Finding Self Love When Your Boundaries Get Crossed

I had them. Boundary lines. I’m sure I did. I found them about 7 years ago and I thought they were pretty solid. I had self love too. Or so I thought. The next thing you know, I’m working on finding self love again and drawing thicker boundary lines.

About my self love and boundaries. And self respect and self confidence and self worth. Where did all that self stuff go anyway??

Last time I checked they were…I mean, my healing journey was long and hard. After over a year I was pretty certain that I was rock solid.

Apparently not.

Finding self love back in 2013

Back in 2013 (or was it 2012?) I took a full year to work on myself. I had an awful lot of work to do. I hated who I had become at almost 52 years old. My life was the result of all the poor decisions I had made as far as boyfriends went.

I chose all the wrong men. Toxic relationships. One after another. When I finally left the last one I stopped to take a look back and over 30 years of my life. I knew things had to change. Many things. I had to find out who I was, what I wanted, what I loved/liked and what I didn’t love or like.

Finding self love, creating solid boundaries, building self confidence and working on my self esteem were just a few of the things I needed to work on.

And I started writing.

I wrote out boundaries. I wrote out all the things that made me worthy of a decent relationship and respect and all that other good stuff.

I wrote out things I won’t put up with again and reminded myself how incredibly awesome I am and how strong I am.

I wrote forgiveness letters to all the people who had hurt me. I wrote a love letter to myself. Oh how I wrote.

I thought I had it all together-self love and a solid boundary line

After well over a year I thought I had it all together. I felt strong and powerful. Not in an egotistical way but more like in a personal power way. I did all this inner work and I was feeling on top of the world.

I had lots of self confidence. I smiled and meant it. I was learning how to say NO and use my voice more. I mean, I really thought I was unbreakable and full of self esteem/self worth/self confidence. My boundary line was thick and black and you couldn’t not see it.

It was there and I had no qualms about showing it off. I even started telling women to draw their boundary lines nice and thick and don’t let anyone cross it. Ever again.

And then this happened…

Fast forward to 2017…

I’ve been in Guatemala for almost 2 years now and loving my life. The only downside of this amazing life is that I’m lonely now. I haven’t had a companion or love or romance in a long time. And I’ll be honest. I miss it. A lot.

In walks a guy. Just a guy. A guy who happens to be tall, dark, handsome and oh so charming. He fills all the voids. Don’t judge. You know what voids I’m talking about. After being single for so long it’s nice to have someone make you feel special. In every way.

Isn’t that what every girl wants? (don’t answer that)

Every fiber of my being said, “no Iva, stay away”. I mean, there were more red flags than Playboy has issues. Yup. Every ounce of me was screaming “step away from the cute boy”.

But dammit, I couldn’t. I tossed out everything I worked so hard for, erased my boundary lines, threw out all self respect/self love and self worth and fell into his arms.

Losing faith in myself and my boundary lines

I questioned myself every step of the way.

• Iva why are you doing this?
• Iva when are you going to stop?
• Iva do you know what you are getting yourself into?
• Iva…please. 

I hated myself for going in full steam ahead. I felt like a hypocrite. Here I am writing blogs and telling women to love themselves, respect themselves, have boundary lines, helping them build self confidence and boost their self esteem all the while I tossed all mine out the window for love.

I was indeed a full blown hypocrite. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. It just doesn’t matter at that time. My head and heart were in constant turmoil.

Life was frustrating and exhausting. I was on an emotional roller coaster and didn’t know how (or wasn’t ready) to get off of it.

Finding self love and inner peace through friends

I had to call on two very close friends to help me figure out this mystery. I was puzzled. What’s my problem? Why does this keep happening to me? When will I ever learn?

Cue best friend #1. She totally gets me. She understands every part of me, why I do the things I do and can talk me down from the ledge in less than 10 minutes.

I need to love myself more. I know that. I always know that. I work towards that daily. Obviously, I need to work a little harder at that.

Cue friend #2. She asks all the right questions so when I answer them, I find the solution. I have several a-ha moments in my conversation with her. The one thing I did find out through interrogation from her was this…I never had a boundary line.

The boundary line never existed

Gasp! Go ahead and gasp too! I sure did. All this time I was sure I had this strong boundary line and no one was gonna cross it but…

All this time it was never really there. It was a figment of my imagination. It was an illusion. It was a comic strip girl with her hands on her hips and a cartoon bubble over her head that reads “STAY BACK.

Back from what? There was nothing there to stay back from. What was there was a girl who still doesn’t love and respect herself quite enough to realize that boundaries are very important. She should have them.

So back to the drawing board I go. Pull out some more self love tools from my tickle trunk and find a thick black marker.

I worked hard on strengthening my boundary lines. I even wrote a book about it because I will never let them get crossed again. And neither should you.

Check out my mini eBook here.

How to Form Solid Boundary Lines

Finding self love is more important than you think

When we love ourselves the right way, people know how to love us back. When we love ourselves the right way, people respect us.

When we love ourselves the right way, we have more respect for ourselves, we can hold our heads up high, not tolerate bullsh*t, stand our ground and be proud of ourselves. And live with true integrity.

“How about we just stay friends?”

Peace and Love

Iva