I really came to realise in the last year how true love means you’ll have boundaries. In all my relationships that flourish there is a lot of respect there and the ones that don’t flourish there is either no respect or I simply haven’t put boundaries in place. It’s something I have really struggled with and in all honesty for the purpose of being really transparent with you, I’m still learning.
I guess for a long time I believed love had no boundaries, the biggest lie ever. I believe now we were told this so if we were treated badly we’d accept the poor behaviour because love has no boundaries right? Wrong. Boundaries are kind. A lot of us find boundaries difficult because for many of us we were taught being a ‘good girl’ and pleasing. That you have to please to get love and to be worthy. Ugh. For many of us, boundaries are new and scary. We don’t know how to go about it, nobody taught us this and it can feel unloving and selfish to have boundaries. Boundaries, however, are anything but. Without boundaries, you’ll probably get hurt. To put it frankly you will get your arsed kicked without boundaries.
I kept getting hurt because I didn’t have boundaries. I didn’t say or make it clear what is and isn’t OK. I kept quiet thinking maybe I’m just being unreasonable then I’d be left feeling broken and yet all the red flags were there. Only those red flags I didn’t communicate what those were for me. Now I will say some people won’t respect your boundaries no matter how much you communicate with them, in fact, they may even make you feel that you’re being unreasonable rather than listening, understanding and caring why this matters to you and how it makes you feel. In this case, with this kind of person, it’s probably not worth communicating them. It’s more about just upholding them which is an imperfect process and a learning curve. I know where I didn’t communicate boundaries that it probably wouldn’t have made a difference in my case, but having those boundaries would have saved me a lot of heartaches. I would have known very early on when a relationship or friendship wasn’t even worth starting. Self-respect is an essential part of self-love and no boundaries, no respect. If you don’t have boundaries then people will overstep the mark because they don’t know where the mark is. Side note this isn’t an excuse to justify people treating you badly, however, if you don’t tell them what is and isn’t OK behaviour for you then you do have to take responsibility if someone crosses the line. Boundaries create circumstances for relationships to flourish because everyone knows where they stand. No guessing, toxic games, tiptoeing around trying to do the right thing, but instead open communication done with love and honouring both parties needs.
It’s about a mutual respect. Boundaries can be summed up in one sentence and it’s this, boundaries are clear communication done often that you uphold. That’s really what it boils down to. I think most relationships fail because communication breaks down. Boundaries are about transparency. It’s honouring your needs because they matter. It’s never and I want to be very clear about this, it’s never about telling someone how they must be, it’s about loving yourself and someone else enough to create the space for the relationship to thrive by both knowing what matters to each other. Respecting each other. It creates space for compassion, love and solutions. It’s a way to go forward with love even after a difficult conversation or different points of views because you were brave enough to show up and not sit on what doesn’t feel right or healthy. It’s putting an end to toxicity and resentment. It’s prevents getting angry about a situation that could have been avoided if they had just been kept in the loop. What’s common sense or simply the right thing to do, to you, might not be to someone else. Or simply put sometimes people take the piss because they think you’ll accept that and that you’ll just be OK about it and aren’t being awful people they just don’t get it or know any better because you haven’t been totally clear. So be clear, communicate with grace and always have boundaries and above all and taken from a speech by Oprah “when people show you who they are, believe them, the first time”.
Be good to you and think about any relationships that aren’t thriving and how you can have some boundaries, it’s such a sacred act of self-care.
Keep Choosing To Rise, Namaste always,
Kirsty xxx
