boundaries: how to not behave badly

In January of 2018 I was in a hotel room in Thailand with a man I loved. I wanted to talk, he wanted to avoid talking. We were both intransigent. That night I said one of the top five worst things I have said to someone who isn’t my mother. He lay himself out, admitted his shortcomings, professed his love for me. I said that if this was what love felt like, I didn’t want it. To take it back.

Ouch.

I remember that when I said it I was watching myself like a movie from the other side of the room. Inside I was saying, “no, don’t do it, stop, close your mouth,” but my mouth was moving and words were happening irrespective to the pleas from my inner self. I was overwhelmed. I wanted him away from me and, boy, did I get it. When I got back to Austin I went to therapy and confessed what I’d said. I felt awful. It was terrifying. This was proof enough for me that I wasn’t a safe partner, that I needed to sit on the sidelines a while longer and figure out how to diffuse the landmines that lead to that sort of behavior.

My therapist disagreed.

When we are beyond threshold, there is nothing we can do. It’s like losing steering and we can’t take our foot off the gas. I, he explained, was beyond the threshold of what I could handle. It’s no wonder I said things I didn’t mean, things I wish I hadn’t said. I had lost my steering by that point. The only area we have agency is below the stress threshold line.

He demonstrated this point by talking about cold sores. He says once you have a cold sore, there is nothing you can do but wait for it to go away. The only place you have any control is in the first moment you feel a tiny twinge of nerve pain. If you can catch it then, you can rest, apply medicine and try to head it off. The other area we have agency is in the general, daily care of our body- to eat well, get enough rest, exercise, monitor stress levels. No one can make a cold sore disappear once it’s there, but we can step in at different stages before then.

This news was so freeing.

I used to be afraid I would behave badly, as if I’d be gliding along life just fine, then suddenly a behavioral bomb would go off. I thought that was just who I was, the same way I saw that as who my mother was. I kept myself away from other people so I wouldn’t accidentally explode on them. It was stressful for me and kept me from deepening my relationships. I attached that behavior to the idea of who I was - but it was the idea of who I was that was causing the problem.

I was keeping myself in relationships and situations that didn’t feel good because I thought they should feel good. When they weren’t feeling good, instead of thinking “this isn’t for me” I would think “there’s something wrong with me” because my actual response was divergent from my anticipated response. Today I can say, “well, look at that,” and make a positional pivot, allowing my idea of what I like and don’t like to shift as I get feedback from my inner state.

When I move through the world in a way that feels good to me, I feel good, then I am good. Over the course of the last few years I noticed the times I was short or rude, the times I was passive aggressive or mean. It wasn’t very often. When this happens today I don’t think “there is something wrong with me because of the way I’m acting.” Instead I think “there is something wrong with the situation I’m in if I’m acting this way.” What a beautiful pivot. Me in my natural state, is a kind and patient and fair person. Me, when I’m contorted in an uncomfortable posture or sticking my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong, is bitchy and score keeping, a resentful caretaker, or spoilt princess.

Big change has exponential repercussions. I try to show up for my friends the way I used to and it doesn’t work. I get into the dug out with them, come back to the trenches day after day, running errands and walking dogs. People show up for me. I show up for people. There is always someone needing something. What can I do? What do I owe who?

When you are friends with someone long enough you see them looping. You see their blind spots biting them in the ass. You see the same genre of mistake with a new cast of characters ending the same damn way. Of course my friends have seen me do it, too. So what do we owe each other as independent adults? Adults who love each other, who go through shit, but can’t carry one another.

I started asking myself a question I’ve never asked myself before. At what distance can I love you and myself at the same time? I think for many of us love means sacrifice. I would go deep with people because I could. I would help them even though it hurt me. And I was happy to do it - for a time. Now I find that the more in tune I am with myself, the more sensitive I am. Before I could tune myself out, pushing down my discomfort, pushing away my hurt feelings, pushing through to the finish when really a voice inside me was saying “let’s go home.” I used to be proud of what I could put myself through, how much I could endure.

While I could hang with the best of them in the moment, the staying in is what blew me out. In the short term it seems loving to stick by your friend’s side. In the big picture it sometimes would create a strain the relationship couldn’t recover from. Was it my friend’s fault for being so heavy? Or was it my fault for taking on more of their loan than I could carry? It was the latter - and this was how I learned that boundaries are just a different way to love someone and let them know and love you.

When I stopped needing people to prove to me that I was lovable, their actions lost a subscript I didn’t know I was creating. If he forgot my birthday, I was unlovable. Gift I don’t like? Unlovable. Didn’t text me back right away? Unlovable! Everything meant so much more than it needed to because I was projecting an old need where it didn’t belong. Now I can see more clearly from the other side, too. When my friend gets upset with me because I don’t remember a story from years ago I see the event compounding in her mind. To preempt that story line I say “my memory isn’t great, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” I’ve answered a question her conscious mind didn’t know she wasn't asking.

So, how do I love my friends? However I feel moved or able to love them in that moment. To go out of my way at a sustainable level, a level at which I can give freely with no expectation, where no attitude or action of theirs could leave me feeling taken advantage of. What is my job, the hardest job, is to follow that little flame, to stay connected to myself even in the sad moment when the picture of me I hoped I’d maintain no longer matches how I feel.

How do I know when I have failed at my job? When I turn sour. When I start judging. When I find myself unable to bite my tongue and need someone to vent to. That is a sign that I kept giving after well was empty and now I’m pulling up buckets of mud. If I give so much that I need someone to take care of me, I haven’t relieved much pain from the world, only passed it along.