Boundaries

Boundaries can take on a variety of forms, mostly physical and emotional, and they can apply to many situations and for many reasons. People may set physical boundaries to protect themselves or others, to make themselves feel more comfortable or secure, whereas emotional boundaries may be set in order to emotionally protect people from harm. What happens when these boundaries are crossed though?

If you cross a physical boundary you may be chastised or you may be physically in danger, if you break someone's emotional barriers then you may offend a person extremely, hurt them emotionally or- potentially- put yourself in physical danger. Of course, this is all situation dependent and also depends on the nature of the person in question whose boundaries have been intruded upon.

What got me thinking about this was an event that happened to me last night. Me and my parents had gone to a family friend's house because she was having a party for her current partner's birthday; there was alcohol and towards the back end of the night I was rather drunk. I had not anticipated what was to happen next, but both my physical and emotional barriers were intruded upon by a man in his late thirties that took a hug- an act that to me is completely benevolent and innocent, an act that I would do to anyone and everyone- and groped me, touched me inappropriately and asked me to return his advances. At first all I could do was just ask him to stop, a night of vodka tends to leave one's head cloudy, but he didn't, so I had to physically push him off of me and tell him that I was in a happy relationship and wouldn't cheat. At the time I felt indifferent over what had just happened, all I wanted to do was sleep and keep the contents of my stomach in my stomach. Today, though, it's all started to sink in.
Physically, he crossed a boundary and touched me in an inappropriate way that I felt uncomfortable with. The act itself, however, also crossed emotional bondaries that, even now, I'm still registering.

I feel violated, like someone has invaded me without permission and taken something from me, but at the same time I feel like I'm the one that's done something wrong, like I've cheated on my boyfriend and betrayed his trust despite the fact that I logically understand that I've not cheated on him. Just very recently, I concluded that I feel like- and this is a terribly blunt way to put it but nothing else quite describes it as brutally well as I feel it- a whore, I feel physically dirty in an emotional sense. What can I do to make this go away? I've honestly not got a clue. A sense of duty came across me today, though, and I felt that my boyfriend had a right to know about the incident. I told him what had happened and, honestly, I expected him to be mad at me and even consider breaking up with me, but he didn't. He said that it was good that I told him but that, if I hadn't, he wouldn't have held it against me. I can't vouch for his emotions but a part of me thinks that he was just glad I was okay. Not in any way did he think that I had cheated, not in any way was he mad at me...and yet the feelings I had still persisted.

This leads me to think that, when you cross boundaries, you risk causing-in a sense- trauma to someone that can last for a while. Trauma seems a very strong way to word how my mind is but, when you look at it, is it not just an extremely mild form of it? Despite what every logical instinct tells me, despite what reality has told me, my mindset has refused to change and is in a worse state rather than a better one.

Boundaries, then, could be seen as a very important protective device that people have developed over time to stop themselves being damaged or thrown out of their comfort zone to a point where they don't feel safe, where they feel vi0lated, prostituted and like they've done wrong. Once this device has been breached and someone does, for instance, feel how I do, how do they then stop feeling like this? My suspicious is that, as with all wounds, time is the best healer and that, over time, I will stop feeling how I do and just look at what happened as an unfortunate event and try my best to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Until then, though, I think I'll be a lot more careful about how much I drink and whom I hug under such circumstances.