When someone comes into your life and you start to love them, the words that they say start to matter. Their words start to mean something to you. I care about what the people I love think, I'm not sure when it happens but it does. So, what happens if that person that you love, doesn't love you the same way and is hurtful? The words they tell you may not be true, they may be mean, harsh, rude - but because you love them and care about what they are saying, you listen to them. You can't help but care about their opinion.
I loved my ex-husband. I cared about what he thought about me. I took the words he said to heart. I tried to adjust myself based on what he said. I likely did this as a child with my parents as well. I want the people that I love in my life to love me back. And maybe that meant at the time, changing myself into someone that they could love. I don't think I knew who I was enough to try and find someone who loved me for me, because I didn't even know who I was.
I found a series of questions I asked myself back in April of 2023. At this time, I had been separated from my husband for about a year, and our divorce had been final a few months ago. In that year, I started to discover who I was on my own, without the input of others telling me who I was.
I asked myself questions like: What do you tell yourself about your self-worth? Where does your value come from? How do I define myself? What are you passionate about? What brings you joy? What kind of person do you want to be? How have I grown?
There was and is so much about myself that I didn't and don't know. How could I know myself when I was looking to other people to tell me who I was. Part of me wants to ask myself, am I still doing that?
I think about my younger self and feel so sad that she never felt like she was encouraged to be herself. She felt like she had to show up a certain way and hide her personality so that others would like her. When I now believe that if you show up as yourself, more people will like you, and you will like yourself more too. When I am not afraid of showing my personality, I am saying that I get to allow myself to show up authentically because I know who my authentic self is. But it was so hard to do that when I didn't know who I was, and if I showed a glimpse of that, it would be criticized.
All of this, in relation to my relationship with my ex-husband, I found myself asking "Am I ready to close the door with him?" After our divorce, he wanted to get back together and try to work on things, which my gut told me no. My gut told me that I had already waited long enough and it was too late. But for some reason I had a really hard time telling him no and setting boundaries. Not that I had ever been good at setting boundaries.
But on May 17th, 2023, I asked myself "Am I ready to close the door with him? - Ultimately yes"
I had felt a lot of peace ever since he left and despite praying and praying for my marriage to be healed, we still got divorced. I waited for several months before deciding that I needed to move on with my life for my own sake. Living in the limbo of being between separation, divorced, and being free was stressful and exhausting. I journaled that I felt uneasy when thinking about re-entering a relationship with him and about talking to his family again. I wrote "I don't want that. He makes me feel crazy and bad"
I also asked myself "How do I start to set boundaries? What do I want my future to look like?"
From the book "When loving him is hurting you" by David Hawkins (which I loved this book and would highly recommend) he talks about how God created boundaries, God created order. Boundaries are markers, indicating the space where I end and where you begin. Boundaries are what separates you from me. I wrote a note down that says "stop reacting and think about what you want protected from others." Another note I wrote out was "boundaries help us determine our property so that we can take care of it."
How much of my time am I spending trying to take care of property that is not mine? What sort of things am I not protecting? At the time, I created new boundaries by limiting communication with my ex, and when he was not able to respect those, all ties were ultimately cut with him. Today though, I have new boundaries to set. I need to re-determine what is of value in my life and what boundaries need to be in place in order to protect those things I value. I need to know and believe that I am valuable and I am worth protecting.
Everyone has the right to be treated with respect and kindness, everyone has the right to protect what they value. Although we all have that right, I am not able to control others. So, when someone crosses one of my boundaries that they are aware of, I am learning that they are not a safe person to be around.
Once I know what I want to protect about my own life, the boundaries that I create can help protect these things that I have found to be important. But if I don't know what is important, then how do I know what I am protecting. A lot of what I have learned, and continue learning, is that my value should not be placed in the hands of others. My value as a human comes from the fact that I am a living human, created in the image of God. I have found that knowing what I value, sharing what I value with others, allows for myself to be respected more by those that care about me. In doing this, there is a lot of internal work to learn and somethings to unlearn.
The action steps that helped me included:
Acknowledge your own life and your own right to manage that life
Recognize when someone tries to manipulate and control you - watch for red flags
Express your vales, teach them how you want to be treated (If you aren't going to, who is?)
Confront and set boundaries
Follow through, don't allow boundaries to be crossed without consequences
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