Down-Low Boundaries, Expressing Ourselves to Know Ourselves, and Gambling with Our Discomfort
Food for thought on knowing yourself.
Hello from Koh Samui in Thailand! Welcome to another edition of Food for Thought where, every couple of weeks, I share some of the many nuggets of inspiration that prompt me to think about knowing ourselves, including knowing our yeses and nos. This weeks’s selection includes not needing to be on the down-low about our boundaries, especially in intimate relationships, and why not overriding our discomfort is good for self-care and intimacy.
“I declined because I knew if I had some of hers, she’d take that as license to drink some of mine when it arrived and she’d drink the whole damn glass. I’d known her long enough to know where to draw my boundaries and how to draw them so she wouldn’t notice.” — Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted
This passage from Taylor’s first novel jumped out at me due to not just the acknowledgement of her friend’s habit and her subsequent discomfort but also the misunderstandings many of us have about boundaries.
Creating healthy boundaries is about knowing ourselves as well as others. If we blithely carry on as if we aren’t receiving any feedback about who or what people and situations are, we sell ourselves short, which inevitably leads to tension, friction and resentment.
We, including what we say and don’t say and do and don’t do, are the embodiment of our boundaries. No, we don’t have to spell out our boundaries every time but we also don’t need to act as if we have to slip them into our relationships on the down-low. Genuinely intimate relationships can handle boundaries because the intimacy exists due to the connection created through the vulnerability of continuing authenticity.
If you're going to have to self-medicate to get through an event or it's going to take weeks or even months of therapy or other self-work to 'recuperate' from agreeing to something, that's not a fair and reasonable decision that you're thinking about making. Do not say yes.
Do you say yes without considering the meaning and consequences of doing so? If, based on experience, certain asks and expectations create negative consequences for you, heed that data. Know yourself before you wreck yourself.
“It may not be possible to know who you are without somehow expressing it.”— Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
We can say that we need, want or expect something in order, for instance, to be happy. It’s only in allowing ourselves to express and pursue who we say we are, though, that we get to discover what’s true for us.
Expressing ourselves by doing the equivalent of occasionally dipping our pinky toe in the water and quickly yanking it out isn’t going to give us (and others) enough insight into who we are. This is why we have to show up and then keep showing up again, which, of course, takes vulnerability and trial and error.