Let’s go through some common scenarios in the course of (unhealthy) relationships. Your boyfriend is frivolous with his finances. He has never seen a bar crawl or beer garden he didn’t like. You, on the other hand, live on a budget. Every dollar has a place, most often known as savings. It’s the 30th of the month and you hear the words, “I don’t know what is going to happen if I don’t pull together the last $200 I need for rent.” Your partner doesn’t directly ASK you for money. However, you are feeling a “nudge” to respond with an open wallet because the weight of the “non-ask” feels heavy. What about the girlfriend that makes it clear that her needs are real and expensive? You know you cannot afford to take her to lavish meals every payday. And when you seem to balk about another $400 meal for the second time this month, you are met with, “Well if you don’t take me, I know plenty of men that will.” What do these scenarios, and many others you have with friends or parents, have in common? Your lack of boundaries. (Not the answer you were expecting, huh?).

What are boundaries? It is a word often thrown about but what does it truly mean to set boundaries with people in your life? Simply put, boundaries are limits that you set for your physical, emotional and mental well-being. These limits allow others to know what preferences you have for how you will be treated and what you will accept from others that interact with you. When you fail to set these boundaries, people that are wired to encroach their views, needs and wants onto you will show up with a bucketful of expectations. Often times, they are hints of manipulation (like not asking for money while asking for money). Or the assault on your value of not being good enough or replaceable if you do not acquiesce to a demand that you do not want to meet. Being with people that are comfortable manipulating you is like a bathtub that drains slowly. It becomes irritating to deal with the standing water. But eventually, you have to invest in the anti-clogging agent so the water doesn’t corrode your home.

What does it look like to set a boundary? It’s as easy as deciding you must take control over what you want for your life. You stop looking at how hard it will be to set a standard for what you need and decide that the standard is precisely how you get to what you need. The next step will be to trust your gut. Allow yourself permission to believe that the heavy weight of these people is real. Your anxiety, stress and sometimes anger are not a fluke. Trust your senses when someone does not feel good for you. Finally, make your requests known and be ready to meet the resistance with walking away. There will be some that did not understand that they were putting you in an uneasy emotional state and will adjust their behavior accordingly. On the flipside, there will be those that are fully aware that they were trying to take advantage of you. They will not go along easily with you taking a stand. Be prepared to reiterate your needs and let them know that how you feel is real and important to you. Remember that having history with someone does not necessarily mean they are healthy for you. You may need to let them go.

Boundaries are necessary for everyone’s well-being. Setting a standard for how you want to be treated is acknowledging self-love and self-worth. There is no greater gift that you can give to yourself than that.

(This blog is dedicated to all the men and women who have had ENOUGH, have decided that loving themselves is important and that being alone does not necessarily mean being lonely).

Here you go again.  You have done it so many times that you know the drill, how the pain will play out and yet, you stay a willing participant in the chaos.  Does that make you crazy?  Unstable?  Not at all.  Simply traumatized and in need of healing.  This blog is for you.

It may not be easy to spot initially.  You feel your partner’s love for you, believe they desire you and what’s best for you and then, BOOM!  This feels like Sally and Sue and Joseph and Bob all over again.  Different people, different faces, same catastrophic outcome.  You begin to feel devalued, unloved and not as relevant as you once believed you were to them.  So you love harder, become more selfless and take the blame for why things are going so wrong.  And even after all of that conceding and acquiescing to their needs and being reminded that you haven’t given enough, the play still ends the same way:  they leave you for someone else or they stay and you know they aren’t really there for you.

Don’t take this as a dig but…ARE YOU REALLY THERE FOR YOU, EITHER?

It’s terribly easy to talk about what your partner didn’t give to you but what do you give to you?  These same relationships with different names and faces that take, take and take some more.   And there you are, willing to continue giving to them but never asking yourself what YOU need from YOU.  What YOU need is to be safe.  You need to be loved.  You need to be seen as a person worth celebrating and pursued with kindness, adoration and affection.  Those needs are like water and air.  And if you’ve been oxygen deprived for years, a couple of months or even a couple of days feeding everyone but you, take note!  We can only live for so long without the necessity of air.

What are you afraid of?  Being alone, miserable, not going out socially and adopting fifty cats to have company?  (Cats are pretty self-sufficient so they may not want to canoodle with you all day!)  Try telling yourself instead that being alone to heal and to learn why you have this pattern doesn’t mean you will be lonely.  In fact, you can count on having so much time learning how to love you that alone won’t even fit into your schedule!  When you take the step to “do it afraid,” spending time getting to know and be the person that demands love and respect for yourself, filling your time does change.  It changes to healthy people because you will become healthy!  It changes to things that are fulfilling to you because you are more fulfilled emotionally on your own.  And, of course, it changes to you receiving love because you have first given it to yourself.

Take a moment to examine what you SAY you want in your life.  And then challenge yourself to take an honest inventory of whether or not you are actually LIVING what you say and make adjustments.  Get support from people who truly love you or therapy to live the life you deserve to live.  And that is one where YOU ARE LOVED BY YOU!