We often and discuss a lot about personal boundaries, but we forget the main thing – they should be well protected from those whom we do not want to let us in. And from loved ones, beloved people, your territory should not be protected too zealously, otherwise you can be on it in complete solitude.
Hotel in a resort city. Late evening. In the next issue, a young woman finds out a relationship with her husband – probably by Skype, because his remarks are not heard, but her angry answers sound loud and distinctly, even too much. You can imagine what the husband says, and reconstruct the entire dialogue. But in about forty minutes, this exercise for a novice screenwriter is annoying me. I knock on the door.
« Who’s there? » – « Neighbour! » – « What do you need?! » – » Sorry, you talk too loudly, it is impossible to sleep or read. And it’s somehow embarrassed to listen to the details of your personal life. « . The door opens. An indignant face, an indignant voice: “You understand that you have done now? » – « What? »(I really did not understand what I did so terrible. It seems that I went out in jeans and a T -shirt, and not even barefoot, but in hotel slippers.) – “You … you … you … you broke my personal space!»The door is slammed in front of my nose.
Yes, personal space must be respected – but this respect should be mutual. With the so -called « personal boundaries » often it turns out about the same. The excessive retreat of these semi -mythical boundaries often turns into aggression. Almost like in geopolitics: each country moves its own bases closer to someone else’s territory – supposedly to protect himself more likely – but the matter may end in war.
If you gloomily focus on protecting personal boundaries, then all mental forces will go to the construction of the fortress walls
Our life is divided into three spheres – public, private and intimate. Man at work, on the street, in the elections;Man at home, in the family, in relations with loved ones;Man in bed, in the bathroom, in the toilet. The boundaries of these areas are blurred, but a well -mannered person is always able to feel them. My mother taught me: “To ask a man why he is not married, as indecent as asking a woman why she has no children”. It is clear – here we invade the boundaries of the most intimate.
But here is a paradox: in the public sphere you can ask almost any questions, including private and even intimate. We are not surprised when an unfamiliar uncle from the personnel department asks us about the current and former husbands and wives, about parents, children and even diseases. But in the private sphere, it is not always decent to ask a friend: “For whom you voted”, not to mention family problems. In the intimate sphere, we are not afraid to seem stupid, ridiculous, naive, even
evil – that is, as if naked. But when we leave there, we fasten all the buttons again.
Personal borders – unlike state – are mobile, pending, permeable. It happens that the doctor asks us questions from which we blush. But we are not angry that it violates our personal boundaries. Do not go to the doctor, because he gets too deep into our problems, life threatening. By the way, the doctor himself does not say that we load his complaints. Close people are therefore called loved ones that we are revealing to them and expect the same from them. If you gloomily focus on protecting personal boundaries, then all mental forces will go to the construction of the fortress walls. And inside this fortress will be empty.