Boundaries...

Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me, simultaneously.

Wow, has it taken me a very long time to learn this!  So simple, yet so hard to do.

I got it so wrong for so long.  Mostly, I think, I failed to set boundaries with you, which interfered with my self esteem and self respect, which eroded my relationship with myself which then led me to have a totally inauthentic relationship with you...and that was the downfall of every single relationship I have ever had that failed.

And to really love someone I believe you have to have both; a deep and abiding love for yourself while also being able to love in a connected and healthy way someone else.  And boundaries are the way that happens...

We all have different needs and for a very long time I thought that my needs were something that I checked at the door of every relationship I entered.  I just became what I thought you wanted or needed and I paid little to no attention to my own needs, for a while.  But then the high of the newness of you or them was over and I became, resentful.  I mean, it was so dumb, because I am the one that caused this whole thing to evolve like this.  I think that I thought, believed and felt that I would just come in, be everything you needed and wanted, ask for little to nothing and one day you would turn around and see how self sacrificing I was and just adore me for it and give me everything I ever wanted or needed...fucking hilarious that I believed that.  Completely contrary to everything that has ever been written about human relationships.  Can that happen?  Sure, but it is likely? No, no fucking way.

What I was really doing was showing you how to treat me as if I didn’t matter, my needs were not important because I pretended I didn’t have any or I acted as though they were fine coming in dead last.  I can see now that my methodology was flawed.  I attracted the people I did because I was advertising that I had no needs and even if I did, I was fine subrogating them to your needs and wants.  I mean, who will that attract???  Narcissists.  Every.  Single.  Fucking. Time.

Anyway, I failed to hold boundaries, claim my own needs and wants and allowed you to have way to much sway over how my life went.  In short, I did not love me, didn’t behave as if I loved myself and allowed the myth that I could be an actual person with no needs and wants to proliferate.  In short, I have been the architect of my own relational demise so many times.  Actually, every single time.

Today I have done a great deal of work.  I have had to face some very hard truths.  The largest one being that I liked the idea that I needed nothing, that I was just this happy-go-lucky girl, plucky and spirited and I was just here living my life and the addition of you was going to finally be my reward for all my hard relational time.  What a load of hooey!  But I didn’t know that, or rather, I couldn’t own that for a long time.  I just kept doing the same shit over and over and expecting something different to happen.

But finally, after getting my ass kicked so badly, after the worst relationship of my entire life taking so much from me and causing me to hit a bottom that was so low, I finally got busy doing the work and realizing that it was never HIM, it was always me. My relational disasters were my fault. 100%.

Today I have done the work to clear away the wreckage of my not so distant past.  I have done the work to be able to be vulnerable enough to admit I have needs and wants and that in order for those to be honored, I have to have boundaries that allow a love to grow and develop between us and not just dream of this magical ridiculous fairy tale where I am long suffering and you are the prince riding in on the valiant steed to save the day and my life.  Today, I am the one on horseback, and maybe you are too, but we are riding together, separately.

Love, as it turns out, exists and flourishes in the space between people.  One person cannot take over another person and have that ever work out.  All the accommodations, all the denied needs, the forgotten wants, the dishonesty that belies all of that, that is never going to get you to a healthy, loving, kind, reciprocal relationship.  Trust me, I tried.

Today, I have done a lot of work on boundaries and I would love to tell you that now it is easy. It isn’t.  The delusion that I can just forget myself and you will value and love me is fucking hard wired and ingrained.  But I work at it.  One person, one relationship, one day at a time.  And I am finding that the more I love me, the less boundaries I have to have but the ones I do hold are firm and unwavering.  I am no longer willing to just fling myself into some situationship because I am bored, or lonely or horny or whatthefuckever.  Sure, it is fun for a minute, but the cost to my life and soul is just too great today.

The kind of love I am interested in today is the kind of love that flourishes with the boundaries we both set so that each of us are free to love ourselves and each other at the very same time.

Again, still...