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March 18 - April 11, 2023
We learn emotional boundaries through the responses we get. When our feelings are met with disapproval, harshness, or stiff-upper-lip messages, we learn to push them down, to separate ourselves from our feelings, and to ignore the valuable information they have for us. When feelings are met warmly, when we are encouraged to talk about them and helped to identify them, and when a parent correctly interprets our facial expression, our body language, and the feelings connected with them, our understanding of our inner selves grows. Learning about and connecting with feelings is essential for
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When a couple becomes enmeshed, that is, when the individualities of each partner are sacrificed to the relationship, the individuals and the partnership suffer.
marriage is a process that challenges two people to develop their individuality in the context of intimacy. This process is delicate, difficult, and deliberate.
Sex that is not prepared for with emotional intimacy leaves a gap.
Too much closeness—enmeshment—prevents the child from developing her own individuality and can foster in her a feeling of being responsible for the well-being of her parents.
Generally, stress means we aren’t getting enough help.
If you decide to live in a way that keeps you driven and tense, you are the one who lives with high blood pressure, greater susceptibility to illness, and strained relationships.
When you mentally excuse someone of even minor intrusiveness, you continue to give yourself the message that your instincts must be sacrificed even for someone who is insensitive and unworthy of what he takes from you. The thief wins and you, despite your goodness, lose.
What strengthens emotional boundaries? The right to say no. The freedom to say yes. Respect for feelings. Support for our personal process. Acceptance of differences. Enhancement of our uniqueness. Permission for expression.
The harm we received as children often sets us up for continued harm as adults. If, as children, we had to deny our true thoughts or feelings to be safe, as adults we are likely to continue to deny what’s true for us. Telling the truth feels very unsafe, a threat to survival. What a dilemma. Denying ourselves feels safer, but it obscures our sense of who we are. The safe route, however, violates an emotional boundary.
When we don’t work ourselves free of the issues that got started when we were children, we are destined to relive them again and again. “Children who
suffer trauma to core self and identity…,” writes Jane Middelton-Moz, “work toward resolution of that trauma and to completion of development in adult life through repetition of the struggle with authority figures, in intimate relationships, through their own children or in therapy.”1
Jane Middelton-Moz, Children of Trauma (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 1989), 64.
If we agree with writer Mary Bly, dogs and cats can illustrate these differences. “Dogs,” she writes, “come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you.”
Parents with boundaries that are too close and too leaky can burden their children with inappropriate information. A child exposed to adult problems thinks she’s supposed to have the maturity to handle them and worries that the parent needs more of her than she can give. Such children grow up feeling inadequate and too responsible. ABSORBENT MATES A person with boundaries set too close can be very vulnerable to her spouse’s mood changes. Like a sponge, she absorbs every frown, every tightened jaw, and feels responsible for it. She may take on responsibility that isn’t hers. She may do too much
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A person whose boundaries are too flexible may not even be able to choose a partner or spouse. She may feel she has to respond to whoever needs her and thus marry someone simply because he asked, not because she considered her own preference.
Boundaries should be distinct enough to preserve our individuality yet open enough to admit new ideas and perspectives.
Triangulation commonly occurs when a parent confides private information about the other parent to a child. “Your father is no good in bed” is inappropriate to say to a child under thirty and questionable for a child over thirty. Children should not be drawn into their parents’ private sexual battles. “Tell your mother I’ll get her that check when I’m good and ready.” Emotionally charged statements should go directly to the person involved, not through a child.
If you’re looking up to a person for guidance, supervision, or parenting, you are not his peer. If he’s your dad, minister, therapist, or boss, you are not required to parent or counsel him. If you’re looking down to a person because she’s a child, a client, or a subordinate, she is not your peer. She should not be counseling you. And you should not give her inappropriate personal information.
The commitment makes the difference. Emotional and physical intimacy have the best chance to flourish when you can count on seeing the person tomorrow. Marriage and partnership also seem to be the universe’s way of offering us a chance to work through our childhood issues.
We can’t say what we don’t know. To tell a spouse about our inner process, we must have contact with it. We need the emotional boundary that comes from knowing intimately who we are, what we want, and how to say it. To listen uncritically requires knowing that I’m not the other person, that no matter what he says I can keep myself safe, that I can and will limit comments that violate me, and that his process is not my process. It requires the boundary of knowing what is him and what is me.
Intimacy comes from being known, and being known requires knowing yourself, having a self to know, and having enough of a sense of your own individuality to have something to present to the other.
The most critical ingredient for intimacy between two people is that there be two people. True intimacy requires two separate individuals.
Making the transition from two needy people to two distinct people intimately bonded takes lots of time, arguments, communication, mistakes, clarity, forgiveness, acceptance, and support. If the two have worked hard on their individual development before their commitment to each other, this process takes less time than if they’re starting from scratch after they make their vows.
Two people with incomplete self-development and unhealthy boundaries find each other, find relief in each other, and then find hell with each other. Many times, these relationships break up, and each person moves on to another person only to repeat the cycle.
whole person presents a completely different possibility in relationships than an incomplete person. A whole person can define needs, express feelings, and set limits. A whole person maintains a separate identity with boundaries rather than defenses. A boundary comes from an awareness of one’s distinctness from another. The ability to build one arises from finishing unfinished childhood agendas. Identifying the harm, feeling the suppressed feelings, and grieving the losses restore wholeness to the incomplete child living inside us. As this work is done, one’s capacity for intimacy expands.
Many of us grew up in families where arguments provided the only sense of attachment. If we’re screaming at each other, we’re involved for the moment, sure. But this compares poorly with the peaceful connectedness of true intimacy.
Then I suddenly remembered I had boundaries. I pictured that I was me and separate from Lee. I thought about what I wanted and needed. I wanted to keep my mental energies focused on the meeting and until then I needed to be separate. I needed to stay within my own consciousness.
Intimacy is simple. For two whole people with good boundaries who have taken care of their childhood agendas and can communicate true feelings and issues while remaining intact, it’s a snap. Intimacy will grow with time and commitment.
Do the following three things and your boundaries can’t help but improve: Increase your self-awareness. Identify childhood violations and the offenders, ask yourself how you feel about them, and get care for that damage. Examine the state of your boundaries in your present relationships and clean them up.
Refusing to enable old practices can have amazingly quick results.
“When I do try to talk to you, you switch it to something about you. I start out needing help and I end up helping you. I go away feeling emptier than when I started.”
It had never occurred to me that my incredible neediness made me neglect her. I was in the house, but she grew up by herself.
My therapist had to teach me how to be a mother. Sixty-five years old and learning to be a mother. Now when I call my daughter, I ask what she’s doing and how she’s feeling. I listen without interrupting her and wait until she’s entirely through before I talk about myself. Then I tell her things only for the purpose of sharing, not to get her to take care of me.
Good boundaries allow us to be close to others without losing ourselves.
