I certainly am not intending to tell you how to think or how to feel, but from my own personal experience, coming to a place where I do not think of any of my partners or lovers as “mine” is what has led to better relationships — both with them and with myself. I believe it’s really easy to slip into a place that is part co-dependent and part controlling when that word is used, and that healthy relationships are neither of those. I now value my own self more fully when I think of myself as less one half of a couple that creates a whole and more just me who has chosen to have interdependence with someone else.