappear.

Welcome to Excel in Rising.

I'm Anna Mael,

Somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery,

And the founder of Somatic Trauma Recovery Center.

Let's begin.

Loyalty is often traced as one of the highest virtues.

It is associated with devotion,

Integrity,

Strength,

And moral character.

And that's true.

And loyalty,

When detached from truth and embodiment,

Can become your cage.

Many people,

They do not remain in harmful situations because they don't see the harm.

They stay because they have been taught since very young age that leaving would make them disloyal to the family,

That they will be selfish or morally wrong.

And as we could see through the history,

People who were quote-unquote stayed unloyal to the family,

They were cast out,

They were exiled.

And this is how loyalty becomes a trap.

So we have different types of loyalty.

Big one is romantic loyalty,

When we are enduring neglect as a measure of love.

And the trap becomes when we do our wedding vows,

In a sickness and a health,

In good times and bad times.

And in intimate relationship,

Loyalty is often framed as staying no matter the cost.

From the day of the weddings,

When we do the vows,

In the church and by the church,

Loyalty is framed as staying no matter the cost.

And why is that?

Who said that you need to stay in good times and bad times?

Who was caging you to believe that?

Let's look at this.

One partner slowly disengages.

They stop growing,

They stop participating emotionally,

In intimacy,

In parenthood.

They stop choosing the relationship.

They stop taking care of their own health and well-being consciously.

And sometimes this looks like emotional absence,

Sometimes addiction,

Sometimes quite regression,

Sometimes chosen neglect.

And the other partner,

Very often,

A woman,

Stays.

She needs to stay loyal.

And not because the relationship is nourishing,

Not because the relationship is reciprocal,

But because loyalty has been confused with endurance and with expectations of church or the family and culture.

So marriage vows,

Cultural messaging,

And gendered expectations teach many women that love means tolerating this connection quietly.

So they are not even talking about abuse.

They are addressing here only disconnect.

Also,

It's thought that staying through neglect is proof of commitment.

So now you can have a partner who is neglecting the health,

Who doesn't care what it eats,

What consumes,

What digests,

Isn't moving or not moving,

And getting sick.

And it's expected of another partner to be loyal to chosen neglect of body.

So how can we label that?

Because that's not loyalty.

That's a life in misery and being caged,

Being submitted to endure to something you didn't sign up for.

It means being with someone who is not responsible,

Who doesn't want to be responsible.

But they want you to take care of them because of marriage vows or cultural messaging.

And also what is learned that asking for more is unreasonable.

It's almost offensive.

And over time,

The nervous system adapts to desire diminishes.

Resentment accumulates.

And your vitality fades.

Self-doubt grows.

And body learns that needs are dangerous,

That your expression leads to conflict,

So it's better to be quiet,

To be silent,

And that staying silent feels safer than being honest.

And that is not devotion.

That's not healthy loyalty.

That's not commitment.

That's not companionship.

This is a slow self-erasure of your being and of your health.

A relationship that requires one person to abandon their vitality in order to maintain stability and be loyal is not mutual.

It is imbalanced.

That's not companionship and love.

That's not marriage.

That's not partnership.

And loyalty to this is not love.

And also what you witnessed with your parents,

Seeing that you were modeled wrong.

It was wrong modeling.

It was modeling of submission and endurance,

Not reciprocity.

Right?

So that's one type of loyalty.

Then we have a family loyalty,

Which means protecting the family unit,

The family system,

At the cost of the individual.

This is another very powerful loyalty trap,

Which lives in many families and usually is hiding abuse.

So families where abuse is normalized,

Where addiction is covered for,

Where secrecy is enforced,

Where silence is mistaken for peace,

And this is how we do it in our family.

And in those families,

Loyalty means not naming what hurts,

What's present in the silence,

What makes everyone unhappy.

You don't talk about the drinking.

You don't talk about the violence.

You don't talk about the emotional neglect because you have to keep the family together and because this is what we don't do.

And the family survives,

But the individual,

You,

Your brother,

Your sister,

Your mother or father,

Pays the price.

So individual,

Usually minors,

They pay the price.

And kids raised in these environments learn early that belonging requires self-betrayal.

It's a requirement to belong.

And the truth is dangerous because you can be cast out.

And also what they learn,

That their perception cannot be trusted.

So now you have a young being who is modeled this way and then enters into the partnership.

Their family loyalty now is just projected and transferred to partnership loyalty where you just continue to endure the same.

So their shame becomes internalized.

Misery is how you live.

So family loyalty becomes a loyalty to misery and that also continues in relationships.

And remaining loyal to dysfunction does not make someone strong.

You're not resilient.

Let me repeat this.

This is very important.

Remaining loyal to dysfunction,

To abuse,

To silence of abuse,

To neglect,

Does not make you strong and resilient.

It makes you someone who is a functioning freeze or hypervigilant freeze.

It makes you anxious,

Disconnected,

Or chronically self-doubting or incomplete,

As I said,

Hypervigilant state.

And loyalty that demands silence learned in those family system is not loyalty.

It is your compliance.

We can see many loyalty traps in cultures,

Churches,

Spiritual communities,

And social groups.

So here loyalty is demanded collectively where you are told,

This is how we do things.

Questioning creates division.

This is also very common.

Or in spiritual communities and churches,

Your discomfort is lack of faith.

Or you're not enlightened enough.

You're not spiritual enough.

Or you would hear something as,

Think of the bigger picture.

Or we're all family here.

And here is where belonging becomes conditional to remain part of the group.

People learn to suppress intuition,

To override their body state,

To stop listening the sound of silence.

Please check my episode,

Textures of Silence.

And also silence your moral conflict.

Silence your moral values where you can sense and see something is off.

Where your moral compass is clearly saying,

This is not okay.

But it gets to be suppressed because belonging in those groups,

Cultures,

Is very,

Very conditional.

And then your psyche splits.

One part conforms outwardly because everyone else around you is doing that.

No one is questioning.

And another part carries anger,

Confusion,

Or grief.

And most common is state of being confused and being stuck.

Because everything in you splits.

Because how come now,

Everyone around you,

Your people,

Your ethnicity,

Your culture,

Is doing all the things.

They are not questioning,

They are following.

And in you,

Everything is saying,

Run away,

This is not okay.

And this internal fracture often shows up as anxiety,

Chronic shame,

As your identity,

Your core identity is wrong.

And people remain loyal but lose contact with themselves.

Autoritarian systems,

Communist systems,

Tyranny,

Relies on this kind of loyalty.

And not loyalty born from shared values,

But loyalty enforced through fear of exclusion.

This is also how cults are running.

So the psychological cost of loyalty without truth,

When this loyalty is demanded at the expense of your authenticity,

Your psyche adapts in very predictable ways,

Your boundaries are weak,

Self-trust is gone,

Intuition is not even present.

Very common is anger inwards,

Not outwards,

But inwards.

Identity fragments,

So we have this split,

Confusion.

And clients would always say,

I don't know who I am anymore.

I feel disconnected from myself.

I feel guilty for wanting more.

How can I do this to my family?

I made vows in good times and bad times.

So guilt is learned.

It comes from being taught that endurance,

No matter of the cost,

Is a virtue.

And sacrifice,

Self-abandonment,

Is your loyalty.

So what healthy loyalty actually looks like,

What you want to look for the healthy loyalty,

Healthy loyalty,

Very clean sign.

Healthy loyalty does not require secrecy.

Let me repeat this.

Healthy loyalty does not require secrecy.

In healthy loyalty,

You are not shunned into the shame as you did something wrong when you know you didn't.

Healthy loyalty does not demand shrinking.

It does not punish honesty.

A good partner does not need you to disappear,

To tiptoe.

A good partner does not need you to take responsibility of their own well-being and how they're going to show up as a partner,

As a parent,

Or in intimacy.

A healthy family does not require silence and not talking about challenging things and experiences.

A genuine community does not shame your identity into hiding.

And loyalty that is rooted in health allows you the growth,

Disagreement.

In healthy loyalty,

Means I can disagree and I won't be cast out or shamed as I don't know what family means or I don't know what group means.

Also,

Healthy loyalty allows your truth,

Your opinion,

Support.

There is no secrecy.

And when loyalty demands self-erasure,

It is no longer relational.

It is not relational.

So keep that in mind.

Because there is no you anymore.

There is no your voice.

There is no trusting reality and valuing reality of your experience where you can say how you feel,

Where you can seek out for support,

Where you can live without being afraid that you will be judged,

Cast out.

Also,

In healthy loyalty,

Living is not betrayal.

Let me repeat this.

In healthy loyalty,

Living is not betrayal.

Ending or redefining a relationship that requires ongoing self-betrayal is not cruelty.

It is clarity.

It is inner authority.

It is self-governing.

So if you end or redefine relationship that requires ongoing self-betrayal where you need to endure,

Neglect,

Abuse,

Unhealthy living is not cruelty.

It is you acting on the clarity and self-authority and on your moral values.

And some relationships,

They can be repaired absolutely when there is a willingness on both sides.

Right?

And some must be left behind.

And letting go is not failure.

It is self-respect as we close this episode today.

To summarize,

Loyalty is only meaningful when it aligns with your dignity.

When staying costs you your voice,

Your body,

Your health,

Your joy,

Or your truth.

Loyalty has moved into captivity.

Your life is not meant to be lived in service of other people's comfort or rigid power over quote,

Unquote,

Values.

It is meant to be lived in alignment with your dignity with your moral values,

With your sense of self,

With your biology,

With your sensibility.

And reclaiming that alignment is not disloyal.

It is coming back home to yourself where you become loyal to yourself and to your own capacities and to your own values.

I'm Anamail.

This is Excel in Rising.

And as always,

Be gentle with yourself.

Be gentle with yourself.

Much care.