Practical Tips for Setting Boundaries - Part One

One of the many hard pieces of this process is using our voice to set boundaries.  I believe for most of us wives, at the point of disclosure and/or discovery, we are in a place of feeling both voiceless and experiencing feeling-confusion (Feeling-Confusion is, {a word I just made up} at its simplest sense, not being able to pinpoint the feelings within.  You may also want to think of this as not having a lot of self-intimacy {fully knowing oneself}.)  One of the first steps in my road to healing was finding my voice and finding my feelings.  It's only after we accomplish this that setting boundaries can even be a tool that helps us communicate our needs to our husband.Before we dive into practical tips for setting these boundaries, let's make sure we understand why most of us start this process feeling voiceless and experiencing feeling-confusion.  Here are a couple of thoughts:

• For myself, I'm a recovering people-pleaser so I learned at a young age to make sure everyone around me was happy and in effect, my thoughts, opinions and needs went out the door.  I was voiceless.
• When married to a man with sexual integrity issues or a sexual addiction, manipulation is at play.  As our husbands use manipulation to get what they want, oftentimes wives become more voiceless and confused with our feelings.
• Piggy-backing off of the last point, I felt like maybe I was cRaZy while Jason was in the throes of his addiction.  The craziness can cause us to wonder if we even have the right to have feelings.
• It doesn't help that some of us have taken scriptures like Ephesians 5:22-24 to the extreme and we think we must submit to our husbands not matter their behavior.  I know for myself, in the early days of our marriage, there was a constant struggle at play between submitting to Jason and deep down feeling like there was something terribly wrong.  My confusion led to feeling-confusion and losing my voice.
• When it comes to dealing with the pain of betrayal in our marriage, it can seem easier to deny our feelings in order to protect ourselves and our marriage/family.

If this voicelessness and feelings-confusion resonates with you, remember that insight is powerful.  Once we recognize and can put words to what is going on, we can then start to take steps towards healing.  To that end, here are two quick things that helped me early in my process.  My counselor repeated these two phrases over and over to me and thus I repeated them to myself over and over and over again (and guess what, I still do!):

• "It's not my fault.  There is nothing I could do to prevent Jason from yoking himself to a sexual addiction."
• "I get to feel however I feel.  There is no feeling that is wrong.  I will own my feelings."

Now let's turn back to setting boundaries.  As we start our healing process and as we begin to work through our triggers, we will need to set boundaries.  Think of boundaries as what we need to feel safe.  And let me emphasize once again, if we don't have the self-intimacy to pin-point how we are feeling and what we need to feel safe, how in the heck will we be able to set a boundary?I'm all about five minute posts (think of it as a little jolt to keep you going) so join me in a couple of days for part two to setting boundaries.  In the meantime, I'd love to know your take on voicelessness and feeling-confusion.  xoxo-Shelley