#boundary-led thinking
If my partner is in the next room over and hasn’t spoken to me in 15 minutes, I can easily convince myself that it’s not just because he’s reading but because the last thing I said to him was wrong somehow, and he’s stewing and ready to scream at me any second now about how awful I am. This belief, though, is wrong. He doesn’t get upset about infinitesimal things, and when he is upset, that isn’t how he handles it. He’s not my father.
It absolutely makes sense for me to process information this way — in many situations I’ve been in, that instinct would have been correct, and helped me stay safe. But it isn’t correct anymore, and it would be unhealthy — and unfair — to act as if it were. I’m not wrong for feeling the way I do, but if I forced my partner to treat my feelings as reality — if I called him five times a day while he was at work to have him reassure me he wasn’t mad at me, if I forbade him from ever taking time to himself without reminding me it wasn’t about me, or ever being outwardly upset about things like having a bad day at work because it makes me anxious — that would be a terrible relationship for him to be in. I’m not wrong for feeling how I do, but it’s on me to make a plan for how to cope with it: to remind myself to look at the evidence and ask whether there’s any suggestion that I’m actually about to be harmed, to develop my own coping strategies, to be self-aware of my own history and the way I map it onto my present. I can certainly ask my partner for support in this, or to make some concessions to my history that he agrees are both fair and healthy for him, but I can’t ask him to bend over backwards for me because I’m not willing to do the work at all. We can’t justify harmful things we do to others by pointing to the ways they’re related to how we ourselves were harmed — a reason isn’t a justification.
Rachel at Autostraddle (in an agony aunt column that’s actually about biphobia, but took this excellent turn into Why You Don’t Have To Grovel To People’s Neuroses)
Hard truth that I’ve had to confront that I’m honestly not proud of:
Constantly voicing your abandonment issues lead to more people abandoning you.
I do not mean in Serious Conversations about what you need in a relationship or anything like that - I mean when your friend plays a video game with a different friend for a few days and you feel like your world is crumbling, that is not the time to talk about them.
I understand the fear that someone will decide they are done with you. I live that fear every single day, but here’s the rub.
If you tell people “you’ll probably leave me anyway” or similar things every time you feel that fear, people will leave you.
Not because they don’t want to be your friend, your partner, your roommate, whatever. Not because you aren’t deserving of friends (you are), but because it is exhausting to be constantly told by someone you like/love to go away.
Because that is how it feels on the other end. I don’t say this to make it worse, or to make you feel like you’re at fault. Your brain is hurting you, and it’s okay to feel things. But if you find that it’s hard to keep people around you, then you need to hear that outside of things like conversations about boundaries and triggers and such, it would be to your benefit to change your language.
Instead of telling people “you probably don’t like me”, try asking. “You like me? It’s much easier for them to reassure you when you don’t start with a negative, because it puts your brain in a different mindset, one that finds it easier to believe their response.
Sit with your issues. Parent them. And when they’re done screaming, hold their little hands and dry their little faces and try to remember that you are worth being loved. I won’t say it’s easy, because it’s really fucking not. I won’t say you’ll get it the first time, or that you’ll never fuck up. I still do. But you deserve friends and partners and love, it’s just that so do they.
Another thing about this is that you are waving a red flag.
Because here’s the thing.
When your friend plays a video game with a different friend for a few days, and you talk about how that hurt you? You’ve just created a situation where you’ve placed the onus of your emotions on your friend, who did nothing wrong. Now your friend has to worry about what other perfectly reasonable activities are going to get them accused of hurting you, which is what you were doing whether you meant to or not.
And here’s the other thing.
When you tell someone “everyone always leaves me”, they wonder why. And it’s very possible that they’ve dealt with someone who complained about this, then proceeded to demonstrate why. There is a particular kind of social parasite that will completely use up their friend group, then move on to new friends while shit-talking how they were treated by the last friend group.
If you’re always reassuring your friend that you love then and do not in fact secretly hate them, it can get tedious and feel like they don’t believe you when you tell them that.
That doesn’t mean they don’t need reassurance and support! Those feelings are real, and can be difficult to manage.
But if you are the one feeling those things, it’s important to interrogate them. As in, it may FEEL like someone is abandoning you, and those feelings are very real and color your perception. But that doesn’t mean they’re reality!
If they’re a long time friend you probably have some evidence that they care about you. A time when theyve said or done something to express that. Try to remember those when you’re feeling that way and take a step back to evaluate.
You can write them down. And if you don’t have many, look for opportunities to give them first. Say something nice about your friend, tell them you enjoy their company etc. They’ll feel more inclined to be do the same.
Work on retraining that internal (and external) monologue.
It’s difficult, anxiety is a bitch. But you’re going to have better results if you put your effort into being the kind of person your friends want to be around than if you focus on worrying that they’re going to leave you.
And I’m not saying you have to change everything about you or pretend to be something youre not. But ultimately you’re the one who gets to decide what kind of person you are, and you can golden rule this. Treat people the way you wanna be treated yknow. If you like getting compliments, be the kind of person that gives compliments etc
Learn to articulate how you’re feeling without accusing anyone of having bad intentions. You can say “I’m afraid of being alone” without saying “you’re just going to leave me like everyone else.” You can say “I need some reassurance” without saying “you probably don’t love me anymore.” You can say “I’m afraid I’ve hurt your feelings and I’d like to talk it through” without saying “you don’t even like me anymore.” You can say “I want to spend more time with you” without saying “you’ve gotten tired of me.” You can say “I feel misunderstood” without saying “you always judge me.” Try not to let your emotions get the best of you. Have a conversation focused on finding solutions instead of escalating the conflict.
