Setting Boundaries (cont.)

written by: Kosjenka Muk

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Setting boundaries is as equally important in a partnership as it is in any other relationship. Within this area in particular, many people have very high expectations and needs placed upon the partner and hence might not respect their personal space. Sometimes they may out of love (or fear and neediness?) beocme overly compliant to their partner. Both ways, unresolved feelings pile up until we explode, or cause the attraction to partner to slowly decrease. So why not to stop this process at the very beginning? Mostly because of the fear of abandonment that many people carry within. Such people learned early in their lives that, if they wish to be loved, they can not be themselves, or that love means that the needs of others are more important than their own.

How do we recognise what our boundaries are and when we act aginst them? To answer this I will repeat my regular advice: listen to your own subtle emotions and try to translate them into words to the best of your ability. If your emotions are not a sufficient warning to listen to, sooner or later you might get warning signals through your physical body.

If we recognise that someone is threatening our personal boundaries, it is still not a reason to react with anger, be it aggressively or defensively. Anger and blaming others are usually signs of repressed anger and unresolved guilt, that we must acknowledge and understand. It is important to learn the difference between decisiveness and attacking in the name of defence, as well as the difference between compassion and permissivness. In the beginning those may be difficult to distiguish, because many of us have learnt to supress our needs as children, so we can react with a feeling of guilt, along with a mixture of fear and anger, when we are forced to set boundaries. Often we will set them only after a period of swallowing emotions, repressing anger and accumulating resentment.

Some people defend their personal boundaries very decisively, but also very aggresively and blaming others for the smallest of problems. They also often come from suppressed fear and guilt, but they are much less able to recognize and accept them. Such people are likely to have been insulted and hurt often in childhood, while in the same time having a model of agressive behaviour in their surroundings. They have decided to fight for themselves, but they do this from a stance of 'I will hurt you before you hurt me'. This attitude in essence comes from their fear and feeling incapable to protect themselves without directly attacking or degrading others. This is not true self-love nor self-esteem, rather a different expression of the same problem.

If we presume that, except in situations of direct aggression and manipulation, people do not act with the conscious purpose to insult or hurt us, rather simply from a low level of awareness of other people's feelings, then there is no reason for us to react in anger. It is also unappropriate to express any other desire to the other person with anger and accusations. In such a way we will push away the other and damage the relationship that might have the potential to be a quality one.

The key is to recognize, define and explain your boundaries, needs and desires to others in an early phase of the relationship before you start to accumulate resentment. The majority of us have not learnt to give significant attention to the messages of our body and emotions, to be able to recognize them from the very beginning. That is why we often await an emotional, sometimes even physical, crisis in order to respond to such needs.

Note such situations, and what stops you from calmly, without fear, blame and anger, explaining to the other person what you wish and what you will accept. To the extent you are not able to do this, you will probably feel uncomfortable and anxious in your contacts with other people, which may even lead you to push them off as the cause of such discomfort, rather than taking responsibility for your emotions.
Moreover, the more you don't respect yourself and your needs, the more you are likely in other areas or situations not to respect others, even if within your thoughts only.

It's good to keep all of this in mind when questioning your own behaviour and demands from others. It is easier to recognize when our own boundaries are threatened, than when we do this to other people. If we don't love ourselves enough, the very act of understanding our faults and inappropriate behaviour can make us feel quite degraded. The more we value ourselves it is easier for us to accept, and hence correct, our mistakes.

We no longer live in the Middle Ages in terms of our physical security and physical survival, but as a society, we are still too violent both verbally and emotionally - or at least in our thoughts alone. Actually, fear is often the only thing that will keep us from being rude, rather than the true respect for others. So the rudeness often remains in our thoughts or is expressed behind the backs of others. Most people accept this as quite normal and find ways to justify it to themrselves. In a similar manner, people in the Middle Ages accepted physical violence as normal. To some extent we are still in the Middle Ages, only that, like people of that time also, we are unaware of how much better things could be. Vasal lords are replaced by bankers and corporation managers, violence is replaced by manipulation, and 14 hrs/day of work by 8 to 10 hours of work and often 2 hours driving. For things to change, we must first recognize it within ourselves.

Changing how you relate to others cannot be done with crude and moralistic demands from yourself. Such an approach is where in fact the problem is created. The parts of us we repress are forced to become stronger and harsher while trying to get us to listen to them.

To be able to recognize the pain of others, we must first recognize our own; to understand how we have hurt others we have to become aware of hurting ourselves. Everyday we hurt ourselves, living the lives we do not desire, remaining in surroundings that we don't like, neglecting our bodies, searching for something or somebody to save us. This will only change when we stop thinking that other people and environment have power over our lives and are hence responsible for us.

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