Boundaries. Attachment styles. Relationships. Avoidance. All or nothing.
I don’t feel like writing about this, and honestly I don’t feel like working on it. I am comfortable with the way things are, for better or for worse. But boundaries and the way they affect relationships are something I definitely need to be honest with myself about if I want to progress as a human being.
Learning to live in the gray.
Basically, I am all too aware that the things I don’t want to work on are the things I most need to. As 2020 approaches, and I reflect back on the last year, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am semi full of shit. There is a gap between knowledge and wisdom that I am still trying to bridge, and while I give myself props for trying, I know that I can do better. I want to do better. It’s one thing to understand something, but it’s a whole different thing to really implement it into your life. And it takes longer than a week to do so.
Like a lot of us, I’m guilty of having an all or nothing mentality when it comes to most things. This is something I have been aware of for a couple of years now, and that I see weave its way into literally every area of my life.
And while I am aware that there are degrees to this whole all or nothing mentality (meaning the things I struggle with aren’t the end of the world), I also know that by being unsure of my boundaries, I face this inner resistance that sometimes feels unbearable. Because when I am unsure of my boundaries, I risk writing off the things that are most important to me.
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When I look back at the relationship in my life that impacted me the most, I can see myself holding on to something so tightly that wasn’t there. I guess I was holding on so firmly because I knew it wasn’t mine. And in a way I was validating my sense of self because I didn’t respect or value myself. So it made sense to stay in a relationship that hurt me because I thought it was what I deserved.
When that relationship ended, I started taking more responsibility for my feelings. Even if someone did me wrong, and I didn’t deserve to feel heart broken, I started realizing that I was the one who was responsible for the way I felt, no matter what. And that the way people treat me likely has more to do with them than me. Basically, I’m the only one capable of fixing how I feel. My happiness has to be intrinsic, or else it’s never going to matter.
What I mean by bringing this up, is that I let someone completely eradicate my boundaries. In fact, I wanted them to. But the key words here are I let them.
That’s when I started getting into attachment styles. They say that attachment styles stem from your relationship with your mother, and I honestly don’t know how much of that is true. This is a theory after all. I’m sure it holds some significance, but I also think that our past relationships tend to mold our attachment styles as well, and I think you can have different attachment styles within different relationships/friendships. I also think that your relationship to yourself is a big factor in how you attach to others.
They say there are four attachment styles, and that it is common to not fit perfectly into just one but rather show a combination. These four styles are:
Secure, Anxious Preoccupied, Dismissive Avoidant, and Fearful Avoidant.
If I think about this too much, it really irritates the shit out of me. I’m just not going to dive into it all, but if you’ve never considered your attachment style, I definitely recommend reading up on the theory and giving it a little thought.
My issue is that I highly relate to the fearful avoidant style. I want so badly to feel close to people, but for some reason I just have this huge wall up. An article from Psychology Today describes this attachment style as follows:
“They see their relationships from the working model that you need to go toward others to get your needs met, but if you get close to others, they will hurt you. In other words, the person they want to go to for safety is the same person they are frightened to be close to. As a result, they have no organized strategy for getting their needs met by others.”
It’s like I find myself wanting to get close to people who don’t feel the same because in reality I’m terrified of being close to anyone. Then when someone does want to get close, it feels too shallow. It’s fucked up.
It just sucks. When I find myself in relationships, I get this terrible walls-coming-in feeling that the person I’m with is using me as some form of motivation, and I know that sounds kinda conceited, but that isn’t what I mean. Like I look around and everyone just becomes their partner and I’m scared of that. I don’t want to lose myself in a relationship because I’ve been there. I’ve literally ruined all of my friendships for someone who didn’t even want me in the past. It’s just discouraging because I look around at every relationship around me, and I want none of it. I don’t want to feel the way I use to feel, and I don’t want to feel how I feel now and I’m confused. It’s like I value autonomy, but I’m insecure in my own.
Maybe it’s because I have been given things I don’t deserve and I’m aware of that.
Even so, I’ve noticed this trait I tend to carry where it seems that I make others feel closer to me than they actually are. I don’t get it. I can still see certain people’s faces when they’ve bared their heart to me, and yet I looked at them and although I cared about them so much, I felt nothing. Or I wasn’t willing to commit to what they were asking of me.
At the same time though, this is all fucked up because I know that I’m getting in my head about everything. Like I have these ideas in my head of how other people expect me to act, and it fuels this pressure that I can’t handle, so I just dismiss everyone and don’t let anyone hold an important place in my life.
I’m not good at setting boundaries. Whether I let them completely be dismissed, or I put up a fifty foot wall. It’s like there is no inbetween, and sometimes I feel like I don’t have control over any of it.
I run in circles though. I’ll write off relationships sometimes, while also having this deep desire to please others. It’s almost like I know if I put myself in situations with others, I’ll end up compromising on some value that is important to me. So I end up avoiding people. I just need to find a way to respect myself and what I want, while being around others.
Or maybe I’m just hanging out with the wrong people. Maybe social anxiety is driving me towards situations in which the wrong people exist. Places where unhealthy habits and a lack of values breed.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that in 2020 I need to work on both my relationships, and my boundaries within those relationships. I need to not expect anything from others, and I need to let go of the idea that they are expecting something from me. At the end of the day, the version of myself that someone has created in their head isn’t my problem. I don’t have to live up to someone else’s idea of me. I need to stop avoiding people because of this. If I set boundaries on who I am and who I want to be, then the right people will find their way into my life.
Geeze. This is a confusing blog post. Am I talking about boundaries, expectations or relationships? I’m literally just rolling from one to the other.
Thanks for listening. I didn’t really enjoy writing this, but I think it’s important to think about the sticky parts of your soul.