Quotes About Boundaries

Brigid is the guardian of the home, and the threshold is one of her power places. Saint

An abuser can seem emotionally needy. You can get caught in a trap of catering to him, trying to fill a bottomless pit. But he's not so much needy as entitled, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough. He will just keep coming up with more demands because he believes his needs are your responsibility, until you feel drained down to nothing.

It is fine to commiserate with a man about his bad experience with a previous partner, but the instant he uses her as an excuse to mistreat you, stop believing anything he tells you about that relationship and instead recognize it as a sign that he has problems with relating to women.

But whether you stay or go, the critical decision you can make is to stop letting your partner distort the lens of your life, always forcing his way into the center of the picture. You deserve to have your life be about you; you are worth it.

I wish I could somehow recover all those years I wasted waiting around for him to deal with his issues." Save yourself that sadness if you can, by insisting on nothing less than complete respect.

And you are not "enabling" your partner to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own actions.

I can't solve his problems, and it's not my fault that he thinks I should.

You are not your partner. His issues are not your issues. His behavior is not your behavior. His destructiveness does not prove that anything is wrong with you. You are separate people.

A man's partner is not his child, and the freedoms he "grants" her are not credits to be spent like chips when the urge to control her arises.

Make a decision inside of yourself—a deep decision—that you are 100 percent responsible for your actions, and he is 100 percent responsible for his actions. You have zero responsibility for what he does, and he has zero responsibility for what you do.

There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply into my body and his body as though to go as far as possible from my mind, and his mind, so conscious, so unrelenting. It did not end while it was still in the middle.

Because we're not free when there are no boundaries-we're in great danger.

Because we're not free when there are no boundaries—we're in great danger.

Complaining is good for you as long as you're not complaining to the person you're complaining about.

you couldn't stop a person from being who she was. All you could do was stop yourself from being with her.

The fact that this medieval France was almost entirely surrounded by rivers – for a little stream, la Thève, forms its northern boundary – probably gave rise to the expression, Île de France.

A good woman knows she cannot be all things to all people, and she may, in fact, displease those who think she should just be nice. She is not strident or petty or demanding, but she does live according to conviction. She knows that the Jesus she follows was a revolutionary who never tried to keep everyone happy.

No, it's not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can't ever possibly meet. That's when the desire to connect becomes an unrealistic need. Unrealistic neediness is actually greediness in disguise.

Don't allow the unrealistic demands of others to march freely into your life.

If they make the choice to walk over me rather than walk with me, I'll have to love them from afar.

While my heart wants to say yes, the reality of my time makes this a no." I've learned the best "no" answers are graciously honest.

We must respect ourselves enough to break the pattern of placing unrealistic expectations on others.

People don't mind doing CPR on a crisis victim, but no person is equipped to be the constant lifeline to another.

But weeping with them and rejoicing with them does not mean trying to take control of their out-of-control choices and behaviors. We can forgive them. But we cannot control them. And we should not enable them.