Boundaries Compiled by M_nabi

The Boundaries Guide for Really Nice People What your therapist was trying to tell you Boundaries are hard for really nice people. If you care a lot and have a lot of compassion, chances are you always see the best in others, so you can usually understand why someone is hurting and forgive their mistakes. You probably give a few too many chances to the wrong people. Plus, you don’t want to make anyone feel bad. You’re a really nice person. If that’s making you miserable, as it probably is, here are three simple lessons to help you change your habits. First, friends are a gift. Noone owes you their friendship, acts of kindness, time, or help. You also don’t owe anyone else these things. To feel entitled to love is to lose the value of true chosen friendship or partnership. Sometimes a really nice person thinks she can earn another person’s love if she just loves them hard enough. Maybe she thinks other people will be obligated to love her if she shows them how they have hurt her, or how much she has done for them. Understandably, these aren’t particularly good premises for a relationship, even if she is really nice. The only valid premise of a relationship is a mutual choice. Otherwise, it must go. One of the great markers of adulthood is learning how to let people go graciously. It is always sad when things don’t work out, but people can choose whomever they want to be friends with, and however much they want to be friends, whenever they wish (people do change, and life is long). The beauty is that our friendships, then, should always make us feel valued and chosen. To let people go graciously requires that you understand that you are valuable and wonderful even if you’re not everyone’s cup of tea (no one is everyone’s cup of tea!). It requires you to build up your skill of friendship pursuit — asking people to hang out and do activities to get to know them better. And it requires you to remember the third rule: it’s probably not about you. Maybe the other person is going through something. Maybe the timing is wrong. Maybe they’ve decided to change their values or culture. Let them go, reassure yourself that you are great, and call up somebody else! Second, manage your own mental health. Ifyou are lonely, grieving, anxious, or in pain, that is yours to solve, not anyone else’s. That doesn’t mean you’re unlovable while dealing with your issues — not at all. We all have our own things to deal with. It’s just important to remember that only you can get your happiness back. Your friends and family can be sad with you, they can support you, they can love you, they can remind you who you are. But they cannot fix it for you. They can’t make the hurt or anxiety go away. They are not responsible for saving you from your negative feelings or problems, and you should not expect them to behave in unreasonable ways to make your anxiety or sadness go away — that’s on you, not on them. Similarly you shouldn’t try to fix other people’s problems, and you should not spend all your energy trying to find someone else’s happiness for them. Such expectations are not fair to anyone, because they create situations of dependency and uneven power dynamics. Each of us has to fight off our own demons. If I am in a relationship where Sam is trying to make me happy all the time, and I am trying to make Sam happy, and we mostly connect because of emotional impulses like loneliness or pain, things will become dishonest and confusing pretty quickly: no one is making honest choices for their own happiness or clearly expressing their own needs! It’s good to express love to others. It is not good to abandon our own needs or happiness in order to try to fulfill another person’s. We have to be able to express love to others as part of expressing ourselves, rather than as a way of erasing our own needs and wants. A really important skill here is asking for what you want or saying what you need. There is nothing heroic or humble about not mentioning your own needs and just letting them vanish — because they don’t vanish. They just fester and become walls between you and others. If you aren’t initiating conversations or communicating what you feel, you are burdening the other person in the relationship by forcing them to try to guess. Or worse, you’re being confusing. Don’t do that. It’s your responsibility to express your wants and needs. It’s not another person’s job to figure them out. Side note: if you’re in a codependent relationship, you should probably get out of it. Sometimes really nice people end up in codependent relationships with other really nice people, because many really nice people have tendencies toward codependency. Often really nice people put up with unhealthy situations too long, or hold onto hope too long. Occasionally really nice people don’t want to set a clear boundary or make a clean break with someone, so they end up being too confusing in their signals and letting another person hold onto hope way too long. Don’t do that. And if someone doesn’t treat you in a way that makes you feel consistently seen, you’ll be fine leaning on other people in your life ‘til someone new comes along. Third, know what you own. Say sorry (own your mistakes), say thank you (accept others’ love), and remember: most things are not about you. One of the most important elements of a relationship is ownership: to know what’s yours and to know what’s others’. Your pain, your grief, your past is yours. How you treat or take care of other people is yours. Your habits and ideas and dreams are yours. But other people have their own dreams and goals and pasts and comfort zones, their own choices and values and lives. They have their own feelings. Really nice people sometimes have a hard time with this: how can I disagree with someone I feel so close to? How can I do something that might upset them? But it’s important to remember that others are allowed to get upset about things you say and do for yourself, and you are allowed to do things anyway. Neither you nor the other person should feel guilt for either the action or the reaction. In fact, in all likelihood, the relationship will be fine if you just let them get upset, and still stand by your choice. Usually, that just makes someone respect you more. It’s also good to remember that the most hurtful things that will happen to you were almost certainly never about you. Sometimes you will hurt others the same way. (Yes, even really nice people hurt other people’s feelings.) The beautiful thing about ownership is that when others do express love to you, it is a big deal, and you must learn to wonder at it and accept it. Knowing what we own, what we control, what others have done for us — this allows us to take responsibility and to feel gratitude. It allows us to initiate meaningful conversations, and to express what has upset us or what we need. When you know what you own, you can say “sorry” if something hurtful you did affected someone else. When you know what another person owns, you can say “thank you” if something good came from someone else. And these small words matter. People often use the word “boundaries” without knowing exactly what a boundary is. Or they think a boundary is a wall (it’s not). Boundaries are internal understandings that help us love each other better. Just as two countries wouldn’t be able to interact very well if they didn’t know where one country’s jurisdiction ended and the other’s began, we need boundaries to tell whose problems are whose. If Sam and Alex are in a relationship with good boundaries, each person will feel like the relationship meets their own needs and brings them happiness. Each person will feel comfortable expressing differing opinions, valid feelings, and needs. And each person would have a strong sense of their own identity and value even if one of them changed significantly or walked away. Walls are different. Walls are what happen when we don’t communicate honestly, when we don’t express our own needs or make choices for our own happiness, when we let resentment or hurt build up between people. If Sam and Alex have let their own boundaries lapse, they might be confused if their presence matters to the other person. They might prioritize the other person’s feelings to such an extent that they become unaware of their own feelings. They might not share honestly about things that have hurt them. They might be afraid to express their own opinion, or live their own life, for fear of hurting the other person’s feelings or losing the relationship. This situation will create walls. Each person will have to protect themselves from the hurt the relationship is causing. Each person will avoid bringing their full self to the table. Probably each person will feel a lot of hurt, pain, and resentment, but in secret: behind a wall. Boundaries create safe spaces for trust. They are how people can argue, feel angry, get hurt, express their true feelings and still love each other and laugh together. They are how people find and experience their own happiness. Boundaries are essential to healthy relationships, and we all can learn how to maintain them.