Why Are Personal Boundaries Important?

I was brought up to always be friendly, agreeable, charming and cheerful. My parents believed that my very survival depended on people liking me and this was, clearly, the way one gets people to like them.

I grew up, got married and, over the years, developed a variety of friendships of varying degrees of social “appropriateness” and superficiality.

I worked as hard as I could at all these relationships. One of the approaches I had developed was to avoid conflict at all cost. I actually believed that conflict signified the end of a relationship, that if I ever told someone how I really felt, they would walk away and I’d be alone – forever. This “walking away” might be physical or psychological. Although this may sound over the top, it was a belief that held real fear for me for most of my adult life.

As a consequence, I pretended I didn’t mind when I did, that I wasn’t hurt when I was, that I didn’t feel sad when I did until I became disconnected from myself. I knew my life felt empty and lonely but I didn’t know how I was creating the very life I declared I did not want.
Then I met a man who became my life coach. For quite a long time what I really wanted was for “them” to change so that my life would be different and, in the beginning, I struggled and resisted every inch of the way the possibility that I might have got it wrong.

As time went on I learned to become a much better friend to myself as well as to others. One of the elements of that friendship with myself was something that I had never even thought about namely that it would be advisable for me to have personal boundaries. The whole idea of speaking honestly filled me with fear because it might require me to “rock the boat” and for a long time I was too afraid to do so. I was more concerned with a fear of hurting and offending others than worrying that others might hurt, upset, anger or offend me. As a result I put up with all kinds of non-loving behaviours which, I assured myself, I didn’t really mind.

For me, the kind of learning that travels from knowing that something makes sense intellectually and the kind of learning that sits deep in my body tends to come as a result of me reaching a point where “I really, really don’t want “this” for me anymore!” It’s like a cry from the heart where the pain of staying where I am (either physically or psychologically) far outweighs any fear of offending, of being abandoned, of the unknown or of consequences real or imagined that I might have.

It is, for me, a moment of transformation although, to be honest, the process tends to simmer below the surface for some time before it comes into my awareness; it’s the sudden realisation and insight that appears instantaneous.
Over time I started wondering, “how are people going to know they hurt or upset me if I don’t tell them?” which is the actual expression of my personal boundaries. Other things I came to see is that conflict, far from destroying a relationship can, in fact, clear the air and prevent resentments that might eat away at the love between us. I also realised that being authentic is more likely to, in turn, attract authentic relationships although that is not guaranteed.

And I realised something else as well, namely that I can’t force anyone to be different from who they are by insisting that they react and respond as I want them to however unwilling they may be.

I recently experienced a situation where I had to test my beliefs.

Something happened between a close friend and myself that caused me, for the first time, to feel angry and upset with her. I called her and left her a voicemail message saying so.

Silence.

It was that silence that upset me even more than the original incident. I felt that, whatever she may have said in the past about how much she valued our friendship, when push came to shove she really didn’t care about me at all. I felt overwhelmed with sadness.

Then I started wondering about how friendships really work. Did I make a mistake saying how I felt? I wondered, “don’t people ever fall out and make up again?” “How can one have a friendship that lasts years and years without ever getting angry at each other, talking it over, making up and continue the relationship, perhaps even growing closer as we learn more about each other?”
In reviewing my beliefs in the midst of my sadness and reflecting about how I had arrived at these beliefs I remembered two very important things. One is that pretending can only create superficial relationships because pretence and authenticity are mutually exclusive. And the other is that I cannot carry relationships single-handedly. I tried for many years so this is not some abstract concept to me.

There was another element in the background of my mind, the one that made me question myself – the issue around taking responsibility versus pretending to be an “innocent bystander” – something I had always done where I am the picture of reasonableness, politeness, understanding, patience and compassion while “they” are thoughtless, rude and careless. There is little that can distance me from another more than this.

I followed up my voicemail message with an email explaining that if I didn’t say how I felt then the resentment would come between us and that I valued our friendship too much to let this happen. I added that I hoped she valued our friendship as well.

Silence.

Having processed this experience – which is by no means necessarily over – I came to the conclusion that I truly stand by my beliefs, particularly the one that I cannot carry relationships single-handedly. It’s time for me to let go and see what happens.