You aren’t alone if you struggle to set boundaries in your relationship. Even when it comes to other types of relationships, like friendship, they aren’t easy to establish — especially if these boundaries weren’t set in the past.

The problem with boundaries is that we often assume that it’s about telling our partners what they can and can’t do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Boundaries are about us, what we can and cannot do.

When your partner is accustomed to you thinking, feeling, and acting in certain ways, new boundaries can be unsettling. They mark a turning point in a relationship. Establishing boundaries will help strengthen your relationship, but knowing how to do this is a completely different story.

How to Establish Boundaries In Your Relationship

Be Emotionally Honest

Emotional honesty is a core foundational skill that every relationship needs. Consider the times when you were going along with something that made you uncomfortable. Consider the interactions that make you feel anxious rather than peaceful or powerful.

Writing them down as you think about them might help. It is helpful to think about boundaries as the opposite of self-abandonment. They are rooted in self-respect. For example, you might let your partner know that you can’t cook dinner certain days of the week because you are overwhelmed. You might also let them know you can’t get the kids ready for school every day of the week. These are just examples.

Beginning with emotional honesty is a great first step to setting healthy boundaries. You aren’t doing anyone any favors by over extending yourself and then feeling resentful in the end.

Be Respectful

One component of setting healthy boundaries is being respectful toward your partner. When you are talking about important boundaries, remember to always show respect. Setting boundaries will only do you good if you follow this tip. Self-respect plus respectful communication.

It’s not uncommon for couples to approach the topic of boundaries with anger. They become frustrated when they think about how their wants and needs are unmet, and when the conversation pops up, it often begins more intensely than they’d like. Anger, in fact, is a signal that boundaries have been violated. It’s important to honor the emotion—and to honor your own boundaries without obliterating someone else’s.

Remember that if you haven’t verbally broached a specific topic, there could be a reaction from your partner. Even if you are respectful. In fact, if the boundary is enough of a change, you can count on their being a reaction from your partner. We call it the “change back” reaction. It is a pressure to not set your boundary and for things not to change. Expect this reaction. Be ready for it. If you can stick to your boundary without getting into criticism or emotional debate, your partner will most likely come to respect you and the new boundary.

Listen To Your Partner

Boundaries are not a one-way street. While your boundaries are important, so are your partner’s boundaries. Make sure that you consider your partner and their needs and wants.

Remember, Communication Isn’t Always Easy

Communication is a skill that takes time. Even if you have been together for a long time, there will be times when communication could be improved. There will be moments when you become reactive with each other or frustrated. This is normal. What’s important is revisiting the conversation when you are both calmer.

When learning to set boundaries with each other, understand that this is a process. Like everything else in life, it isn’t always going to run smoothly. However, when you both put in the effort, it will go a long way.

Consider Body Language and Tone

Yes, we verbalize our boundaries by expressing them out loud. The tone of your voice and body language also speaks volumes. Work towards observing yourself—and your spouse. Notice yourself. Notice them. Talk about the process. When couples talk about the process they are more successful at resolving problems.

For example, you can notice out loud that your voice is rising. You can say, “Oof, I’m noticing my tone of voice. I’m going to take a minute.” Or you can say, “Lord, I just realized I pointed my finger at you. Let me slow down here. What I mean to be communicating right now is…”

Your words may say one thing, but don’t discount the power of how you say them or what you do while you talk. Sometimes, it’s just as simple as rewording your phrases to come across differently or trying to relax in your seat.

Try Counseling

It’s common for a couple to become stuck in old cycles of not being emotionally honest, self-respectful or just plain respectful in their communication. If your relationship is struggling, you don’t need to stay stuck. Reach out to learn more about intensive couples therapy and how it can help strengthen your relationship.

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Find Balance With Systems Theory

An approach to couples counseling that is based in systems theory is primarily focused on the balance between emotion and thinking. The focus is on what people think with coaching and guidance on the difference between one’s emotions and one’s thoughts. The goal is to develop a more solid sense of self and a more mature self through developing a broader perspective of one’s marriage and one’s place in it and in the larger emotional “system” in which one lives. The emphasis is on what happens between people, and less so what happens between one’s ears, a place that systems therapists understand people can get lost in for entire life spans. A systems therapist in couples counseling will look at emotional patterns of interaction and helps people to see their part in the patterns and then to learn to interact in more mature ways.

An attachment based approach is going to be primarily focused on the expression of feelings. Attachment theory teaches that problems in marriage occur because of problems with one’s original attachment to one’s parents. The idea in the therapy is that if couples can express their feelings to their spouses and be heard and validated, that the attachment issues with one’s parents will be resolved, more or less, with the spouse becoming the new safe relationship from which a person can blossom and grow. Common interventions include the teaching of various communication techniques, the encouragement towards dates nights, more sex, more vulnerability, compromise, and so forth.

Here are a few excerpts from different segments of the webinar:

Kelly: “We are feeling creatures that think.”

Miriam: “You get to a point where, and so many people are frustrated with this, where you’ve expressed all the feelings, and it hasn’t changed anything.”

Kelly: “I think it’s so important to understand the context of human partnership with BOTH of those things…both feelings AND cognition. That I think is the biggest draw to systems therapy and the biggest help to couples.”

Tune in below and let us know what you think! And if you’d like more information about couples counseling from a systems perspective, please feel free to contact Kelly or me. Our contact info is just below.

Kelly Matthews, LCSW: matthewslcsw@comcast.net; 847-691-5347

Miriam Bellamy, LMFT: mrbellamy924@gmail.com; 404-932-9320; More on Marriage Counseling HERE

Feel free to contact me or learn more about intensive couples therapy!

The post Webinar: Couples Counseling appeared first on Miriam Bellamy.

Six years later, sitting in my office, they were feeling terrible. They weren’t fighting anymore, but they both felt like the spark had gone out. They were wondering how it was they still didn’t feel connected, and they thought something must be terribly wrong with them. When I suggested that they might stop all of this trying to get connected—that perhaps their experience was trying to tell them something—they thought I meant that they should give up and get a divorce. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Perhaps We Are Missing Something

After 21 years as a marriage counselor, and after 18 years as a married person, I am clear that the solutions to marital discord have very little to do with the monumental efforts people are making to reconnect. It’s certainly not for a lack of trying and definitely not a lack of character, intent, or intelligence. So, what the heck is going on?

Behind closed doors, therapists tend to conclude that their clients just aren’t getting it…that they were too far gone or waited too long to start marriage counseling. They theorize that people’s attachment styles are just incompatible or that they are too damaged to be able to achieve a healthy marriage. And then they start diagnosing and even encouraging spouses to diagnose one another.

But maybe something else is going on. Perhaps we can start to consider that maybe the ‘diagnosis’ as “lack-of-connection” or even “lack-of-a-healthy-connection” is missing the mark. Perhaps it is time to consider the possibility that instead of a lack of connection or of having the “wrong kind of connection”, humans evolved to be highly connected to and concerned with each other, and that we now tend to suffer under this intense connectivity…period. No bad guys. No need to diagnose spouse with Asperger’s or NPD or “gas lighting” or an attachment disorder. Just a normal and natural process that we inflame with how we address it.

When we narrowly focus on connection with spouse (or with any family member), our ability, in the moment, to be open and relaxed diminishes and so do the good feelings we are longing for.  If this is the case, then we must consider the possibility that taking steps to reconnect, as is prescribed in conventional marriage counseling, makes things worse either in the short or the long term. Perhaps we just need a different direction—a calm response to a normal, natural, human problem.

A Tension We Can Work With

While we evolved to be highly connected with each other, we simultaneously have a kind of allergy to it. As much as we need to be together, we also need to be independent in order to function well in life. Perhaps the constant tension between these two instinctive human drives is the problem. For example, Mark wants more sex than Jamie, and he doesn’t do well emotionally without it. Jamie reacts to his pressure with a kind of automatic shutting down, and her own sexuality becomes the last thing she will be interested in. He is pushing for togetherness and she is avoiding it—which just seems to increase the togetherness tension rather than diminish it. This kind of emotional reactivity is a kind of glue that sticks us together in rigid positions. Like a centripetal force that sucks us in, unable to step away, to relax, or to open up.

Addressing this tension tends to move people towards resolution—towards settling down, relaxing, and creating the open space required for mature intimacy. Addressing this tension has something to do with the practice of maintaining an independent self that avoids mentally or emotionally:

• Pushing
• Shoving
• Cajoling
• Convincing
• Begging or
• Avoiding

These are all related to togetherness at the cost of the individuality of both people. Addressing this tension also avoids:

• Martyrdom
• Self-righteousness
• Ultimatums

All of which are more togetherness at the cost of individuality.

In dealing with this tension between individuality and togetherness there is a moving towards—not a moving towards spouse—we are already narrowly focused on, concerned with, and highly reactive to spouse. Rather, it is a moving towards one self. Moving towards one self is characterized by:

• Persistent, quiet, humble moving towards a deeper knowing of self—of one’s internal world but also of how one impacts others—minus blame
• A broader view of human relationships
• A focus on process rather than getting stuck in content.

This moving towards self slowly opens things up by relaxing the tension between togetherness and individuality. It’s almost like we have to get out of the way of connectedness, give it some breathing room, for it to find its sweet spot.

Moving Towards Defining a Self

Here are a few ideas to consider as you deepen your journey towards defining a clear self in relation to important others.

• Consider your brain. We are only just beginning to understand how central the brain is to our mental, emotional, physical, and relational well-being. With the discovery in the late 1960’s of neurofeedback, we now have a safe and effective way to deal with sub-optimal brain function. To not seriously consider this as an option for any client seeking either individual or marital counseling seems a tragedy. We offer professional grade neurofeedback in our offices and via home rentals. If you have tried many other routes to get your relationships on track, it might be time to consider this very powerful bio-hack.
• Consider your family. Besides neurofeedback, in my 21 years as a marriage counselor, I have seen nothing more effective than learning to think about family differently. By the way, I am quite aware that most folks don’t go here. We want to leave our families behind. That was then. This is now. But I had a client recently describe it this way. If you have a room in your house where you stuff all your junk or extras or unopened boxes from your last move…and you close the door to this stuffed-to-the-gills room…just because you’ve closed the door and don’t see all the stuff in there, doesn’t mean it’s not weighing you down.
• Consider thinking outside the box. Outside the box thinking, to me, means non-linear thinking—also knowns as systemic or ecological thinking. In so much of what I read online and on the bookshelf about relationships, I find linear thinking. If you take these 3 steps or have these 8 dates, you will be on your way to getting the love you want. Ugh! Non-linear thinking means thinking in terms of process. It means beginning to understand that there are automatic emotional processes that are much bigger than we mere mortals. It means understanding that the river of life is much bigger and deeper and faster than we are. It means resolving relationship issues has something to do with accepting this and learning to ride the waves rather than trying to swim against them.

Blocks to Moving Towards Defining Self

There are many of course. Here are a few that can be rather resistant to change:

• Martyrdom—Have you ever heard or said this one: “I’m doing MY work. He or she isn’t doing theirs. Or “I don’t want to be the ONLY one who is doing their work. It’s YOUR turn!&!@!# As true as it MAY be, this stance will get you deeper and deeper into togetherness and further from your own independence and freedom and availability for calm, open connecting.
• Isolation—The fewer outside connections we have with friends and family, the more intense we seem to focus on spouse and kids.
• Brain processes—If you are someone who is dealing with anxiety, PTSD or CPTSD, insomnia or poor sleep quality, brain fog, focus, or memory, then you might consider your brain is part of what’s getting in the way of new thinking on old problems.

Steps to Reconnect?

The very steps to reconnect we are told will work, may tragically work to do the very opposite of what we want. We are already highly connected, and Pulitzer prize winning science and current research are demonstrating this more and more, not as theory, but as fact. And I think the last thing we need is conventional theory inadvertently, yet negatively diagnosing us or our relationships when things feel bad. Life is hard. Relationships are harder. But we make them unworkable when we diagnose them and then try to “fix” them. Instead we can consider our own part in the natural processes inherent in our relationships and in evolution itself. It’s a fine balance between togetherness and independence. Consider the following questions to help facilitate your process:

• What steps can you take to reconnect with self in kindness?
• Where does your own humility come into your relationship?
• How grounded can you be in your own realistic view of self when in a challenging moment with spouse or offspring?
• Do you have a realistic view of self?
• How much self-control do you have in one of those stressful relationship moments?
• Where does your own self-awareness come into the relationship?
• What about radical personal responsibility?

We have more options than perhaps we know. And perhaps, our relationships are less “sick” or “broken” than we fear.

Feel free to contact me or learn more about intensive couples therapy!

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