Boundaries

In my youth, I didn’t know what a boundary was outside of classroom expectation and even those were a challenge for me.  Excuse me, can someone explain what it means to be quiet again?  But there’s a person so close to me and I want to talk to them!! Hello person! What do you mean I can’t talk to the person next to me?  What if I just whisper one little something… 

At that point in time, I found little need to define boundaries and only exerted them when aiming to please or experiencing unkindness.

I began to understand boundaries differently once interacting on a deeper level in my teenage years within friendships and soon after, coupling. There are unspoken rules for interacting that when not observed, could push the envelope of comfort or lead to creating layers of complication for many people.  We may come to defining these things with time and interaction, if we don’t understand them to be necessary at first.  We find out based on our emotions and the emotions of our loved ones what will work in any given circumstance.

These days, I am coming to the topic after a time period of having a gigantic wall around myself.  I was only letting boundaries down when interacting with a long standing  friend or easily approachable female.  Luckily, I have arrived at a place of perceiving boundaries as flexible and not necessarily gender specific.

People can have set boundaries in place for differing reasons and it is important to respect these. Understanding and respecting boundaries is a mark of empathic socialization.  If you feel a boundary, it doesn’t have to be taken personally but should be observed for the need of another human expressed.