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Love Limits

We’re going to ask you to start by helping you analyse your current relationship, with a visualisation.^{(Listen to this exercise here)}

Take a moment and close your eyes. Inhale a few deep breaths and settle yourself.

Picture yourself at a time when you were in your first grown-up sexual relationship.

Now place yourself in a room you feel comfortable in. And bring in your past loved one.

Start picturing what boundary lies between you – is it opaque or translucent, small or large, made of recognisable material and who has control of the boundary? Is ownership of the boundary shared or singular and does that change according to time or events or needs (such as one of you suffering a bereavement and feeling vulnerable)? Is the boundary visible to others? Would the boundary look the same from either side? Or is the boundary around the two of you excluding all others (as if you are in a bubble, which is not uncommon with a first love – the intensity can be all-consuming)?

Looking back, does the situation seem happy and comfortable? Could you be looking through rose-tinted glasses or when you now recall the relationship does it make you shudder?

Come back out of your picture and write/draw all of that in your Learning Journal.

Now, let’s remind ourselves what a healthy boundary is; you may remember we compared it to the natural layers of skin – dense enough to protect and contain us, but flexible to allow for necessary movement. Do you think that is true of the boundary that you have drawn for this past relationship?

‘You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arm too full to embrace the present.’

JAN GLIDEWELL

Some people may have been able to move on from first loves with ease and a natural sense of progress, be that experience good, bad, or indifferent. Others may find the first love sets a tone or standard they struggle to replicate. You may not realise how common it is to carry the baggage of even a good relationship into the next.