Many people know what boundaries are, but very few people understand what they are for and how to maintain them. In episode 118 of my podcast, Recorded Conversations, licensed marriage therapist Dovid Feldman offers some insight into boundaries; most specifically, the importance of how to set them AND how to receive them.
Feldman cautions that boundaries are, on same level, intended to separate us, the “no” draws a line between me and the thing that you want. But boundaries also connect us and keep us close. My ‘no’ is utilized because I love you and I love our relationship. I know that if I say ‘yes’ to the thing you want, there will be separation between us. The reason it will separate us from one another is because I cannot do this thing with an authentic heart. If I were to do the thing you want inauthentically, I would be deceiving myself and you. In essence, the ‘no’ is protection—my ‘no’ will protect us and this relationship. It’s not that I am saying ‘no’ to you, I am saying ‘no’ to the thing you want that I cannot do. It's important to set boundaries with love so that we do not disconnect from or reject our partners. Boundaries represent the limits of how you will allow others to treat you and speak to you, but they also represent the limits of how you will allow others to activate your own emotions. Boundaries are not just physical. Setting your boundaries means you are assertively protecting your rights to your bodily, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, along with your ideas, needs, wants, and desires. Research finds that a lack of boundary setting is associated with various forms of psychopathology- especially depression and social anxiety, and personality variables such as neuroticism. People that struggle to set personal boundaries do so for various reasons, such as, the fear of being disliked, rejected, or being counter-challenged (threatened or ridiculed) (Schwartz & Gottman, 1976). Other difficulties in setting boundaries can be related to social comparison. Individuals who tend to compare themselves unfavorably to others often experience increased stress levels and a reduced capacity to perform assertive behaviors. (Gilbert & Allan, 1994). Visualizing Boundaries: Boundaries are the limits we set for ourselves in our relationships with others. Setting boundaries is essential for healthy relationships. However, our boundaries can be difficult to define and can change over time. Your beliefs about love, the principles that guide your life, and what you value can offer insight into how to define your boundaries. Take a moment to reflect on your current life situation. Get yourself a piece of paper and a pen and answer the following questions.
Flip that piece of paper over, and on the other side, draw a big circle in the center of the page (big enough to write words inside). Inside the circle, write down everything that makes you feel safe and stress-free. Here are some examples:
Outside the circle, write down anything or anyone that makes you feel stressed, uncomfortable, or unsafe. These are people or situations that are pushing your boundaries and need further attention. Examples could include:
This exercise will help you identify your boundaries. The next step requires that you identify your personal values. Your values represent what is most important to you and what your priorities are. Once you outline what your main values are, you can practice saying no to the requests that violate or threaten what you value. Everyone has the right to refuse or decline to do something. You do not owe an explanation if questioned. However, saying no is difficult for those of us who want to keep others happy or who worry about what other people will think of us. Saying “no” is a key assertiveness skill and essential for setting healthy boundaries. Try practicing these different ways to say no that are confident and respectful. Use them the next time you feel uncomfortable and need to set limits, either in person, by email or text message.
Reflect on how this made you feel. When we are not used to setting boundaries with certain people or in specific situations, we might feel guilty, anxious, or even ashamed at first. This discomfort is to be expected when we are making changes to our behavior and recalibrating our programs. Lean into the uncomfortable feelings and accept them as they are. As you develop your boundary setting process, you will be more open to state what it is you do want, directly, and with confidence.
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The reality is, with many men, porn provides a shame-free environment for them to fantasize and project their desires outwardly without rejection. Porn lacks any emotional dimension, so it further erodes a man's sexuality. Thus creating a dependency loop.
Porn doesn't necessarily desensitize a man, but it does create unrealistic sexual expectations for a man and erodes out any potential avenue for curiosity and discovery within his own real-life romantic relationship. Sex is meant to be mysterious and we are meant to discover one another in union, through stimulation and pleasure. However, latest studies indicate that too many men are hooked on the dopamine-like hits they receive from instant gratification of porn that they no longer have the attention span or emotional bandwidth to engage in a truly connected, pleasurable experience. Porn basically reduces men objectively by making orgasm the goal of the engagement, without any effort or energy. All he has to do is watch and stroke. He doesn't even need to be present or engaged to a partner. And this reduces all possible forms of rejection, hesitation, or disappointment. Basically, the growing fascination of porn with men reveals a lack of curiosity and a lack of self-confidence with each user. Once upon a time, I remember when men would refuse to admit to watching porn, let alone even consider using porn. It was a joke of the 2000's that no real man would ever need porn. Now, everyone acts like it's normal and not a big deal. This "I'll do it myself" mentality has encroached into the erotic dimension where self-stimulation cannot even compare to total surrender. And it's utterly ridiculous when you ponder it for a moment. Why on earth would self-stimulation and instant gratification ever be more satisfying and pleasurable than the total surrender to another soul in a pleasurable escapade of sexual connection with someone you love? There are many reasons. One reason is that a man is not able to fully surrender and be vulnerable in his own relationship. He feels shame and embarrassment for wanting to explore more. Another reason is that he has not fully developed an erotic identity. He is left stagnant in identifying as simply an objective creature with one mission: Ejaculation. He has been convinced that his only real meaningful contribution is to sexual hierarchy. And when he feels he cannot compete with such biological programs, rather than encouraging himself, because he lacks confidence and the ability to articulate himself, he then falls for the superficial substitutes so that he can convince himself he matters. Porn dependency is really a coping mechanism for things he fears expressing or addressing. And many times, what he fears expressing may have nothing to do with sex at all. But he turns to sexual expression because again, he has been programmed to think that his worldly contributions are all physical/sexual never emotional. When men do not feel as if their needs are being met- again, not just sexual needs- they turn to an outlet that allows them to feel satiated. Sexual release lowers stress- ego, if he is stressed, porn is the answer. Yes, sex with you could also help him reduce his stress, but he may have developed some stress-triggers from performing with you. Men struggle with performance pressure because they lack curiosity. They don't wonder if their partner so much is proud of their performance, they wonder more if the world will be proud of his performance. And if social narratives insist that proud men look a certain way or behave a certain way, he may feel as if he cannot compete. Also, when men do not feel desired by their partners, it's easy to convince yourself that the porn models desire you. Even if they only desire their money and attention as currency. It's purely transactional. But he can deceive himself in that moment and believe that porn star really wants him. To understand the mindset of the porn user, you must ask questions about childhood and adolescence. What was problem solving like growing up? What were the discussions about sex growing up? What possible wounds are left gaping open that he doesn't know how to heal? And also, ask yourself with brutal honesty, "Do I allow him space to be authentic in his desires and share with me his sexual fantasies or wants without judgment or shame?" Have you ever told him that any of his desires or fantasies were "gross" or "disgusting"? How do you encourage him outside the bedroom? Do you have a culture of appreciation in your dynamic? How do you pursue him when you do want to connect sexually? Do you invite him and let it be his choice or do you demand it and give ultimatums? Are you curious about his mindset and his thoughts and ask him open-ended questions, or are you two stuck in a routine of rhetoric that only reiterates the days events? These are some questions I would ask myself if I discovered my husband was turning to porn. It in no way implies you are to blame or at fault for his choices, but it may influence why he chooses the way he does. Just some things to consider. 1/26/2024 0 Comments Drama, Peace, and Stress: Necessary Elements for Connected, Conscious RelationshipsI’ve seen the list of requirements for the current dating pool in our society and I must say, I am shocked by what people are asking for. When I hear individuals express a desire for a peaceful, drama-free, stress-free relationship, I can’t help but notice how much of the experience of life is excluded in such a request.
“I just want someone to bring me peace…be my peace, be my place of peace.” It seems like a virtuous request, doesn’t it? Let’s look at the definition of “peace” for a moment. Peace noun 1. Freedom from disturbance, inconvenience, or interruption 2. Freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts and emotions 3. A period or state of concord between two parties 4. To keep silent or quiet If what you are inviting in is freedom from disturbance, inconvenience, or interruption, then how on Earth are you supposed to meet someone? The very act of meeting someone new disturbs our comfort zones, inconveniences our self-confidence (temporarily of course) and interrupts our thoughts and emotions. How can one find a mate if they are seeking quiet and silence? Are you asking for your partner to be mute? Are you saying you don’t want to be interrupted by desire? Are you saying that arousal is inconvenient? How can there be joyful conversations in your relationship if your demand for peace (and quiet and silence) is so high? How will you ever connect with another incredibly unique human if what you say is “I want peace”? Peace, the way I see it, is a state of being that only the individual can provide for themselves. If you are seeking someone else to provide you with a state of being that you can access internally, you are saying you do not have the ability or capacity of peace of mind. Seek out harmony and unity of two separate forces rather than demanding silence, solitude, and peace. Because if you keep asking for peace, that’s exactly what you will get. “I do not want any drama. If there is drama, I am out.” Many people unknowingly believe that any form of drama is bad. Peace is good, must bring, but drama = bad, can’t have that. Well, let’s look at the word drama, shall we? Drama noun 1. A movie, play, or television production with a serious tone or subject. 2. Art, literature, or affairs 3. A state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces. 4. Dramatic state, effect, quality Drama is necessary for an intense love affair, is it not? Without drama, without a series of events that are interesting and exciting, we do not connect. Love is a collision of forces, including dramatic forces. Without drama, love wouldn’t be love. Drama is not a bad thing, but a necessary element for the recipe of alchemy. Remember, love is transformative, it changes your state of being, so it is going to include suspense, intensity, and interesting climactic peaks throughout the relationship. If you continue to demand a drama-free engagement, you’ll get it- and you’ll end up in an uninteresting, anti-transformative, boring situation…alone! “If I can’t have a stress-free relationship, then I will stay single.” Stress is an interesting word, isn’t it? Most of us identify the word stress as a negative consequence of overwhelm or upset. But let’s think about this term a bit more expansively, shall we? Stress noun 1. Pressure or tension exerted on a material object. 2. A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from very demanding circumstances. verb 1. Give particular emphasis or importance to (a point, statement, or idea) made in speech or writing 2.Subject to pressure or tension Listen, I am not suggesting one benefits from encouraging stress, but I am suggesting we look at stress outside the negative lens. Stress during sexual connection is a good thing, isn’t it? When pressure or tension (or friction) is applied to our bodies, it’s very rewarding, is it not? Is arousal not a demanding circumstance for the body and the mind? The thing about stress is that humans actually require some stress in their lives for the development of resiliency. If you aren’t willing to get your heart pumping a little faster and place yourself in risky, unknown, uncertain circumstances, you will never know love, you will never receive the reward, and you will suffer from a resiliency-deficiency. As it goes, you can’t have love if you don’t welcome all that comes with it. You won’t find love in silence and solitude. You won’t experience passion unless there is suffering, and you won’t know peace until you endure suffering. Suffering comes from stress, but without stress, we do not develop a resiliency to overcome greater obstacles along our path of life. Drama in love is the unending ebb and flow of two people navigating their dynamic. Without a conflict of forces (energy, without an interruption to presence, you’ll miss out on life’s greatest adventures. If you ask me, love’s recipe has four main ingredients. These ingredients are often hard to come by as our world substitutes these precious elements with synthetic, artificial imitations. The ingredients are acceptance, accountability, grace, and understanding. Without these pure ingredients, it is impossible to complete the recipe for love. If you use the synthetic version of these components, you will likely end up baking quite a disaster.
If you ask me, love’s recipe has four main ingredients. These ingredients are often hard to come by as our world substitutes these precious elements with synthetic, artificial imitations. The ingredients are acceptance, accountability, grace, and understanding. Without these pure ingredients, it is impossible to complete the recipe for love. If you use the synthetic version of these components, you will likely end up baking quite a disaster.
In this blog, I am going to discuss the third ingredient for love, grace. Grace is often defined as mercy, pardon, favor, privilege, benevolence, and compassion. In religious circles, it as accepted as the influence or spirit of God operating in humans. A deeper dive into the etymology of the word reveals that the Latin “gratis” is more closely related to the concept “a sense of gratitude.” More specifically, it refers to gratitude without condition. What’s interesting to me about the concept of grace is that it is relative to the senses. It is thanks to the ingredients of acceptance and accountability that we have a greater understanding of how the senses are sprinkled in the batter of the recipe of love. More interesting than that is the idea that grace is “gratitude without condition”. Much ink has been spilt debating the terms of grace and how it may be applied to humanity, including whether or not grace is something one earns or deserves. But if you ask me, grace is more akin to a type of energy that you generate for yourself that spills out over others. If grace is a sense of gratitude in every moment, then it does not require an earnings statement for a declaration of deservedness. Grace doesn’t require reciprocity; therefore, it cannot be transactional. Tullian Tchividjian’s definition is helpful, “Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an underserving person by an unobligated giver.” Grace is freely given, with no expectation of how it shall be received. Here’s something else, grace has an additional component which is compassion. One can extend grace to someone whom it is in one’s power to harm, punish, reject, or sentence. With this helpful addition, we can understand that grace is really a dual force, acceptance of what is sprinkled with gratitude for what happened. It’s a way of being grateful for suffering, finding pleasure in pain, or seeing the rainbow through the storm. It’s a powerful ingredient that acts as the binding element for the batter of love’s recipe. Grace has multiple meanings of course, so let’s examine those definitions for further consideration of the application of the practice of grace. Grace is also defined as “simple elegance or refinement of movement”; “courteous goodwill”, and finally, as a verb, which means “to honor or credit someone or something by one’s presence.” If we take these definitions into consideration, we can understand that grace is more of an internal orientation that helps us extend compassion and understanding to the external world. Principle:
If you ask me, love’s recipe has four main ingredients. These ingredients are often hard to come by as our world substitutes these precious elements with synthetic, artificial imitations. The ingredients are acceptance, accountability, grace, and understanding. Without these pure ingredients, it is impossible to complete the recipe for love. If you use the synthetic version of these components, you will likely end up baking quite a disaster.
In this blog, I am going to discuss the second ingredient for love, accountability. Accountability is the willingness to accept an accounting of one’s actions, attitudes, or behaviors, along with accounting for one’s feelings and thoughts. To be accountable is to take personal ownership of how I participated in the situation. For me to be fully accountable means that I own how I engaged (or did not engage) in the experience, and that I evaluate my role and my response. Tragically, accountability runs into the same distortions of ownership that acceptance does. Many people view accountability as a declaration of wrongness. As if to suggest that when I take accountability for my actions, attitudes, or behaviors, I am essentially admitting that I deserved this outcome, or it’s my fault, or that I intended for this to happen, or that I am wrong. None of this is true. Indeed, we all willingly accept accountability when the outcome is a reward or praise or an endorsement of our abilities. We gladly accept ownership over our gains and successes. Yet when it comes to taking accountability for an outcome that is less-than satisfactory, negative, or requires a form of punishment of some sense, we awkwardly abandon ownership and defend or deflect our actions. This is an unfortunate result of attaching our identity to this ingredient for love. If I believe that being accountable means that I am a failure, or that I am wrong, it is because I believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that my accountability status says something about who I am as a person. Or rather that I am either a “good or bad person.” I am a “good person” when I take accountability for my accomplishments, I am a “bad person” when I take accountability for my mistakes. What if I told you that neither is true? Could you breathe a little easier? Would you be more willing or less willing to take accountability? If acceptance is about recognizing that I am the common denominator in all my experiences, then accountability is about recognizing that all of the experiences are divisible by me, meaning that if I take myself out of the equation, none of this would have happened at all. This means if I take myself out of the experience, I wouldn’t have this accomplishment to speak of, nor would I have this failure to hide from. How do I practice accountability? What does it look like in action? Accountability begins with the awareness of cause and effect. Although awareness is a relative concept, it’s nestled in the knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. Awareness is the realization of reality. Often known as consciousness or cognizance, awareness is analogous to sensing something. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasized that awareness (or being aware of me in all roles of my existence) consists of the capacity to generate emotions and awareness of one’s surroundings. Awareness is the attention to the situation through sensation. This means that I am aware of the sight, the smell, the sound, the taste, the touch, the feeling, and the thoughts I experience in any given situation of my participation. The best part about practicing awareness, which ultimately helps me develop accountability, is that I can observe my surroundings and the situation with non-judgment. I can simply witness what is happening without attaching my identity, my feelings, or my criticisms/concerns to the experience. Awareness means “I know what’s going on.” After awareness, comes an authentic apology. Accountability also includes a verbal recognition of what happened and what’s going on. An authentic apology reflects an effort to repair any damage that has been done. This includes asking the offended person what a possible reparation may look like before engaging in any action to restore the relationship or to alleviate possible feelings of guilt. This is a feedback mechanism that provides you with more knowledge which expands your awareness. Principle:
Apology, and therefore accountability, sets a goal—a goal to not do it again. Principle:
Many of us only take accountability when it’s asked for by someone else. The goal in mind here is to always practice accountability as a lifestyle, not just when I fuck up and not just when I am receiving praise or reward. Principle:
If you ask me, love’s recipe has four main ingredients. These ingredients are often hard to come by as our world substitutes these precious elements with synthetic, artificial imitations. The ingredients are acceptance, accountability, grace, and understanding. Without these pure ingredients, it is impossible to complete the recipe for love. If you use the synthetic version of these components, you will likely end up baking quite a disaster.
In this blog, I am going to discuss the first ingredient for love, acceptance. If you were to look up the definition of acceptance, you will discover that the term is typically regarded as meaning “the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered,” and, “the action or process as being received as adequate or suitable.” However, this does not fully elaborate the depth of the definition. Upon further digging, you’ll find less popular notions of acceptance that I believe apply to love. Acceptance is an assent to the reality of the situation. In French, it is known as fait accompli, which means “an accomplished fact.” Thus, acceptance is simply an acknowledgment of something that has already occurred, it is an agreement with the reality that has happened. Acceptance of reality does not mean that you personally approve of or endorse what has happened. Principle:
Acceptance is not about my thoughts, my feelings, or my evaluation of the situation. Acceptance is not about me, it is about what I see. |
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"At the beginning of love, there is a surprise, the discovery of another person to whom we are bound to by no tie other than an indefinable physical and spiritual attraction; that person may even be a stranger and come from another world."
-Octavio Paz, The Double Flame of Love and Eroticism
-Octavio Paz, The Double Flame of Love and Eroticism
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