5 Steps To Finally Break The Cycle For Good

Boundaries for Healthy Relationships

Robyn Firtel

Healthy relationships and boundaries.

Nowadays there is frequent talk about boundaries in our culture and oftentimes people misunderstand the word, thinking a boundary is something you’re going to do or say and that you’re going to draw a line in the sand. But today I want to talk to you about something that is more common with boundaries that people or you might not know about...

Say I have a couple – let’s just say a man and a woman. The man is completely at peace and all of a sudden the woman gets angry with him, and then he also immediately starts getting angry. So, what is happening in that dynamic is that her anger transferred over to him… and that happened because he did not have an emotional boundary, meaning that because his partner got angry then he reacted or responded by becoming angry as well – so there was a transfer of emotion.



Because he didn’t have a good emotional boundary, he started to actually feel her anger for him.

Same thing, it could be with a parent or child. So, say the child walks in and he or she is sad, and then all of a sudden the parent gets sad too. So, there’s no emotional boundary between the parent and the child.


Same thing is if at your workplace a customer comes in and they’re frustrated, and they’re feeling they’ve had a hard day and they’re feeling disappointed and upset, and then you – as the person that’s working for the customer – starts feeling upset and disappointed with the customer. So, there is no boundary of emotions between two people.


Two types of boundaries

There are two types of boundaries I’ve found that are the most important boundaries to learn to use, in order to have healthy relationships: talking boundaries and listening boundaries.


Most people in any relationship don’t know how to talk or how to listen. Most of us don’t learn it from our parents, because our parents haven’t been taught how to talk moderately and respectfully, or how to listen.


So, a boundary when you’re talking is not to tell somebody how you want them to act – that’s more of a control issue, right? – it’s really learning how to talk and express who you are and what your needs are as a request, rather than a demand; and that is definitely something I consistently teach my clients how to do.


When you’re using talking boundaries, you can say almost anything to anybody as long as you remain respectful. What most people have trouble with is that they don’t want to talk because they feel like they’re going to hurt the other person’s feelings or the other person might react.


But really, if you say something in a very respectful way and you learned how to talk, you can say anything. How the other person reacts is really on them – as long as what you’re saying is not critical and it’s done in a respectful way.


Now, let’s talk about the listening boundary.

The listening boundary, believe it or not, is a lot more difficult to get for everybody that I’ve worked with over the past 20 years. I would say the listening boundary is harder for most people. Why do you think that is?

Think about it. It’s because when you’re listening to somebody, you’re usually thinking about what you’re going to say back. But then, how do you listen to what someone else is saying without having an emotional reaction internally or externally? What you want to learn how to do while the other person is speaking, is really listen, and then, think to yourself, “This person is giving me a perception. Is this true or not true for me?”


So, you might not necessarily agree with what the person’s saying, but they’re still entitled to their perception. So, then – and there’s a whole coaching on how to listen – if you can learn how to listen respectfully, you might hear things that you can’t hear if there’s talking going on in your head already. If you’re thinking, “I want to listen to this person because I’m curious about who they are,” rather than saying, “I want to be right in my head,” and coming up with a story on what I’m going to say back, you’re going to be able to have better, more mature relationships.


So, those are just some tools on how we use listening boundaries. They’re very, very helpful, because if you think about it, the only function of an emotional relationship is to learn how to talk and listen.


It’s one of the most important things about a relationship. Now, in romantic relationships, there are also the physical and sexual boundaries, but in any relationship, it’s the talking and the listening boundaries that are the most important.

What Is Love Addiction? What Is Love Avoidance?

By Robyn Firtel • 08 Jun, 2022
The Love Addict enters into the relationship feeling an unbearable sense of inadequacy. Her relationship with the Love Avoidant is as doomed as it is inevitable. Having been neglected and abandoned by her own parents, she has learned that all attempts at intimacy will be painfully unsuccessful. When she seeks a love mate she will, therefore, find someone familiarly not intimate, but someone who will be good at mimicking intimacy. She deludes herself into believing that the mimicry is the real thing by creating her lover in accordance to a fantasy of her own making. The Love Avoidant becomes her knight in shining armor- “armor” being the operative psychological irony- shiny, but impervious to intimate contact. The Love Avoidant, on the other hand, enters the relationship not because he is seeking confirmation of his own worth but out of a sense of duty. In his childhood, his parents taught him that it is his job to care for people who cannot care for themselves. As an adult, the Love Avoidant, while feeling superior or pity for the neediness of his Love Addicted partner, thrives on the power it gives him over her. Eventually, he grows resentful of all the work it takes to be a caretaker. He begins to feel suffocated and lifeless. The suffocating Love Avoidant begins to distance himself from the Love Addict, who after several bouts of hysterically trying to get him back, eventually becomes exhausted with the pursuit of the Love Avoidant and turns to someone else with whom to be helplessly Love Addicted or to some other addiction to cover her pain of inadequacy. The substitute addiction could be food, alcohol, sex, work, spending or exercise- any addictive activity. At this point in the Co-Addicted Tango, the Love Avoidant, who is no longer the object of the Love Addict’s desire, feels the pain of no longer being needed. Without someone whose weakness cries out for his strength, his sense of superiority wavers. What value does he have if he cannot care for the needy? This triggers deep, underlying abandonment fears- sardonically the same kind of abandonment fears that lie at the heart of the Love Addict’s emotional dysfunction. Love Addicts, never having been unconditionally loved by their neglectful and/or abandoning parents, look for a knight in shining armor to provide them with the self-esteem with which they never had mirrored for them by their own parents. Love Avoidants, on the other hand, almost never got a chance to feel their inherent worth, because in childhood they were empowered to care for their own parents. While not having received love from the parents, their caretaking gives them a sense of grandiosity, while masking the haunting truth that they have never been intimately loved. This false empowerment very effectively hides the crucial truth that they, like the Love Addict, were starved of intimacy. The contempt they feel for the neediness of the Love Addict, is the masked contempt they feel for themselves at not having been worthy of their parents’ love. Contempt is shame turned outward on anyone whose weaknesses reminds us of the intolerable shame of our inadequacy. Deprived of the caretaking role by the withdrawal of the Love Addict, the Love Avoidant finally feels the jolt of the carried shame of abandonment; and the Love Avoidant, who once feared being smothered by the Love Addict, now turns around to get close to the Love Addict again, using all of his powers of seduction to get back into control of the relationship. One is running and the other is chasing all the time. When the one who is chasing finally gets close to the one running away, they both erupt into intensity, either a romantic interlude or a terrific fight. As the lyrics to the classic song say, “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” This behavior is what most people call “normal”; and if it isn’t “normal,” it certainly is “familiar”. This cycle will repeat itself over and over again. Robyn treats both love addiction and love avoidance.

Boundaries for Healthy Relationships

By Robyn Firtel • 10 Nov, 2021
Healthy relationships and boundaries. Nowadays there is frequent talk about boundaries in our culture and oftentimes people misunderstand the word, thinking a boundary is something you’re going to do or say and that you’re going to draw a line in the sand. But today I want to talk to you about something that is more common with boundaries that people or you might not know about...

Healthy Relationship – How to Know If You’re Having one!

By Robyn Firtel • 02 Nov, 2021
Healthy Relationship Have you ever wondered what it means to have a healthy relationship? Being in a healthy relationship means you have good and stable adult relationships that work. But what does a healthy relationship actually look like? Before we can see what a healthy relationship looks like, it’s important to see what unhealthy, or bad relationship looks like.
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