“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
~ Prentis Hemphill
In my early 30s I found myself living with a man and not enjoying it one bit. My therapist – my first, poor thing – asked me how he and I had come to decide to live together.
“Well,” I said, “he asked me if he could move in so what could I say?”
She looked at me with a mixture of disbelief, patience, and firmness.
“You could have said, ‘No.’”
“No” had never occurred to me. Everything I’d learned about relationships told me that I could not say “No” when someone I loved wanted something from me that I could give. Even if it felt off. Even if I didn’t want to.
To be clear, I had said emphatic “no’s” to kisses and sex and physical advances when I didn’t want them. But once in a relationship, a committed relationship that I wanted to go well, it was a different story.
I was under the sincere belief that kind people, good people, loving people did whatever they could to help and please the people they loved. If you can, then you must. Saying “no” just didn’t fit into my view of Good Personhood. “No” was fightin’ words.
In the twenty-plus years since then, I’ve learned to say “no” more with people I love. Even so, I was still shocked to hear that Brené Brown’s research showed that the most compassionate people are also the most boundaried. In her latest book, Atlas of the Heart, Dr. Brown says,
“Boundaries are a prerequisite for compassion and empathy. We can’t connect with someone unless we’re clear about where we end and they begin. If there’s no autonomy between people, then there’s no compassion or empathy, just enmeshment.”
My live-in relationship was both enmeshed and doomed. My warped Boundaries Are Bad belief left me afraid to disentangle myself. I was afraid of what would happen if I drew a line and dared to say “no.” I spent years saying “yes” under duress, because I thought I was supposed to. In the end, there was no healthy place for the relationship to go. Without boundaries it didn’t take long until “no” was the only answer.
Next week, we’ll continue our exploration of relationships and boundaries with Holding Boundaries.