Boundaries, those damned boundaries

“The more our boundaries have been violated, the more difficult it can be to know where they are, or to feel safe-enough to articulate them. We may just expect people to overstep our boundaries, or we may find it really hard to know when that has happened.”

Meg-John Barker, All About Boundaries

Trigger warning:
This text contains descriptions of child abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, among others.

Boundaries. Writing about boundaries might be the most painful thing I’ve ever written. As Meg-John Barker writes, “the more our boundaries have been violated, the more difficult it can be to know where they are”. Or to even have a concept of boundaries. Again Meg-John Barker: “As long as we’re unable to know and/or communicate our boundaries we’re treating ourselves – and often others – non-consensually. This is taking a deep physical and emotional toll on our lives.” Shit! And how true. And how painful to realise.

It’s hard to think about my boundaries in childhood, as I have no memories whatsoever of the first ten years of my life, and the next ten years are more marked by memory gaps than by memories. A happy childhood, as I wrote about a month ago. My boundaries? Nobody cared about my boundaries. My mother used me as her doll to satisfy her emotional needs, and also came close to sexual abuse (and of this I do have memories), my father and, to a lesser degree, my older brother, sexually abused me maybe around the age of seven to nine years. But there are no memories. There were intrusive images that tormented me, until, a few months ago, I finally accepted the sexual abuse as a fact of my life and was able to start the process of healing – a process that is still ongoing.

But it’s not just about my family. There has been bullying at least borderding on if not including sexual bullying in primary school (again, no memories, only the drawings of my inner child), and there has been homophobic bullying in my adolescence, my “friends” touching my arse and calling me “bi-boy”. Nobody cared about my boundaries. My body was there for others to do as they please.

But that was not the only issue. There was also emotional neglect, as I wrote in A happy childhood, and the result of all this was complex trauma. And, as Pete Walker writes, “Traumatic emotional neglect occurs when a child does not have a single parent or caretaker to whom she can turn in times of need or danger, and when she does not have anyone for an extended period of time who is a relatively consistent source of comfort and protection. Growing up emotionally neglected is like nearly dying of thirst just outside the fenced off fountain of a parent’s kindness and interest. Emotional neglect makes children feel worthless, unlovable and excruciatingly empty, with a hunger that gnaws deeply at the center of their being, leaving them starving for human warmth and comfort.” And add to this the issues of my gender identity in childhood, that only recently became more clear to me.

What a great way to start your adult life.

LoveUncommon writes: “Recognising the signals in your body that tell you that you are having an emotion is crucial to determining your wants and needs. These signals tell you when you’re safe or in danger, when you want something and when you really really don’t. Without being connected to our internal desires and limits it is impossible to consent to anything.” Back then, I was completely unable to recognise any signal of my body, any emotion. I was emotionally numb.

When I left “home” (I can’t really call this “home”. It felt more like prison), I had no concept of boundaries whatsoever. But, on the other hand, to protect myself I did not let anyone come close. Looking back at myself now at that time of early adulthood, when I fled the house of my parents to study, I functioned more like a robot or a zombie, not knowing what I felt, dissociated from my emotions and disconnected from my body.

It took me a while to allow some very limited physical contact. Hugging each other was very common in the alternative environmental scene I was moving in, and these hugs felt very awkward. It took me a long time to not feel awkward, and even longer to enjoy them. But that was about it. I was not able to even imagine myself any more physical intimacy with anyone. But not just that. I was also not able to talk about my own feelings, about what was actually going in within me. I didn’t even know this myself, being unable to recognise “the signals in [my] body that tell you that you are having an emotion”. My protective response was to not let anyone come close, neither physically, nor emotionally. Zero intimacy of any kind. And that wasn’t especially healthy either.

A few years later I had a sexual-affective relationship with another person (their gender doesn’t matter here), but I entered this relationship without any concept of boundaries (my own boundaries or the boundaries of others), and with a lot of unfulfilled needs for physical intimacy. As a result, I did not recognise the boundaries of the other person, or even overstepped boundaries that were expressly marked. This included sexual touching which was often clearly non-consensual. At the same time, I was still very disconnected from myself, poorly understanding what was actually happening, what I was doing, and unable to recognise “the signals in [my] body that tell you that you are having an emotion”. I was craving physical intimacy (which, back then, I could only imagine as sex, even though sex didn’t really work that great either, as I was unable to switch off my controlling head during sex), but I was still unable to connect with myself and what was going on within me, much less to talk about it.

As Meg-John Barker writes, “We need to recognise that we’ve probably been taught to treat ourselves – and others – pretty non-consensually. We might need emotional support in facing the painful implications of that: The places where we are a survivor and the places where we’ve behaved non-consensually ourselves.”

That’s very painful, and I’m still struggling with feelings of guilt and shame for having harmed another person, a person I loved.

After that relationship, which lasted maybe a year, there again came many years I was pretty closed down to physical intimacy, not even to mention opening up about my inside world.

Again years later, and after a change of country (I moved from Germany to the UK), I entered into another sexual-affective relationship, this time a more stable and longer lasting relationship (we were together eight years, of which we lived together for six years). While I think this relationship, at least initially, was much more healthy than the earlier one, this does not mean I was able to connect with myself, to recognise “the signals in [my] body”. We were having a lot of sex, and maybe both of us were craving physical intimacy, at least for some time, but I think I was still pretty unable to intimate in any other way.

Ten months ago, and the beginning of this longer period of acute complex PTSD, I wrote about this relationship:

“Until recently my interpretation has been that at one point in the relationship I was beginning to connect with my complex trauma, and from then on everything became difficult. Although complex trauma plays an important role in this story, I am now realising the trauma of this relationship itself.

The first memory (or, rather, fragment of memory) that came to me is that once (once?) when my partner was penetrating me, all I could think about was "when is it going to be over?" I know, many of us have been through this, but it was something I had completely forgotten about. Why did this memory come to me these days?

A few days later, I was beginning to remember that certain sexual practices that I had always enjoyed started to disgust me at one point. I don't know from when on. But I kept doing them, disguising my disgust. Until - until I couldn't take it anymore. Until my pain was so great, that I began to refuse to have sex, but was unable to explain it.

Something had happened that had to do with my boundaries, or, rather, with my inability to at first identify my boundaries. So, my partner was overstepping my boundaries on many occasions, without me realising it. Just not noticing doesn't mean there is no pain. You just don't realise it in the moment, and the pain is stored in your body.”

After that, I again closed down completely, to protect myself. When that relationship ended, I entered into a downward spiral for years, probably not visible to anyone from the outside, but at the inside I was in a very dark place.

It took me years and another change of country (I moved from the UK to Spain) to finally collapse and to have to face up to my trauma, which was about six years ago.

LoveUncommon writes: “As a survivor of intimate partner violence, it took me many years to learn how to recognise my emotions. I dealt with my trauma by disassociating from my emotions because I believed that would keep me safe. Eventually, I recognised that my emotions were actually more likely to help me stay out of danger than to put me in danger, but by then they were deeply buried. I had to re-learn what emotions felt like, how to label them and where I felt them in my body. As part of that, I had to learn what ‘yes’ and ‘no’ felt like for me. That was surprisingly hard!”. How true that sounds to me. I tried for decades not to feel in order to stay safe. Only when I finally broke down six years ago, I realised that the only way forward was to face up to my trauma, to slowly start to connect with my emotions, and to open up to other forms of intimacy, that is, to actually talk with friends about what was going on with me and inside me.

For years that was more important to me than opening up to physical intimacy. It was difficult, and as LoveUncommon writes, my emotions “by then … were deeply buried”. I’m still learning – I can’t even say re-learning – what emotions feel like, how to label them, and where I feel them in my body.

A few days ago, I met an activist I know from the local social centre, but who I am not particulary close to, and she stopped and gave me a hug. An established practice, even though I never actually actively consented to it. The usual "alternative" greeting, one can say. However, I am clear now that I actually don't want to be hugged by her. But I did not do anything when we met, I did not say no, I did not try to evade her hug. And my body reacted immediately be tensing up. I knew that was a clear "no" of my body. It also triggered me into a severe PTSD response, and the issue of boundaries, sexual abuse and the need to assert the autonomy about my own body.

Now, I finally feel able to also open up again to physical intimacy, after identifying as asexual. That means, yes to physical intimacy, but no to what is usually called sex (I know there is no clear boundary here). And that is probably what has brought up the issue of boundaries again, and with force. Meg-John Barker writes: “[T]hose with experiences of CSA [child sexual abuse] may find boundaries around sex with others particularly difficult given that those were violated at such a vulnerable age. Having adult experiences which are very careful and consensual can do a lot to shift our bodies and brains in ways which mean we are better able to have and hold our boundaries.

I’d suggest that everybody enters into any sexual encounter or relationship aware that the other person probably has some non-consensual experiences in their past. The boundaries conversation is a really essential one to be having with anybody you’re having sex with (or any other kind of relationship come to that).“ And yes, I don’t think it only applies to sex, it certainly applies to other forms of physical intimacy, especially as the boundaries are blurred.

A few nights ago I imagined myself being physically intimate with another person. But at some stage I just withdrew into the fetal position and started to cry – and not just in my imagination. I clearly had hit one of my boundaries, and at that instance it had to do with the other person just coming close to touching my genitals. This is one boundary I am very aware of. But I feel opening up to physical intimacy to some degree means launching myself into a minefield without a map locating the mines. I am aware that my body carries a lot of trauma, and I don’t know which touch might hit the mine. And that brings up a lot of fear.

At the same time, I feel that opening up to physical initimacy is an important part of the process of healing. And for me it’s clearly about intimacy, and not about sex. I just hope I won’t be damaged in the process by too many exploding mines.