Deal-breakers and Staying with Yourself
When navigating any relationship, you might find yourself asking if it is okay to have particular boundaries, to decide that particular behavior is a deal-breaker, or to make certain requests. You ask, “Should I expect this need to be met? Or, “Am I supposed to be okay with this behavior?” Unfortunately the state of mind that asks questions like these is not the state of mind that can answer them. If you look for rules about what is supposed to happen or to others for advice about what boundaries you are “allowed” to set, or what requests are okay to make, you only find a mess of conflicting opinions.
The truth is that you get to decide what a deal-breaker is for you in any relationship. You get to decide where you want to invest your energy and where you don't. Making these decisions is about asking questions that help you understand your experience and connect you with your heart. When you are connected to your heart, you ask questions that reveal what’s truly nourishing and in integrity for you. You also naturally consider the impact of your decisions on others. Being present in your heart isn't about chasing romantic fantasies or trying to make everyone happy. It's about having the courage to face each moment as it is, identifying what's really true for you, and acting on that truth. An aliveness and vibrancy in your life comes from a present moment responsiveness that arises from a deep sense of self-connection.
Let’s look at an example with a student we will call Yesenia. Yesenia knows that positive judgments are a part of the general vernacular and for the most part she can hear them for what they are; people doing the best they can to say that they are enjoying her in some way. But in Yesenia’s closest relationships, comments like, “You are such a sweet person,” leave her bristling with reactivity. Yesenia grew up with a mom who told her who she was, what she should do, and how she should do it. This left her struggling to find a sense of self and with a tenuous connection to her own experience. In her closest relationships, Yesenia wants ease and care around this tender place. She wants people closest to her to take the time to find the words to express their experience in a way that doesn’t include adjectives and labels of her.
If Yesenia asked other people’s opinions about whether it is okay to ask her closest friends to refrain from positive adjectives and labels of her and even make this a deal-breaker in an intimate relationship, you might easily imagine the following responses from others:
That’s just the way people talk. You have to work on not taking it personal.
You can’t tell people how to talk, it’s their right to say it the way they want.
People will feel like they have to talk a certain way around you and it will inhibit their freedom.
That’s a compliment, you need to learn to take it in.
Stop projecting your mom onto everyone.
Other people aren’t responsible for how you grew up.
Responses like these are coarse attempts to manage life with rules about what should or shouldn’t happen. They effectively block a genuine response to what’s true in a moment of two people interacting. Questions that direct your attention to actual experience, on the other hand, give you the information needed to discern a way forward. These questions might include:
When I am triggered, how long does it take me to manage that reactivity and come back to center?
What kind of support would enable me to manage this trigger more effectively?
Is there a way I can enhance the healing work I am doing regarding the needs that are threatened with the trigger?
Am I able to learn from being triggered or am I just recovering from being emotionally flooded?
Is the relationship nourishing enough, that I am willing to invest energy in working with this particular trigger? Do I choose this particular challenge?
If this person is unable to change behavior in the way I would ask, am I willing to grieve and let go of the relationship?
When checking in with her own experience, Yesenia notices that she is not yet as effective as she would like to be at managing the reactivity that is triggered in this way. Thus, even when she remains silent and tries not to let it bother her, there is a significant cost. She begins to feel disconnected, distracted, and sometimes angry. Even though the other person is someone she enjoys, Yesenia gets tired from managing reactivity rather feeling nourished from a connection.
Yesenia realizes that she is not able to meet this challenge on her own. So she shares her experience of the impact of hearing adjectives and positive judgments. She lets the other person know a little bit about her history and the steps she is taking to heal from that history and work with reactivity. Yesenia lets them know that it's not that their comments are inherently bad, but that they don't work for her and asks if they have any willingness to cultivate mindfulness around using positive judgments of her to express something they enjoy. If the other person is willing, the two of them negotiate how they could collaborate around caring for this tender place in Yesenia.
If the other person isn't willing, Yesenia may need to break off the relationship to meet her own needs for peace and ease. She recognizes that becoming flooded with reactivity again and again doesn’t contribute to her healing process. Yesenia has to find the courage to be honest with herself about where she is in that process, what she is really able to practice and learn from, and what is too much. This might mean letting go and grieving a relationship with someone she really enjoys, this too takes courage
If you decide to have conversations with another person about what triggers you and ask for collaboration, a certain amount of care and subtlety is needed. Several conversations may be required before the other person can connect to your tenderness rather than perceiving a threat to their needs for autonomy or acceptance. To the extent that the other person perceives a threat, doesn't have a shared experience, or is unfamiliar with the trigger, they may attempt to minimize or dismiss your concern. You might hear them say things like:
You're being too sensitive.
You’re making a big deal out of nothing.
That's just me, that's how I talk. If you can't accept me…
Just let it go and move on.
Okay, okay, I won't say that again. Don't worry about it.
That's not my problem
Those are your issues you have to work on them.
You might feel insecure and ungrounded in the face of these kinds of responses. If so, you might back away from what you're saying, which further confuses the conversation. Learning to stay with yourself is a special kind of strength. Regardless of how the other person reacts, your experience is valid. Asking for someone to collaborate with you around taking care of your tenderness is not enmeshment or an abdication of responsibility. In fact, it is the very opposite. Direct communication and honesty about your experience, along with specific and doable requests, is self responsibility.
When a conversation like this reaches a particular quality of connection, the other person hears your request as an invitation to contribute rather than a threat. When they hear you in this way, they can then check in with their own desire and ability to contribute in the way that you ask. Ideally, you show respect for their autonomy by releasing your request if they say no and moving to the next stage which may mean ending or changing the relationship in a significant way.
If the other person says they are willing and able to contribute, your dialogue moves to the next stage of collaboration. For most, a simple desire to change a habitual way of behaving or speaking is not enough. Such a change requires a collaborative plan of action. This is helpful to set up before the trigger behavior occurs again. You might say something like, "This might be hard for you to remember. I'd like to find a way to remind you in a way that works for you the next time it happens. Would you be willing to brainstorm some ideas with me?"
The initial phase of learning and reminding is typically difficult. It requires graciousness on both sides, that is, a willingness to allow for a learning curve and all the little frustrations that arise when hearing something that's triggering or being the one who is being asked to say it a different way. This phase depends heavily on skills in repair and requires groundedness in emotional security.
This level of support and collaboration is typically reserved for close relationships in which there are many opportunities to exchange this kind of support. This type of collaboration has the added benefit of calling each person into a new level of growth and deeper sense of compassion.
Practice
Take a moment now to find an example of a time in which you doubted your own experience and instead looked for standards outside yourself or the opinions of others. Replay that situation in your mind and this time imagine that you are confident in your own experience and notice what it tells you.