How to Not Take Responsibility for Other People's Emotions
In this episode, Libby shares concrete steps for creating a healthy emotional boundary between you and your partner, so that you don't react to, take on, or take responsibility for your partner's difficult feelings.
Transcript
Hi, welcome to making polyamory work. I'm Libby Sinback, a queer polyamorous mom and a relationship coach. If you live in the states, today is Thanksgiving. And so I'm hopping on for, a shorter episode, to offer you a practice to help you with your emotional boundaries. This practice is specifically for those of you who tend to be reactive to other people's feelings instead of responsive. If you haven't listened to my last episode, where I talk about why being reactive to your partner can undermine having a secure relationship. Definitely check that one out.
I wanted to offer this practice to you because it comes up a lot with my clients. It's also my experience that being unable to have emotional boundaries with your partner is one of the big reasons why jealousy can be such a challenging thing for couples in open relationships. If you have a habit of feeling and taking responsibility for your partner's emotions and your partner is being triggered by something you're doing like dating a new partner, which is giving you a great amount of joy and fulfillment. Often, what you need from them is to stop having their difficult feelings already, because that seems like the only way you can continue to date your new partner. It becomes unbearable for you to engage with your jealous partner while they're struggling, knowing that it's your choices, choices that you can't unmake, or won't unmake that are triggering their feelings.
But jealousy, as we all know, is something your partner has to work through. It's not possible for you to fix it for them. They have to do that. Work of understanding their own feelings and working through their fears. Often when people accept this, however, their next move is to withdraw from their jealous partner, leaving them alone, to work through their feels, but that can leave your partner feeling up abandoned, what they often need and what can be tremendously healing and connecting is for you to be able to hold your partner in loving and warm regard, as they are thrashing about with these challenging emotions, just loving them, not fixing them or running away, but you can't do this without creating a healthy boundary between you and your partner's emotions. That's what this practice is for.
The first step is to tune into yourself. One thing that is often going on when someone you love is expressing big emotions or getting triggered, particularly if it's something like jealousy that you feel some responsibility for is that you get triggered too. Your fight or flight response starts to take over. Some sensations to look for in your body, include a sort of clenching in the pit of your stomach, or a tightness in your throat, or a lightheadedness in the front of your head. Your mouth might get dry and your heart might be pounding. That is your body diverting blood away from non-essential functions to get you prepared for survival. And here's the thing about fight or flight too is that oftentimes with people who struggle with boundaries, their fight or flight response in relationship is actually to fix. We want to fix because that's how we can reduce our own stress around our partner's emotions. You have to resist this. You cannot fix your partner's feelings and trying to often escalate things or causes you to compromise on your own needs. If you want to be able to be with your partner's feelings without fixing or fighting or fleeing, you have to practice noticing when your stress response comes online and ground yourself. And instead of opening your mouth, breathe, breathe deep from your abdomen. That deep breath helps relax the body by stimulating the vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs from your neck to your abdomen. The vagus nerve is in charge of turning off that fight or flight reflex next in your calmer state, try your best to silently name some of the emotions that are coming up for you. This is a mindfulness practice that can really bring you into the present. It might help you also to journal these feelings.
I would not bring them to your partner just yet. This is just for you. You to help you get even more grounded, often just naming your feelings can help keep them from running away with you. Once you are centered and grounded, you can turn toward your partner. Now, I want you to imagine putting just a tiny amount of distance between what they're expressing to you and yourself. I don't want you to put up a big wall in between you or a gigantic gulf, but just one tiny breath away. Some people describe this as shielding, but I want you to think about it as more of a small space of air, where things that don't belong to you don't get to pass through a useful thing. Say to yourself is this is about them right now. Not about me. It's not my job to fix this or fight this, but I can choose to care for them and support them.
If you want a concrete way to think about it. And you're a parent, you can think about how you may already do this with your children. There are times when my children are throwing an absolute, shit fit over something that just isn't going to change. They ask me for candy at a time when that's not allowed, or they want to do an activity that we just don't have time for, or they don't wanna put on their coat. And, and it's cold outside and they cry and they get upset. And I can't fix that for them. And indeed it's really my job to not fix that. But instead, hold the limits that I've set. So I breathe and I feel my own frustration. And then I remind myself that my kids are allowed to be upset and that those feelings belong to them. And it's not helpful for me to try to fix them or stop them or fight with them.
In that moment, creating this tiny bit of distance can also really help you. If your partner has a story that they're stuck on, that feels unfair or untrue, or just, isn't helpful. If you can put that breath of distance between you tell yourself that the story is about them, you can find in that space between you, compassionate and empathy for what they're going through. Also, remember to breathe and keep breathing. And if you need to take a break because the breathing isn't working anymore, or you're getting tired, that's okay. Just remember to tell your partner that you'll come back to it and then make sure you rest, take good care of yourself, and then come back to it. The next step is to acknowledge the feelings that your partner is feeling. If you get this right, it's good for them because it will make them feel and seen. But it's also a valuable practice for you in maintaining that tiny bit of distance and keeping you out of reactivity. You want to say, you sound and then name a feeling scared, hurt, angry, triggered, low stressed, insecure, jealous, whatever. Right now you wanna make sure you say you sound this way and not just tell them how they feel and you wanna make sure you're correctly identifying the feelings that your partner's actually feeling by asking them, "am I getting that right?" Incorrectly naming your partner's feelings can feel invalidating or controlling. So it's important to check once you've confirmed that you got it right, then you can express empathy. You can say things like "I hear the pain in your voice", or "I see that you're really struggling with this right now", "This sounds really hard", or "I can understand how much this sucks right now and I am sorry you're going through this". As you name the feelings and who they belong to, you take away their power over you. As you express empathy and compassion toward your partner, you take the focus away from yourself, which again, keeps you out of that reactivity and keeps the focus on your partner and their struggle. Finally, you can now offer soothing to your partner if you want to. It's so painful. I know to see someone you love struggling, and it's even harder. If it feels like a choice between your needs and their fears by learning to hold space for their feelings and offer soothing without fixing that again helps you with that emotional boundary, their feelings belong to them, not you, but you love them. So you can offer comforting things like a massage or a walk outside or a warm cup of tea, or just to hold them.
You can tell them that you are here for them. You can tell them that, you know, this is hard, but you believe you both can get through it together. And you can remind them that you love them to focus on here is to keep your heart open to your partner, without letting their feelings blast you. If your partner is used to you fixing their feelings or taking responsibility for them, they might have a hard time with you engaging in this practice. They may struggle with that tiny little bit of distance you're creating. They may want to trigger you because by triggering you, they get a connection with you. Even if it's negative. That's why the offer of comfort and soothing is so important. It keeps that line of connection open in a positive way while holding onto your boundaries and limits. Oddly, I first learned this lesson as a new mom, dealing with a crying baby who would not stop crying.
He would cry even when I had changed him and fed him and otherwise met all the needs that I could perceive that he had. I learned that sometimes I just couldn't fix his crying and his crying didn't mean I was doing anything wrong, but what I could do was hold him and be with him while he was crying, I started singing to him. It's alright to cry. You know, that song from free to be you and me. It helped him of course, but it also helped me to just accept his struggle which at that age was probably gas without feeling like I had to fix it. The was part of me, grounding myself and naming what was going on with him and accepting those feelings and offering soothing. Now I realize this is the second time I've compared having emotional boundaries with your adult partner, to caring for a child.
And I realize adults aren't children, but it's worth saying children and adults aren't that different. When emotions take hold of them. When adults are in a triggered state, their higher brain functions, which kids don't have at all, just aren't working as well during those times. And what both adults and children need to help calm down is soothing. What having an emotional boundary can you is the ability to stay centered so that you can access your higher brain functions so that things don't escalate. And so that your partner can either have that space to self soothe or receive soothing from you. I also want to be clear that if someone you love is triggered and they are acting out in ways that are harmful to you or anyone else, you do get to call those things out and set limits around what you are willing to tolerate. The focus of this podcast right now is just to create an emotional boundary, but I will talk about limits in another podcast soon.
To recap, the first step is check in with yourself, calm your body, name, your emotions, ground yourself. The second step is to create that tiny bit of distance between you and your partner. Third, name, your partner's feelings, and express empathy. And last, offer comfort and soothing. Now I call this a boundaries practice because it is like yoga or meditation. It takes practice to get it. And the first time you try, you may not do a good job as you're working it. You may get tired quickly and need a break. Boundaries are kind of like muscles. You have to work them in order to make them strong. And you also have to stretch them to keep them flexible. I find also that I'm not as good at my emotional boundaries. If I'm tired or hungry or overwhelmed, you may also find that you do not at first like that little bit of distance with your partner. Terry Real pointed out that as you create some emotional boundaries, one thing you might feel sometimes is a little bit lonely.
It's worth honoring that feeling as part of the cost of emotional boundaries, but it also has the tremendous power to create deep intimacy. Being able to move through your partner's difficult emotions without letting them run away with you staying centered and grounded and offering care where you can, will keep you out of guilt and resentment. And by letting your partner be where they are be seen and understood and held, even when things are rough, trusting them to be able to work through it and offering support and not fixing can be tremendously healing and connecting to both of you.
I hope you've appreciated this practice on creating emotional boundaries.
