One of the most important characteristics we need to develop to attract someone for us is our ability to set healthy boundaries that keep our personal identity intact. Keeping our identity intact is a part of our wholeness. Wholeness is another word for healthy, whole, complete and unbroken. It doesn’t mean we are perfect, but we have enough stability and sobriety resulting in the clarity needed to make decisions that lead to health and wholeness for ourselves. Setting healthy boundaries while dating helps to provide greater safety and security along with the closeness we desire while getting to know others.
Setting healthy boundaries extends to our emotional stability as well. When we’ve embraced proper boundaries, we value ourselves and protect ourselves, and require others to do the same. The person who respects our boundaries and values us as much as we have shown that we value ourselves will be someone that we may want to consider keeping around.
An Expert Had the Below to Say
Stephanie Camins of Roadtogrowthcounseling.com shares some important things about boundaries in her article, “Setting Emotional Boundaries in Relationships.”
“Setting good personal boundaries is critical to creating healthy relationships, increasing self-esteem, and reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. Boundaries protect your personal self by setting a clear line between what is me and what is not me. A lack of boundaries opens the door for others to determine your thoughts, feelings, and needs. Defining boundaries is a process of determining what behavior you will accept from others and what you will not.”
I would encourage you to follow the link and read the entire article as it shares some basic boundaries that everyone has. I love that she bought out the fact that those without boundaries open the door for others to determine thoughts, feelings, and needs instead of requiring your own thoughts feelings, and needs and getting those. Could this be why some of us may be disappointed in our dating because we aren’t setting clear boundaries for ourselves before we get into a dating relationship or any relationship for that matter?
Many women have been socialized into thinking that passivity and conformity in relationships is the only option for women, but this outlook can easily cause us to lose ourselves in dating and cause us to avoid practicing the proper discernment to qualify the right man for us. Each of us has a right to qualify someone who will genuinely care for who we are at the core. Therefore, we have to maintain who we are at the core by setting the proper boundaries to protect who we are.
Boundaries Protect Our Values
Boundaries protect our values. Our values are the core beliefs that make us who we are. If I value rest; I will set a boundary to go to bed at an appropriate time to maintain my rest and energetic attitude. If I value getting my hair done; I will set a boundary to allocate money within my budget to be able to get my hair done. If I value intimacy with God; I will schedule my dates or phone time around my intimate time with God and not in place of. If I value the clarity that comes with not being physically involved too soon; I will communicate that at the proper time to my partner and it should be respected and acted upon accordingly.
Someone only interested in pushing or removing your boundaries may be selfish and may not genuinely care about you at all. Remember what the Bible says about love: Love is not self-seeking (1 Cor 13:5.) They may only care about transforming you into the image of what they want in their mind. We need to be honest with ourselves when we are dating someone who doesn’t match our values and thus doesn’t respect our boundaries that protect our values.
It’s okay to pass on them so that our identities and self-worth can remain intact. We should never degrade or devalue ourselves to be in a relationship with someone. I ask the question in my book, The Wholeness Action Plan: Do we love ourselves the way that we expect someone else to love us? Receiving the right love in our lives first starts with our decision to love ourselves. Meditate on the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 and ask yourself if you love yourself in each of the ways mentioned. If not get to work on loving you.
Once Your Healthy Boundaries are Set You’ll Need to Stick to Them:
Once our boundaries are set; we need to stick to them. If we do not stick to our boundaries that we set; we will confuse those seeking to be in a relationship with us. I shared a story in my book: Patterns of the Heart: Discernment in Choosing a Potential Spouse of a couple named Tavia and Terrell. They both had different values but continued to date. After Terrell attempted to change Tavia’s boundaries of saving sexual intimacy for later. The couple split up. The truth was they could not continue in the relationship unless one person yielded their boundaries to the other, but because the boundary that Tavia had had a specific goal to honor her relationship with God she could not continue in the relationship and still be herself. She would have had to become someone else that she was not willing to be.
The same was true of Terrell who had a personal value to please himself in the relationship without considering God. He would have had to become someone he was not also to continue with Tavia. If we want to be loved for who we genuinely are we have to genuinely be ourselves. Terrell met someone with the same values as him and now he is married. Likewise, Tavia in the book met someone with similar values as her. Because the values matched; the boundaries were respected and a healthy bond grew. This is what I want and this is why I’ve committed to myself to be myself maintaining the boundaries that allow me to do so.
Amos 3:3 – How can two walk together except they are agreed.
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