3 Emotional Boundaries To Set Before Allowing Yourself To Fall In Love Again
It can be scary to love after a major heartbreak, but you can protect yourself.
Andrii Nekrasov | Canva There is nothing worse than a broken heart. Nothing. And thinking about getting back into a relationship after that broken heart can be intimidating! But it doesn’t have to be.
Much like using physical therapy to rebuild muscle strength after an injury, so you can use self-awareness and intention to rebuild your “mental muscles” and be ready to date and get into a new relationship after your broken heart.
Here are three emotional boundaries to set before you fall in love again
#1 - Do not compromise your sense of self
There is nothing more of a self-confidence buster than being broken up with. It inspires the belief that we aren’t good enough for someone, that we are bad at relationships. We experience weeks, months or even years of feeling unloved and unloveable. All of these things can bring us to a place of feeling horrible about ourselves.
The key to being ready to get into a new relationship is feeling confident with who we are in the world. To proudly be who we are, not who we believe someone wants us to be. That requires finding who you are and what you want, then believing in yourself enough to establish a boundary where someone cannot take that away from you again.
Why? There are a few reasons.
The first is that like attracts like. If you aren’t feeling good about yourself, the person that you attract won’t feel good about themselves. Remember, someone cannot “fix” you with love — they can’t. Furthermore, it can be extra challenging to work on yourself if the relationship is toxic.
The second reason that it is important to feel confident before you get into another relationship is because you want to bring your true self to a relationship.
So many of my clients twist themselves into a pretzel to be who they think someone might want them to be. They come into a relationship not being themselves. What happens then is that the other person falls in love with someone who doesn’t exist and, when my client can no longer sustain not being herself, the relationship falls apart, with the partner being bewildered by what happened to the person they fell in love with.
So, if you are going to exercise any “mental muscle,” it would be the one that helps you believe in yourself, the one that knows that you deserve to be happy just as you are. Don't let anyone take that away.
#2 - Do not let anyone undermine your instincts
Recognizing and acting on red flags is another very important muscle to strengthen after you have had your heart broken — and once you do, you must protect those instincts and skills. Why? Because not being able to do so might be exactly why you had your heart broken in the first place.
A red flag is one of those things that you see at the beginning of a relationship, something that makes you pause and wonder if it’s something that you find attractive or something that you want in your life.
A few examples:
- Your person being rude to a service person.
- Your person being a bad communicator.
- Your friends not liking your new person.
- Your person having a bad relationship with their family.
- Your person not treating you well.
For many people, women in particular, ignoring red flags is the norm. We either justify them away or we believe that those red flags are something that we can turn into green flags with love.
Unfortunately, red flags can only be turned to green ones if the person displaying them wants to do so.
It is essential that, if you want to find love, you must exercise the muscle that helps you recognize red flags and, more importantly, taking action on them when you do.
If you see a red flag, stop and consider if this behavior is a red flag that you can live with. If not, walk away. Don’t waste any time on someone who you know might just let you down in the long run.
3. Protect your own vision for the future
For many people, when they have had their heart broken, they believe that their future is bleak. That they will never love or be loved again. That their future is hopeless and that they should just crawl into a cave and stay there.
The reasons for this are many. The most common one is because, with this person, you might have visualized a future. Perhaps the two of you talked about that future, about how much fun your life could be. Marriage, children, travel and simply living happily ever after. When that vision of the future gets shattered after a breakup, it’s hard to believe that it will ever be possible to get the life that you dream of.
What I can tell you is that, if you can work to build this “mind muscle,” you can find the love that you want. There are a zillion people in this world. You will find the right one for you. I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my most amazing husband!
The key is to visualize this future; to take stock of the kind of person you want, how you want them to make you feel, how you can make them a part of your life.
Also, take stock of what you want your life to look like outside of your love life. If you only visualize what kind of person you want, you will miss the opportunity to live the kind of life that you want to live, with or without someone else. By making a life for yourself, one that makes you happy, one that you can bring the right person into, is how you find the life and the love that you want!
Now that you've got that vision, you must protect it. Don't let anyone take it away.
Luckily, you can do all of this "mental muscle" exercise from the comfort of your own home, no gym membership necessary. And once you are feeling strong, you can stand by that vision.
And you can do it! On your own, with the support of your friends and family, a therapist or life coach. Whatever works for you.
But you can do it! I know you can!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi's bylines have appeared in MSN, Prevention, Huffington Post, and Psych Central, among many others.