Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, in their book Boundaries in Marriage, discuss ten laws of boundaries. One law of particular interest is the second law, the Law of Responsibility. In essence, this law states that we are not responsible for the feelings of our spouse or partner. We should be responsible for our hurtful behavior, but we are not responsible for how they feel.
Feelings are an interesting thing because they represent emotional memories of hurt from the past. In some sense, we are triggered by our partner in order to bring up these past feelings and process them. When we project our feelings onto our partner and leave out the shor story of the past hurt that we carry around, we not only put them on the defensive, we also limit our ability to heal and grow. We have to be willing to parse out what part of the way we’re feeling is really measured by what we haven’t healed in ourselves — by what lives unconscious in our deep relational and survival brains.
It’s difficult to do because we’ve essentially built a way of thinking and being that is designed to keep us from feeling those past hurts. This philosophy, or rulebook, by which we live and see the world is designed to protect us from pain. These rules were written during a time in our lives when we were developing, but they limit our ability to grow and develop intimacy. Essentially, they block love from entering in and eliminating the fear that we are driven by. We then go on in our lives to see emotional pain as something to avoid, not something to embrace. In a loving relationship, communicating our pain — no doubt triggered by our partner’s behaviors — in a way that articulates personal responsibility allows them to hear us and validate us in a way that we’ve never been validated.
Although my partner may do something intentionally or unintentionally hurtful, the software for what I’m going to experience is already written in me. The story I tell about that feeling, if it is solely focused on the other person’s behavior, becomes a danger not just to me, but to the partnership. In an intimate relationship, my partner is essentially supposed to trigger me. This is how growth and healing is given the opportunity to occur. Whether or not their behavior needs to change can be worked out in the conversation, but what is true is that the magnitude of my feeling — and the reaction I have in my words and actions in relationship to that feeling — is fully my responsibility to handle. I don’t get to use the phrase, “I did this or said this because you…” A loving partner who truly wants connection and genuinely cares will be able not only to take responsibility for their behavior, if necessary, but also to validate my experience, because it’s really not about them.
All pain is not an injury
When I’m triggered by my spouse, it is inevitable that I will feel the present pain as an injury happening in the moment. I will then defend against the injury in a typical fight-or-flight, immature way. But this is not true; feeling pain does not mean that I’m being injured. This can also happen when our partners set limits or boundaries. They can feel like a disconnect happening — a pain. In reality, it’s the codependent ties that are being cut, which is healthy for everybody. Boundaries help heal.
When I or my partner sets a boundary, we are both sitting in our own anxieties or pains. This is a beautiful gift to the relationship. When we are given limits, or when we choose to sit in our pain, we are not being injured by our partner; we are actually healing. There is a difference in pain, and the mindset is what’s important. The brain stuck in past trauma says, “I’m being injured; this is bad,” but it’s not real. There’s no re-injuring happening.
The pain I’m feeling is the pain that I’ve blocked out and am now healing from by sitting in it, noticing it, paying attention to it, and processing it. Putting that pain back in the story of the past where it belongs — talking it out, journaling with it — it’s all healing, even though I’m feeling the pain.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Yoann Boyer on Unsplash
