Boundaries: To Have And To Hold

With a high-profile court case on coercive control dominating the UK media, 40 plus blogger Claire Kenny reflects on how easy it is to lose ourselves in an unhealthy relationship if we don’t know the warning signs.

Reading about a certain court case this week, I was struck by a simple analogy: a filter in a fish tank (please bear with me here). The filter is there to provide a boundary between the fish’s breathing space and the toxicity that could potentially threaten and compromise its wellbeing. If it’s compromised, you start to see a very downcast fish swimming in odd circles or hovering despondently in a corner. With a healthy filter, you see a happy, vibrant fish which swims around its living space perfectly happily. All very simple, you might think.

But is it?

Although for many of us, healthy boundaries aren’t an issue in our professional lives and friendships, I’m always surprised at how easily they go out of the window in relationships. Perhaps this is because we don’t educate people early enough - if at all - so we often can’t spot boundary busters such as coercive control until it’s too late.

Many of us have experienced those times when our ‘filter’ has been a little broken. Deep down we know we’re letting too much toxicity into our space but we put off fixing it that little bit longer, either to avoid confrontation or in case things turn out to be OK after all. But deep down we know that the outcome of allowing people to cross healthy boundaries is always a dead fish, or certainly one that floats despondently.

So why is having healthy relationship boundaries so difficult?

When a partner tests your boundaries it’s often very subtle at first. You might be in a new relationship that's started to feel a little intense. Maybe you have children who need your attention, a busy job, or other commitments, but you seem to be feeling obliged to spend 80% of your time in contact with your new partner. Although you don’t want to hurt their feelings, you might explain that it’s moving a little too fast and that you can’t be in constant contact. But they don’t listen. Maybe they’re still calling you a zillion times a day; maybe they’ll then graduate from switching confusingly from hot to cold or withdrawing affection until you agree to do things on their terms. It might feel passionate and romantic at first, but before you know it, you’ve kind of lost yourself and are accepting treatment you know is unhealthy.

I was largely protected from a lot of this stuff until I started dating again in my 40s after my marriage ended, but I’m struck by how little I knew for someone in midlife. Many women of a similar age to me contacted me after reading my blog on unhealthy relationships to tell me they could relate, so we're clearly missing a trick somewhere. I really feel we should talk about these issues more openly before they happen – particularly to young people - so we're equipped rather than blindsided.

We’re often unkind to ourselves when we realise we’ve let someone cross our boundaries and mistreat us, telling ourselves we’ve been weak or stupid. And those who stay in unhealthy or abusive relationships are often derided. But abusive partners are often extremely charming and skilful, disarming and trapping those with normal empathy into a cycle of dependency and making it incredibly hard to leave.

Our intuition will always tell us when something is off - it’s that feeling of unease right in our core - but the difficult part is acting on it when we love someone. We might fear losing them, even though we know something is seriously wrong. We might have lost confidence in our own judgement; and we often fail to see our own worth.

It’s a harsh lesson, but anything we can lose simply by holding onto our own standards is worthless anyway.

To put it more simply, if something – or someone - makes you feel uneasy, or like you're losing yourself, listen to your intuition. Because it’s rarely wrong.

Don’t be that dead fish.