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In Step Three, we’re going to explore how to use boundaries in your most intimate relationships, drawing on your past experiences to help you learn. It’s worth noting that intimacy covers not just our sexual relationships but those we establish with friends and even with people we actively dislike.

We’ll look at making the most of the partner relationship you have at present, plus how to approach and survive a break up and how to look for new love in a confident and secure way. There will also be advice on your close friendships and some discussion on navigating relationships which seem more based on hate than love.

Exploring the Love Myth

There are few biological entities with the curious desire to team up once and for life: swans, prairie vole, French angelfish – and, of course, (most) humans. Apart from that desire, we don’t have much else in common as species. Certainly, it’s unlikely that voles invest as heavily in the concept of the One True Love as we humans do.

Because from the moment humans first start listening to bedtime stories – delivered from the mouths of those nearest (and sometimes dearest), we are imbued with messaging based heavily around the concept of the search for The One, regardless of the immediate role models we see. Think of fairytales like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, or films such as Shrek or the young penguins in Happy Feet. The messaging is often deliberately non-specific, yet carries with it the subliminal call that love is heterosexual, monogamous and status-linked.

In Disney’s Enchanted – a film that sent up those classic Disneyfied dreams of old – the heroine, Giselle, sings at the start of finding a true love’s kiss – and naturally of a prince she hopes comes with that. To find him, Giselle goes on a magical journey to New York, and learns en route that a prince who looks good on paper may not necessarily be the right match for her, once she has got to know him properly. The film ends up with Giselle finding a ‘prince’ but this one is a single dad, supports her professional ambitions to open a fashion company and doesn’t wear a doublet and hose.

But Disney can’t quite let go of the dream: Giselle’s perfect match is a male who is handsome and a corporate New York lawyer with a great flat. It seems even when pop culture chooses to acknowledge the reality of modern romance we cannot escape the idea that part of our whole purpose is finding a True Romanticised Heterosexual Love.

So where do boundaries come into this?

This love myth sets us all up to fail as couples because it encourages the idea of love with no boundaries, or with you and your loved one in a bubble behind a joint boundary. In reality, many of us feel like this in the first heady days of love or lust. We discover we like the same films, the same foods, share a sense of humour and are fascinated by each other’s words or thoughts. We mirror each other as our relationship develops in intensity.

However, we all know the moment inevitably arrives for the first disagreement. You might learn that the other does not enjoy a sport you do. They might confess they have never really shared your passion for Coldplay but wanted to see you happy. This can cause irritation, disillusionment, or may even cause you to break up.

If your relationship survives this flashpoint it is the moment when you could start to develop healthy boundaries which will make you sustainable as a couple in the long term. Rather than a difference of opinion or taste marking the end of a partnership, it can be a useful signal that your relationship is ready for some appraisal and healthy growth.

In some ways this is similar to a child realising that their parent is not perfect and indeed that they hold some different views. Ideally – in a good-enough parent-child relationship – the parent allows the flexible skin-like boundary to grow with their own view and tolerate being perceived as not perfect. That relationship grows with the child growing. For a parent, the child’s new perception of them as imperfect can feel like a rejection – after all, it’s nice to be regarded as perfect – and in a partner relationship, one half may feel equally snubbed. But actually it’s a healthy stage in the development of any relationship. The risk of not acknowledging this moment and the positive developments it brings is that each half of the relationship – suddenly disillusioned with the fall from grace – may retreat to their bunkers or build inflexible walls around themselves (not permeable boundaries) and survey each other warily from behind these barriers. In doing this, the couples both remain rooted in their own beliefs about the relationship and what is wrong with it.

By initially exploring where these barriers started to be built and what each partner needs to be able to come out from behind their own fortress, we begin the process of creating a new boundary around the relationship and what is necessary within that to help it to prosper.

We all get entrenched in our own beliefs about what is wrong with a relationship. This isn’t always about blaming the other; sometimes one will hold on to the blame, or feel they are at fault, when in fact the landscape of separateness has often been jointly created. So, one partner might be convinced they are the naturally ‘impatient’ one – perhaps having been told that. Then, if arguments develop about punctuality, they instinctively take the blame thereby letting the other off scot-free for being a poor timekeeper.

Now, we’re going to look at the way relationships and love develop from the earliest age. But first, remember Step One. (If you have not read Step One, you can download it here.) Think about your self-boundaries again, as these are not to be lost when it comes to entering and enjoying intimate relationships with others.

Draw the Line: a self-boundary is knowing how much to give to another while maintaining care for yourself.

LOVE AUDIT

This section is designed to help you to analyse your past behaviour and relationships so that you can look at your current situation with a considered view. We’re going to start with an exercise.

EXERCISE: The Cost of Love

Let’s look back at the stages of relationships which have got you to here – whether ‘here’ is single, dating, married, divorced, bereaved, in a happy or unhappy way. This exercise is going to require a little time and space to complete. We’d encourage you to set aside a moment when you can really think about the following questions, making notes of your answers in your Learning Journal. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, just your personal experiences.

Consider and make a note of each of the following:

• Have you ever considered how attached you feel to your original care-givers? We’re not looking here at a simple statement like, ‘Oh yes, I loved Mum and she loved me.’ It’s time to dig a bit deeper. So, think about what that love meant and how it was expressed. Do you recall being cuddled as a child? Did that physical affection stop when you reached a certain age or are your family still demonstrative in their love? If you can’t remember, what you know of your parents in later years may help you answer that question.

• Who was your first crush, pre-puberty? This could be the girl or boy next door or it might be the singer from a teen pop group.

• Let’s look at teen love: were you the object of a crush? Did you feel popular at school in general? Did you feel isolated? Would your friends have described you as attractive, clever, sporty, cute, or idolised you in any sense? Did you get Valentine’s Day cards (not from your sympathetic family)?

• Do you recall your first foray into real dating – and was it happy? Did you feel pressurised into behaviour you weren’t ready for? Were you happy to watch from the sidelines, comfortable in your own timeframe? Did you have a reputation – positive or negative? Were you struggling with your sexuality or sense of gender? Did you have a holiday romance? Did your parents know any of this?

• Who was your first serious love – and are you still with them? If not, were they the one that ‘got away’? Did you have a faithful relationship? Were you hurt or disappointed when it came to an end, or did you initiate the break up? And were you fair in your own behaviour (looking back honestly)?

• Have you ever checked up on them or anyone else since online? Have you thought of initiating contact? Are past loves casting a shadow over your present life as well as your love life?

• Would your friends describe you as happy in love overall, or unhappy?

• Where are you now with your sexuality? Are you confident? Unsure? Or experimenting?

• If single, are you looking for love, licking your wounds, or generally fearful?

• If in a couple, are you centred and secure, worried, or resentful?

Your answers to these questions will help you as we explore how to set down some boundaries in regard to your current or future relationships and how to draw some lines regarding the past, if necessary.

In the next sections we will help you to understand current and past relationships and examine how to stay in love and improve the existing relationship you have. We will also cover what happens when it is time to make an exit as comfortably as possible, if staying really doesn’t make any sense anymore, and in Looking for Love, we cover dating.

Lastly, we will look at how the same boundaries are applicable in those non-intimate relationships with your friends and peers.