Boundaries and Faith
Setting boundaries is especially difficult when I'm attached to the idea that the other person will gain perfect clarity and understanding about why I need this boundary, and how this boundary increases my ability to love them.
It almost never happens like that, and I have to simply remember that no one in the world has an accurate understanding of me, including myself.
Clearly, understanding is something I can survive without.
But how do I find the motivation to relate without the hope of encountering understanding, or at least a close approximation?
If I don't believe there is hope of me being understood, I feel despondent when I consider connecting with others. This is true loneliness—not the absence of others, but the exclusive presence of misunderstanding.
So long as I don't set that boundary and encounter the actual misunderstanding, I can hold out false hope that understanding may presence itself in this relationship. Yet I'm also in a continual readying of myself to encounter the misunderstanding I fear, because I know my hope is false.
Staying in a relationship where I fear misunderstanding, because I fear misunderstanding, is a lack of faith that understanding can be found in another relationship.
So long as I stay in relationships of misunderstanding, I'm clinging to hope I know is false that understanding will arrive if I explain myself well enough to this person. I'm committing to the belief that understanding is not out there for me, and I grow despondent and avoid connection.
When I act in faith and end the relationships of misunderstanding, my love opens up and flows again, because true hope is restored. I live in the abundant perspective that the right relationships are preferable to more relationships, and with my love open and flowing, understanding is much more readily accessible to me.
Not only is there once again hope that I will be understood, there's another hope—that this final boundary might be the final misunderstanding
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