3 Boundaries for a Healthy Relationship

Between all of our differences in Brigg’s Personality Types, Western/Eastern Zodiac, Numerology, and the countless ways to prescribe understanding to our intricate identity there is vast knowledge to college in efforts to understand and how we connect with others, plus it’s interesting! Since we all speak different love languages, among our own native tongues, there can be a sea of miscommunications lost in translation.

While some people aren’t aware of the various ways of understanding identities in a deeper way, others that are aware choose to not let it become an influence; and then there is a spectrum of people who live by it as a defining rule by categorizing people before given the chance of getting to know them.

Free will gives us the power to have some control into our destiny. I believe if two people really want to work things out they can and will, nothing can stop combined effort towards healthy communication. I’ve had my share of super unhealthy relationships, starting in my biological family; and after experience in many relationships my own inner work and seeing a Psychologist I’ve learned that we really have all the tools we need to create the relationships we need and desire. When we work on self-love we can love our partner which creates RISING COMPASSION through our example of love to the world.

1. Set Guidelines

As a massage therapist of 10 years, I have seen thousands of people and found that communication is something that needs to be a regular practice in setting guidelines that make us feel safe, healthy, and happy. I’ve learned communication can make people love or hate us, and it lies in the small details of understanding the boundaries of one another. We can attempt understanding of others with minimal communication, but it will likely be way off. I meet a lot of people who think I am a mind reader, but the face is there will never be enough for me to read someone 100% without direct communication.

At the beginning of a massage session I will ask questions to create an open space of communication, set boundaries for myself and listen to my clients’. During the session, I will check in with them multiple times asking them open-ended questions, and multiple choice questions to create a format for open communication. Once I reach the end of the session, I check in with them again before I ask them a few more questions when they come out of the room. Giving someone several opportunities to communicate, allows even the most closed off person to open up and connect so that expectations can be met and this is where peace exists.

The most important thing in setting guidelines for others is that we look within and ask our selves:

“What do I require to feel safe, healthy, and at peace?”

Setting guidelines is telling another person what you need so that your needs are being satisfied to what your personal level of satisfaction-whether mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually only YOU know what YOU need. It is not the responsibility of others to guess what we need through indirect, or meek forms of communication.

The better we understand our inner workings, the better our relationships will become since framework makes everyone feel more safe, healthy and at peace. We all crave boundaries; whether you are free spirited or rigid in personality, guidelines give ourself and others the opportunity to explore within the safety we have created for our health.

Respecting others boundaries is the highest form of love we can show another person because it means we value their needs over our own personal will to what WE may want instead. When our guidelines we set for others are disrespected confrontation happens that can put our health in real danger. If someone is closed to communication due to fearful apprehension, lack of inner work, self-protection etc. then we cannot form a connection that is open or safe, healthy, and peaceful. It is a choice to communicate, and we cannot force anyone except meet them where they are.

We can be direct, open, and honest in the way we communicate our boundaries and this guideline we set for one another creates a deeply bonded foundation of trust and loyalty to one another that grow love in epic proportions.

If you have issues with boundaries and communication, check out these:

What do we do when someone doesn’t want to communicate?

We can’t force communication, but we can attempt to understand. What is their communication or love language style and are you speaking it? Ask them why they feel closed or what they fear by opening up? Find the blockage and work on it!

How to we re-create healthy boundaries when they have been disrespected?

When trust, loyalty and respect is ripped away by disrespecting boundaries, relationships get can get rocky and even end if a healthy balance is restored. People deserve the chance to work through negative emotions by addressing them by creating a timeline for working through things, because if they persist negatively for too long the energy can’t sustain the relationship in a healthy way and things tend to end. Time, and allowing each other to do what they need to regain balance is self-love and needed to create a whole relationship again. Start with small things, and focus on positive reinforcement; people are generally more receptive under these circumstances.

Why can’t we communicate?

Disconnection can happen at any point in the relationship, guidelines and boundaries are important but getting to the foundation of what binds you two together is the best things you can do to get back to what started it all. If that is destroyed, create a new foundation on new experiences and connection; dedicate to one another getting to know the new evolved versions of you two.

Who do I talk to for help in communicating?

Sometimes it isn’t enough to work things out on your own but to rely on a mentor couple that have succeeded through high’s and lows. Talking to a life coach separately, or psychologist, various support groups and seminars that focus on relationship building. I think focusing on the positive aspects of relationship even if they are few is the way to grow back up together stronger, and more whole!

Where do we expect to go with boundaries?

Boundaries are not a one step line we draw at the beginning, but lines that we create, erase, re-draw, and connect to other lines and it gets messy. We are constantly growing and changing so the best thing we can do is stay OPEN, honest and live to our true individual calling accepting one another as they exist good and bad in an unconditional freeing way that allows one another to be as they are no judgement. When we can communicate openly, it is bliss! We can feel safe, healthy and at peace and grow exponentially.

2.Conflict/Resolution

This can make or break a relationship depending on how well the communication style needed for successful conflict/resolution is developed. I’ve heard a few interesting things over my years of what works to solve problems in the best way possible; these 3 are my favorite nontraditional FUN ways to resolve conflict:

Holding Hands while in an argument

They say it is pretty difficult to fight with high levels of anger when holding someone’s hand. It is too contradictory to our brain to disconnect with our words as we connect with our hearts and hands.

Having a Nerf Battle (tribute to my Brother and Sister-in-Law on this one!)

Pent up tension can bring rage to an all time high, and doing something physical and playful can be a way to diffuse the argument in a healthy way where you can talk to one another and take turns talking when taking shots!

Paper Hearts

Sometimes things repeat themselves in circular arguments, and nonverbal communication is best! Writing down “I feel/felt this….when you x” and writing those statements and then putting them in a cup and exchanging statements with one another is a great way to get out the deepest feeling without the strong flow of an argument. Take turns reading each others statements and reflect on one another’s heart and a resolution to mend things up!

Whether you need to be assertive, aggressive, or passive the above ways are just a few forms of healthy conflict/resolution that can turn a dreaded argument into something that actually spins love in a deeper layer of connection…that may lead to the bedroom!

Without a go-to for healthy communication for solving conflict with a resolution in a more structured way, we are lead by high-strung emotions that are bonded by a history together with one another; and knowing each others highs and lows it can become ugly if we do not have a way to reign in our emotions to control them in efforts for achieving a balance of understanding.

Harmony is what we all seek in our relationships, and to suggest that there is a perfect situation is pretty rare and if that ever happens in the “perfectly aligned relationship” the two may be in for a world of fright when things come crashing down without a plan to resolve any disruption to the relationship. The way we grow best is in our passionate unity with our partner, not in complacency and simply getting along at all times. It is also highly unrealistic to just naturally figure things out, or go off of old logic and patterns that once worked previously.

Healthy conflict/resolution takes work and if we become out of touch with our own emotions or identity it can be difficult to find unity with our partner; which is why having our own self-love and personal identity is so important for our own mental health but the health of the relationship. Sometimes we need to allow space to exist with open-communication so that we can regain being close once again; so long as both people want to work on the relationship it will always regain its balance!

3. Show Grace

Make it a rule to show grace to your partner when they mess up, and they will; just like you! We seem to create boundaries, and talk about guidelines, rules and limitations; but don’t look at the most important rule of all granting grace. Mercy looks like not giving a person what they deserve when they do wrong to us, while grace gives what is undeserved when they do wrong to us. Grace is a deeper form of love, that rather than spare someone punishment or justice (revenge etc.) we give to them the love that is not deserved but unconditional and needed.

Why do we treat our partners with boundaries that when crossed heat up our core, stifle us and can even end everything? The person that becomes our life partner could very well live with us longer than our own birthparents who birthed and raised us under the toughest of conditions. It is said that nobody will love us quite as unconditionally as our parents; imagine if we stepped over a boundary a few times and then we got kicked out of our family unit permanently to perish on our own? Why do we think that conditional love is love at all? To love another person unconditionally is to show them grace over and over for better or worse.

The only time we should not show grace is when there is a threat to our health and safety, which under no circumstance should be taken lightly or in any normal light. Professional help, and distance is needed in those situations potentially never allowing for unity to exist in the future; but it is possible that people can change.

Communicating grace looks like a non-verbal and verbal way of letting the other person know that your boundaries still exist, and that out of the kindness of your heart and through time things can be corrected and or healed through sticking to the other healthy boundaries listed on this particular post.

I feel called to discuss grace especially to be the most important of all because we have somehow calculated and analyzed the imagined ‘perfect relationship’ image in our mind and it isn’t real! We all have our own personal image of what the ideal partner or relationship looks like, and when our expectations are crushed we look outside and think that things are over. Treating one another as disposable will devalue the potential growth that happens naturally in a relationship.

Think back to your birth family and the several stages and times in life that ya’ll endured where everyone in the family unit grew in different ways but grew together due to the circumstances at hand. Relationships take alot of love, dedication and patience; if we just keep trying the same way we are all trying to be mega billionaires then we can be unstoppable.

Persist with grace, giving undeserved love where it is most needed in the relationship. When you cover hurt with more love, it is the energy of the universe that love will come back to you; hold tight to the grace in your hearts that bind the tender and sweet relationship that cradles love in the most gentle of manners.

Talk about it with your partner how grace is necessary from both of you, because without tenderness and forgiveness what can exist longterm? It’s important that you receive grace, as so you give it because boundaries are not only about safety, health, and peace but reciprocity that make us feel content in the give and take of a relationship.

Self-love within, and love within our relationship create a RISING COMPASSION that exists within ourself, our partner, and translate to the world in the brightest of ways!