The nice guy with no boundaries

In any relationship, boundaries are crucial. Being in a relationship, you need to understand that you are the highest authority to yourself. Healthy boundaries allow yourself to take better care of yourself – emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. I had to learn the hard way when my partner was crossing my boundaries.

Being in a situation where your boyfriend (at the time) was wonderful, cared about me and always made time for me. He was also a person that cared a lot about other people, which I thought was sweet of him. It sounds like there is nothing to complain about, right?

However, he still had his ex-girlfriend as a friend. I am 100% not opposed to people being friends with their ex’s if it’s evident that the ex-doesn’t want to get back together with them and just want to friends. I respect people that address that although they are friends with their ex, they don’t want to disrespect the new person that they are with and clear the situation with that said person. It overall creates trust between the ex and the new girlfriend but also creates a mutual understanding within the relationship .

Not realising you're going over boundaries

You can conclude that I had the complete opposite to the example of a healthy relationship above. I had a relationship where my boyfriend (at the time) was trying to keep friends with his recent ex, but the ex-clearly didn’t want to stay friends. I’ll give you evidence to make it clear that I was not exaggerating this (many of the things I have known about his ex was from him experience it):

• At the beginning, when we started dating. When he would bring me up in conversation, she would either get angry or emotional

• She was furious when he hung out with me straight after hanging out with her

• She would call him being upset when he wouldn’t do what she wanted him to do but fall back in love with him when he goes out to help her and comfort her. She consistently did this during our relationship

• She would get annoyed about all the things that he would do for me that he wouldn’t do for her

• Not being able to be friends or even just cordial with me

Dismissing the signs

Although I did know that he understood that his ex-wanted him back, as he was a caring person, he couldn’t dismiss caring about her to keep her as his friend. What he didn’t realise was he was never going to resolve her issue, which was getting back together with him. She didn’t want to be just his friend.

As a result, he went over my boundaries for the sake of keeping her close even though it wasn’t making her change her mind just to be friends. His actions just always hurt my feelings because it just made it evident that his actions were enticing her, even if he didn’t understand that he was doing that.

The overall result

The effects from this on me was that I began losing my trust in my boyfriend (at the time). He did not realise that his actions of caring in nature were only enticing her. Furthermore, not realising that you can’t please everyone, as you’ll either keep one person or lose both altogether. He eventually lost both of us as his ex-stopped being friends with him and he broke up with me due to distance. The problem was not solved, and I couldn’t do anything to solve it, which eventually just got to me and pretty much deteriorated the relationship.

To conclude:

Boundaries are so important. You want to be in a situation where you can trust your partner, allow them to do the things that they wish to or hang out with whoever they want to. However, the actions they do don’t cause issues within the relationship. Establishing that means that both parties know what will hurt their partner and boundaries can be put in place, so a problem doesn’t reoccur in the future. If a problem does arise, communication and understanding are fundamental to solve the issue.

Key points to remember:

Create boundaries, have trust, communicate your issues and being understanding creates a healthy relationship. I know there are more things to create a healthy relationship, but I see these actions as the main steps.

Prioritising is very important: Just because a person wants to keep someone in their life, they can’t prioritise that over your happiness if it’s reasonable why you are upset over it (which in my opinion it was).

On your part, always be understanding of what your partner is doing. If something is bothering you, communicate with them clearly about your issues and make a plan of action about how to tackle the problem. If you feel the situation cannot be solved, take into consideration if you want to deal with that issue and stay in the relationship. Don’t put your health and well-being aside just to stay with someone and leave before any emotional attachment gets in the way as it’s way harder to let go when you have invested a lot in the relationship.