For those who are excited to be trying out some popular dating sites to find love on Valentine’s Day, you may want to read this article about how to develop healthy boundaries prior to your first date.
The reason for this is that boundaries are, at their core, about preferences. What often happens in our busy society is that we are saying yes to more than we actually want to say yes to, and as a result, we either have too much to handle for ourselves, or we feel miserable for what remains, or worse, we hand over all our power to other people to decide what is and what is not acceptable.
We fear rejection if we say no, but somehow saying no is not only a way to be more desirable to others, but a way to stand up for ourselves and to go in the direction of what is acceptable to us. Healthy boundaries extend far more than in romantic relationships, and for this reason, I have created a list for you to learn how to create healthy boundaries with yourself and with others. Developing healthy boundaries will help you find better dates when you start browsing through profiles on popular dating sites.
1.Learn to delay saying yes or no until you know all possible outcomes.
For example, online dating, or dating in general, is full of opportunities. If you said yes to all your dates, you would have too many dates to go on and you would never be fully engaged with the person you are trying to understand. If you said no to all of your dates, you would never go out on a date for the rest of your life.
Finding the middle ground of dating a lot of people but being selective, is basically delaying becoming someone’s boyfriend or girlfriend until you know their good and bad side and everything else you need to know. This will force you to participate in dating and to be fully engaged with not only the person you want to understand but with yourself as you ask each other questions and experience life together. Isn’t that what dating is all about?
2. Learn how to convey your boundaries to someone else.
When you know your preferences, you must know how to communicate them very specifically to others. This means that you should be able to speak them, write them, or give some sort of presentation on them in a form in which others can fully comprehend. Miscommunications happen all the time, and if just one person misinterprets them, chances are high that those boundaries will be violated again and again until the miscommunication has been resolved.
Everyone’s perspective should be validated while the issue is resolved because not many people will have every perspective needed to know what happened. When the issue has been resolved, the boundaries you now share with others may, in fact, be stronger than ever before. Just make sure to maintain or update them periodically.
3. When you decide to back out of any decision, know that your decision is valid.
For example, most people feel bad canceling any plans they made, especially important ones they have made with other people. If something feels wrong, if it is bad timing, or there is some emergency, you can always leave. Your safety and happiness should be a top priority than a plan that was made which could potentially jeopardize that for you.
If no one validates your decision to leave, you must seek to validate your decision to leave or you could potentially make yourself feel worthless and want to seek validation elsewhere. Every decision you make must have a valid reason for existing, so don’t feel bad if you must do this on your own.
There are many more ways to establish healthy boundaries with someone, and for this reason, I have made the list very short to include what I believe to be the most important ones. Also, developing healthy boundaries with someone should be a lifelong process you should want to do for yourself and for others. To go through life without them is to fall prey to a life of pain instead of joy.
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