Nearly a year after I left my ex, a friend invited me along to visit New York with her. When my ex found out (because our children told him), he asked me “Who are you going with?”
I answered, “I’m going with Rosalie” and at that moment, it hit me, full on: It was none of his business who I was going with. I could have been going with a bunch of men for a wild swingers’ weekend and it would still have been none of his business. I needed to start setting boundaries.
I was still living with the old paradigm that he’d drilled into every fiber of my being throughout our relationship: that I wasn’t allowed to have any boundaries. I was still used to constantly accommodating, appeasing, and adjusting. But now, it was past time for me to unlearn those patterns. He was still acting like he could control everything I did. I decided there and then to reclaim my right to establish boundaries.
But I needed to do it the right way. Telling my ex to stop asking me questions wasn’t the boundary I needed to set here. I needed to set a boundary on my own response. In her book, It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, Dr. Ramani Durvasula says “Boundaries are an inside job.”
The first boundary I set with him was scary. I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember how I felt. Every cell in my body was screaming to soften the blow, to add a little explanation to ease the tension. But I resisted.
And guess what? The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t end. Yes, he wasn’t happy, and it didn’t make him back off or be any less controlling. But he was controlling anyway, so what did it matter?
That’s the power of setting boundaries. At first, they might make you feel exposed, vulnerable, or even selfish. But let me tell you, setting boundaries isn’t selfish. It’s self-care.
Each boundary you set is like building a wall around a sacred space that declares, “This is where I start taking care of myself.” It’s about giving yourself permission to make your emotional and psychological well-being a priority.
Setting boundaries with a narcissist is challenging because they’ve trained you to believe that your feelings and needs don’t matter. They thrive on blurring lines.
But there’s an added benefit to setting boundaries with a coercive controller. They don’t just help you manage your interactions with them; they help you reconnect with your inner strength. You start to remember who you were before the chaos, and you start to see who you can become.
Once I started consistently and firmly setting boundaries, the hardest thing to deal with was the response from well-meaning people who thought I was unfair to him. “Why can’t you two get along for the sake of the children?” they said.
What they don’t realize is that getting along isn’t a one-way street. It needs mutual respect and understanding, and neither of these can exist without clear boundaries, even in healthy relationships.
So, when well-meaning people asked why I couldn’t simply get along for the sake of the children, I reminded them—and myself—that by setting boundaries, I WAS getting along in the healthiest way possible.
I was teaching my children that respect and personal space are vital components of any relationship.
I was demonstrating that it’s okay to say no, and that everyone’s feelings and needs matter, including your own.
Setting boundaries isn’t about creating conflict; it’s about preventing it. It’s about making it clear what is acceptable and what isn’t, which in the long run, creates a safer, more predictable environment for everyone involved, especially the kids.
It was clear to me that this process wasn’t about changing my ex’s behaviour. That was something I couldn’t control. It was all about changing my response to his behaviour.
It was about taking back my power and deciding that I wouldn’t be manipulated or coerced into feeling or acting a certain way. I had decided that I had the right to peace, and I gave myself the power to enforce it.
Featured image: Setting boundaries with a narcissist. Source: Vitezslav Vylicil / Adobe Stock.
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