Embodied Authenticity, Boundaries and Trust in Dating and Relationships for lasting love

Authenticity, Boundaries and Trust in Dating and Relationships:

A lot of times folks avoid vulnerability and don't risk opening up about their concerns, fears and needs, because they don't have the resources to handle uncertainty, conflict or the possibility of being misunderstood or rejected or disappointed.

These inner resources grow through support, such as therapists and coaches, loving supportive community, other healthy familial and/or platonic connections, romantic ones too, consistent practice in setting and sustaining boundaries, as well as healing and contemplative practices that help build our emotional reserves and equanimity.

Get practice saying "no" with folks who accept you as you are and encourage your self-assertion. Your coach, therapist, and as an additional support, even an emotionally skilled friend you trust can help practice boundary setting with you by pushing back a bit, then you may practice sticking with your boundary and repeating it firmly and clearly.

Allow them to push back a little more, letting them know when you start to feel overwhelmed, so you stop before your internal threat system is activated. As they offer you acceptance and respect for that boundary setting, your body will slowly learn that boundary setting can be safe and healthy.

Practice in low-stakes situations too, like telling a good friend something small you'd like them to do differently (like maybe playing music at a lower volume when you're around, if that's something you need to feel safe and well, for instance).

The other thing to remember is the best we can do for ourselves and to build healthy trust is be authentic about our concerns, needs, values and boundaries, and to insist on these being, at least, as important as those of partners/loved ones etc.

They may be more important in crisis situations, and they may be more imperiled if you're multiply marginalized, and so may require more attentiveness and prioritizing by partners, because oppressive systems will make that challenging for you to begin with.

And as I have said before, we cannot control others but we can be intentional about our responses and manage our own reactivity with more compassion and awareness.

We also can't always predict other peoples' responses or reactions, unless in specific situations where there is a clear existing pattern or your intuition is very active around the issue/individual. Check notes below on intuition vs. anxiety.

The key here isn't to put our energy into predicting people's actions, where we inevitably tend to assume the worst and make it even harder for us to set boundaries or to set boundaries clearly from a place of equanimity or even neutrality/curiosity rather than hypervigilance.

Of course if a person has a pattern of harmful behaviour, it would be perfectly reasonable to be concerned and also to seek support when you need to set boundaries, as it may be expressly unsafe to do it without professional guidance and personal support (in the form of friends, professionals, or a care team).

More generally, there are times when people we expect to respond poorly to our boundaries will respond rather well. Make a deliberate practice of making room for this possibility.

The earlier we have information i.e. how people respond to our boundaries, the more we can set boundaries and standards in a timely and effective way.

Another big part of the self-trust piece is keeping other people's responses and reactions seperate from our sense of worthiness or belonging. This barrier between, as Anne Katherine puts it, us, or where we end and they begin, can help us return focus to honouring and sticking to our boundaries, needs and values.

It does so by ensuring we don't internalize people's lack of responsiveness to our clearly communicated needs and boundaries as as a sign of our being somehow defective or unworthy of respect and care.

When we believe in our own worthiness and trust that we can take care of ourselves if disappointed or rejected (not the same as unsafety), we are more open to release the strained/bracing energy of hypervigilance (or even functional freeze where we feel anxious and frozen- a helpful tip can be noticing where you sense this tension in your body and releasing it through movement like loosening your jaw or relaxing your shoulders) and kindly, firmly state what we need, what is acceptable/unacceptable and so forth.

In this way we make our own healing and well being our focus instead of over-focusing on other people's reactions and choices.

So the best way to build trust is to build your capacity for self-trust in the following ways:

1) Attuning to your body consistently and listening to its messages, such as not tuning out red flags/yellow flags and actively savouring green flags (trust isn't just about avoiding harm but also INVITING and savouring goodness) is key.

2) Learn the skills to clearly and kindly state what you need, value and desire, as well as what is not okay with you. (I do a lot of this work with clients).

3) Increase your tolerance for uncertainty. A quick tip is going into boundary setting *expecting* some level of uncertainty or discomfort and knowing it is a natural part of human relationships and interactions when vulnerability is involved.

Also remind yourself uncertainty or not knowing how someone will respond isn't the same thing as unsafety even when the primitive parts of our nervous system can interpret them as such.

A key step, to reiterate from above, is increasing our tolerance for discomfort and conflict bit by bit.

Conflict isn't by itself unsafe.

It becomes unsafe when people are belligerent, repeatedly defensive (may include things like sarcasm and put downs), blaming/critical and stonewalling, crossing boundaries by imposing their own lens/interpretation on your behaviour, your past or trauma, controlling your behaviour and being.

I am stating some examples of unsafe conflict to demonstrate that not ALL instances of disagreement or conflict are harmful, but some clearly are and it helps to know what that looks like, so we don't tolerate it.

Conflict can also look like disagreements that clear the air, robust honest conversation that gets folks to be transparent about their needs and agendas, creating choice points for renegotiation or meeting one another mid way via problem solving and mutual understanding.

Conflict hasn't always been safe for most of us, so our bodies interpret conflict/disagreement as inherently unsafe.

As folks working to heal and develop safer, more loving connections with our bodies and selves, it can help expand our capacities and skills to know what healthy conflict is and isn't, and very importantly, remember that it's a natural part of human relationships. Even our non human friends butt-heads and make peace all the time.

Remember, conflict is not catastrophe and there are many productive, loving ways we can learn to be in conflict and many productive, helpful outcomes to conflicts.

Helping our bodies heal and create new neural pathways around conflict begins in standing up to trusted friends/coaches/therapists and getting in practice with pushing back, being assertive and saying no or even YES.

With rejection, it helps to remember like folks can't control us, we can't control them, and rejection means another person setting a boundary and revoking consent to be with us or no longer move in ways they may have in the past.

This is not a reflection on our worthiness as human beings.

In dating, it often means they've picked up on an incompatibility and are clearing the path for more aligned folks to enter or making room for us to expand our relational skills.

Also remember a boundary that leads to rejection or disappointment is a boundary that leads to connection and belonging in more aligned ways OR with more aligned people and can help us come more into alignment with our own needs and values.

4) Expand your toolkit of soothing, grounding practices you can use to feel safer in your body and more connected to it, so you feel held by it when you are being vulnerable about your needs and values (also boundaries)

Practice these forms of soothing and grounding (self-compassion exercises, walking meditation, grounding through the feet and spine, ujjayi breathing etc.) in chill/relaxed times and gradually incorporate these in low stakes arguments/conflicts and slowly expand your tolerance to stress/uncertainty.

5) A huge part of learning to trust is evaluating folks to see if they are transparent about their motivation and goals, act from integrity (ethical words align with ethical action), align with us as opposed to forming alliances against us (Gottmans name this metric "alliance"), and prioritize our well being and attune to us compassionately.

In order to have a healthy relationship with trust and the people in our lives, we also learn to be transparent about our motivations and goals, act with integrity, prioritize our needs and not compromise them or get them met at our partners' expense and learn how to attune to dates/partners' in small and big ways daily (turning towards, listening nondefensively, tolerating difference, being empathetic or compassionate as i put it).

I hope this post has been helpful in illuminating how we can trust ourselves and develop more ease and healthy trust in our dating and relationships.

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P.S. One way you distinguish intuition from anxiety is by noticing if this intuitive voice is critical, panicked or solely focused on worst case scenarios or if it feels more grounded and reinforces your agency or ability to make decisions in line with your well being.

Your intuition will not make you feel disempowered and unable to care for yourself in a given situation, which is often how anxiety shows up in boundary setting struggles.

I know it's easier said than done.

It helps to remember that self-trust begins with connecting to our bodies and listening to the messages we're receiving from it, in the form of thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, impulses, imagery and even dreams.