Partners, growth & boundaries
“There are various essential attributes to life — particularly human life — such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may “break” a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others — to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line….Evil, then, for the moment, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.”
- M. Scott Peck
SO I’VE been under some stress lately due to various reasons (tend to take on too much in my life, have streak of perfectionism a mile wide, possessor of highly-strung yappy terrier personality), which led me to thinking about relationships — romantic and platonic and familial and political, healthy ones and unhealthy ones…
I think the best ones are built on a foundation of strength — if you can convince yourself to go independent when you disagree with her/him, and let him/her disagree with you, if you can both sometimes go off and do your own thing, you are testing the relationship in the best possible way. There is nothing more intellectually attractive than someone who is constructive, whose every choice benefits not just herself/himself, but others as well.
It’s not a matter of playing mind-games; let’s look at it in terms of the personal boundary, which is an invisible marker of personal space and boundary — an invisible psychological circle around you that marks what you control about life from what you don’t.
When underdeveloped, undeveloped or damaged, the personal boundary is the cause of codependence, abuse, rudeness, prejudice, loneliness — if you develop a strong personal boundary, you hold a secret, invisible vault full of psychological treasure. The personal boundary provides a way to say no to some things and yes to others that lets you budget your resources wisely.
A person with holes in his personal boundary is overly stressed, oversensitive and weak of character. He has a bad day everytime the environment is bad to him and a good day only when conditions are right. If this is the case, that person cannot defend him/herself psychologically — let alone defend you.
When the boundary has holes, stress gets in whenever it wants. People who have buttons to push or are thin-skinned are immature and send potential partners running for their lives.
Suffering is the taking of your own emotional energy and spending it on the uncontrollable in your life. You lose your self-esteem by wasting it on things you don’t control. We *never* have control over other humans. You do control what’s within your boundary: likes, dislikes, attitudes, standards.
When someone says “should” often, what he’s saying is that he wishes he controlled something he does not. The personal boundary is the very thing that lets us have preferences in life. When we can’t say no to things that don’t feel like us, or feel too inhibited to say yes to things that do, we lack a sense of identity. A partner with a solid identity is someone who can be trusted.
People with holes in their boundary are prone to lie. A lie is like putting up a smokescreen over a hole in the boundary, rather than simply saying no or taking rejection gracefully. Holes in the boundary make it unlikely that the partner is able to commit toyou, and if he/she seems to, he/she will be likely to lie or cheat eventually.
We are all being steered in our lives, whether by ourselves or by others. Someone is responsible. If you have every known someone who is easily irritable, easily stressed or overwhelmed, then this person has many holes in the boundary and likely has an external locus of control. This person needs an outside force to help control his/her feelings, and self-control is unpredictable. People will see you as impatient, impulsive and unlikely to follow through on your promises. When this happens, every stress controls you instead of the other way round. The partner senses in you that you can’t take responsibility for your own negativity and emotional management. You are a boat with no oars, a ship with no sails.
An internal locus of control is the opposite. It comes from a strong boundary that lets him/her know you can resist stress. Your partner will know that no matter what happens in the environment, you are capable of keeping your composure and grace. It lets your partner know that you are as strong as he/she is, and you won’t create drama that raises his/her blood pressure, risk her/his health, his/her territory, his/her property, or his/her mission in life.
Strength is the currency of the personal boundary. It is what lets us protect others and defend ourselves in the way that the strong border of a nation does. The other party can’t merge boundaries with you if you are going to be like a sieve that drains his/her energy by sharing your worry, complaints, rage, victimisation and suffering all the time. A committed relationship is meant to give you both a shoulder to occasionally lean on, not a dumpster for either of your negativity or suffering.
I’ve learnt to think of it in terms of a sword or a shield — a shield, a boundary against stress, uses much less energy. Your boundary is a shield, and its most practical use is in the simple ability to say no to time or energy drains, to take no gracefully, and to tolerate rejection without creating drama.
Addictions (to computer games, to perfectionism, to guilt, to serial monogamy etc) are symptomatic of boundary holes and impulsive anxiety management. Codependence is a struggle between a winner and a loser. The bigger bully begins taking emotion, ideas, energy and time to himself, leaving the other person to feel depleted and afraid to break up. Someone with holes in his/her boundary is doomed to codependence as he doesn’t know a more mature way of being.
When two people first meet, they are in a state of independence. People who have just met have unique emotions, ideas, beliefs and preferences in their decisions for themselves. If you meet a passively difficult person who goes along with everything you say and then sabotages when she/he’s agreed to, you are looking at someone with holes in his boundary.
I’ve been in unhealthy partnerships/relationships before, and I think deals should only be struck when we feel full good-energy friendship. Doors only open to win-win deals and close to win-lose deals: I think of it as having a strong customs and immigration service at a national border.
This doesn’t mean I’m perfect; I’m often not. But before we enter into deals or partnerships or marriages or relationships, look out for this in yourself and your partner:
- Strong sense of ID with specific tastes and preferences
- Accountable for own tastes and preferences, but does not force them on others
- Does not suffer much over things he/she cannot control (including you). Instead, he/she works with what he does control to solve problems, accept himself/herself (aiyah I’ll just use her/she from now) and her limitations, and accepts the limitations of those around her.
- She doesn’t let anyone — including you — tell her how to feel, what to believe, or what she should or should not do.
- He doesn’t tell others what to do, be, think, or feel. He accepts them for what they are.
- She keeps her privacy to herself, honours it, and respects that of others.
- He doesn’t take on responsibility for the normal self-care of others, yet is empathetic and caring.
- She wants to grow and see you grow.
- He is good at budgeting time, energy and money.
What you learn to develop is a cool eye, the only human skill that allows change or growth…a relationship is not just about feeding him, having sex with him, and shutting up — it’s about mastering communication and finding shared life goals, beliefs and values.
What you don’t say matters. When you lie within a commitment, you put your partner at risk of failing to achieve those life goals. If you lie, the other party believes he/she has true access to you intimately when he/she really does not. Someone who lies frequently shows he/she’s not capable of truly committing to you due to the holes in his/her boundary.
A woman who lacked a good father may find herself stuck in a perpetual habit of trying to please all men at any cost while remaining helpless enough that she is always dependent on men. It’s as if she’s waiting for a good father to come along and give her an endorsement.
A solid boundary with doors lets you know what your identity and preferences are. Without a boundary that’s strong, you can’t honestly figure out what your personal life goals are. Be honest even if it feels temporarily bad. Communication is vital in a true committed relationship or partnership — it reflects honesty, prudence, balance and patience.
Beliefs are emotion-based opinions. Avoid overly judgmental people as they cannot make good partners in dealing with all of life’s challenges. You can’t afford to stake your time, energy and life on faulty information, sulking, manipulation, passive-aggressiveness or any other kind of subtle dishonesty that destroys your friendship. So learn to open and close doors selectively when it comes to people, situations and deals in your life. Your budgeting of resources is only as good as your boundary.
Allocate time, energy and resources on what’s important. When you have a good, solid boundary, you can set aside what you don’t prefer around you and set goals for the things you do prefer. You’ll buy a house before you set eyes on this partner, you’ll build a career before you know the partner’s name. You’re real, not just a dreamer, and you don’t need to wait for this partner to come along to make things possible for you. If someone comes along who will be by your side, that person is your true partner, with its/her/his health and happiness becoming intertwined with your own destiny. Hopefully, you’ve chosen well in the first place.
Setting and reaching goals is the only way to expand the size of your personal boundary. Shooting for joint goals with the right partners expands the size of your boundary you control together — this means you work together as a team to achieve goals.
When you stay true to yourself and to others about exactly who you are, what you need, and therefore what you must seek out of life, you will be much more likely to form solid partnerships and relationships with those around you. It’s also our responsibility to raise our understanding of instinct and character to the highest level we can imagine and choosing well before you even begin to make a commitment. It comes from getting real about your personal growth and being open to those entering your life who display the same skill. It’s a long series of decisions that we have to make, that we make out of our free will, without resentment or baggage. Passiveness is just waiting for someone else to make decisions for us, which can lead to cancer within a career, a relationship, the ownership of our own life.
Immature ego defences: passive-aggressiveness, denial, projection, black/white thinking, over-intellectualisation, exocet-missiling
Mature ego defences: humour, altruism, sublimation, anticipation
So look out for people with mature ego defences, who are patient and comfortable with delayed gratification, who value others’ opinions, actions and decisions, who have a good ethics of conscience, who utilise their “cool eye” — the self-monitoring ability to see their own behaviour for what it is, those who don’t harm or use others but instead help when they’ve more than enough to give, those who make win-win decisions instead of indulging in silly zero-sum games.
When two people share too much too quickly, they tend to cross into each other’s world so deeply that they can tend to lose all sense of their original, individual stories. But that’s where the simple act of using your “cool eye”, of exercising your courage and assertiveness, kicks in. I don’t believe in magical thinking. But I believe that the Universe/God/Kismet sends little opportunities for us to connect with someone else’s story, and begin a whole new path in life you’ve never thought possible.
Every now and then, we get a gift from the universe; a moment shared with a special other person. You can remain passive, or take the required action the universe is begging us to take. Decisive action is the cure. You can only make sure you’re ready when situations like these happen.