Boundaries refer to limits that we have in order to protect our sense of wellbeing and emotional and physical safety. It benefits each of our relationships, from family to romantic partners, to clearly communicate and reinforce our boundaries.

To learn how to establish healthy boundaries, you can visit this page on PositivePsychology.com.

“The reactive view of loving implies that in order to evoke delight, a person, object, or event must be unusually delightful. The myth of reactive love holds that to be lovable, something must be especially attractive. […]

When you know only reactive loving, you have few tools for loving more. Your loving depends on the world providing the unusually lovable people or objects you can appreciate. These are, by definition, uncommon, so you will live in a world in which the lovable is scarce. You will spend your life seeking for the few that exist, and when you find one you will cling tightly to it for fear it will leave. Most of the time, rather than feel you have choices in your life, you will feel stuck with what the world offers you.”

— Dr. Frank Andrews, The Art and Practice of Loving

“You can choose what you will love and choose to interpret it positively, and thus love intentionally, rather than wait for the occasional flash of reactive loving. This enhances its value as the object of your love. Loving is no delusion; it is an artistic creation.

Artists do not duplicate reality; they paint it, but by doing so they make it important in human life.

You can live in love, in a constant willingness to appreciate and delight in whatever is in your life. Heartwarming experiences flow from that intention; the circumstances just give you the excuse. The world is a screen onto which you project your love. And that is great news. Willfully responding with a yes opens a way of knowing the world that is always available. At this moment, you can choose to love.”

— Dr. Frank Andrews, The Art and Practice of Loving

“Depending on how we interpret events, our minds can sometimes play tricks on us. They can convince us of things that aren’t true, even though they feel rational to us.

When these inaccurate beliefs influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions, we can feel anxious, stressed, angry, or depressed about ourselves (or the world around us). These faulty beliefs are known as cognitive distortions.”

Some examples of cognitive distortions include:

• expecting the worst outcome in any situation

• discounting the positive when things go well

• overgeneralizing

• jumping to conclusions (“You base your decisions not on what someone says or does, but on what you believe they’re thinking”)

  — From the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (learn more)

Conditional love means to impose certain conditions on our love for someone, similar to withholding our care and affection until they have met certain expectations we hold for them. Unconditional love means to freely love someone and always wish the best for them regardless of circumstance.

Both kinds of love are common and equally valid. It is widely thought that the only form of pure, unconditional love we see in daily life is that between parents and children.

“Someone who’s gaslighting might:

• insist you said or did things you know you didn’t do

• deny or scoff at your recollection of events

• call you “too sensitive” or “crazy” when you express your needs or concerns

• express doubts to others about your feelings, behavior, and state of mind

• twist or retell events to shift blame to you

• insist they’re right and refuse to consider facts or your perspective

Experiencing gaslighting can leave you second-guessing yourself constantly, not to mention overwhelmed, confused, and uncertain about your ability to make decisions on your own.”

— From Health Line (learn more)

“If you feel that you might be experiencing gaslighting, here are some steps to take:

1) stand firm in your experience (i.e., what you saw, heard, and felt),

2) write things out as they are happening and review your writings,

3) know your purpose before you enter a conversation (because a person who is gaslighting will blatantly lie, shift the narrative, and will minimize how you feel)

4) self-validate and give yourself permission to leave the conversation if the gaslighting turns severe

5) don't worry about trying to "outsmart" the gaslighter with evidence to prove your account of events; disengage instead

6) increase your support system and share your truth”

— From Alyssa Mancao, LCSW, licensed clinical social worker and certified cognitive therapist

“Emotional abuse includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten you. This may present in romantic relationships as threats, insults, constant monitoring, excessive jealousy, manipulation, humiliation, intimidation, dismissiveness, among others.

Sometimes emotional abuse is more obvious, like a partner yelling at you or calling you names. Other times it can be more subtle, like your partner acting jealous of your friends or not wanting you to hang out with someone of another gender.

While these emotionally abusive behaviors do not leave physical marks, they do hurt, disempower, and traumatize the partner who is experiencing the abuse.”

— From the National Domestic Violence Hotline (learn more)

Healthy communication “is the ability to convey or share emotions, feelings, sentiments, and desires. Communication can be sent or received through verbal or nonverbal cues. […] While not all communication will be received with a welcoming spirit; healthy communication acknowledges that we have a right to “agree to disagree”.

The key to healthy communication is having a willingness to lay aside our defensive tendencies and accept responsibility for our part of the relationship. Healthy communication entails exercising our active listening skills, reflective listening skills, and having personal insight. If we want to have a healthy relationship, we must establish and seek to maintain healthy communication. “

— From the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (learn more)

“Gottman refers to bids as ‘the fundamental unit of emotional communication.’ Bids can be small or big, verbal or nonverbal. They’re requests to connect. They might take the form of an expression, question, or physical outreach.

For example, your partner might say, ‘Hey, whatever happened with that situation at work with your manager?’ or, ‘Do you want to talk about our plans this weekend?’ or simply, ‘Can you pass the water?’

They could also give you a loving squeeze, pat you affectionately on the head, or tease you with a wink.

Bids are often purposely subtle because people are afraid to be vulnerable and put themselves out there.”

— Logan Ury, The Gottman Institute

“There are three ways you can respond to a bid:

• Turning towards (acknowledging the bid)

• Turning away (ignoring or missing the bid)

• Turning against (rejecting the bid in an argumentative or belligerent way)

Now imagine you’re tidying up the kitchen and your partner asks you how your day was. You could pause, look up from what you’re doing and respond with details about the challenging phone call you had that day. That’s turning towards. You’re telling your partner you see and value them.

Turning away from your partner, in the same situation, would be ignoring them or just grunting and continuing what you were doing.

Turning against them takes the form of an attack, such as replying, ‘Why are you always interrupting me when I’m trying to get things done?’”

— Logan Ury, The Gottman Institute

1. Criticism

“The first horseman is criticism. Criticizing your partner is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack. It is an attack on your partner at the core of their character. In effect, you are dismantling their whole being when you criticize.”

Note: To learn the difference between a complaint and a criticism, which is quite help, you can visit this webpage.

2. Contempt

The second horseman is contempt. When we communicate in this state, we are truly mean—we treat others with disrespect, mock them with sarcasm, ridicule, call them names, and mimic or use body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.

Contempt goes far beyond criticism. While criticism attacks your partner’s character, contempt assumes a position of moral superiority over them.

3. Defensiveness

The third horseman is defensiveness, and it is typically a response to criticism. We’ve all been defensive, and this horseman is nearly omnipresent when relationships are on the rocks. When we feel unjustly accused, we fish for excuses and play the innocent victim so that our partner will back off.

Unfortunately, this strategy is almost never successful. Our excuses just tell our partner that we don’t take their concerns seriously and that we won’t take responsibility for our mistakes.

4. Stonewalling

The fourth horseman is stonewalling, which is usually a response to contempt. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction, shuts down, and simply stops responding to their partner. Rather than confronting the issues with their partner, people who stonewall can make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive or distracting behaviors.

It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable “out,” but when it does, it frequently becomes a bad habit. And unfortunately, stonewalling isn’t easy to stop. It is a result of feeling physiologically flooded, and when we stonewall, we may not even be in a physiological state where we can discuss things rationally.”