Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about reciprocity. She was honest about her capacity. I was honest about what I needed. It didn’t match, and we adjusted our expectations.

It still hurt. But it was okay. No one was wrong. Just two people who couldn’t meet each other in that moment, handling it with care.

This interaction is very different from the destructive pattern I’m about to tell you.

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to have that conversation. I would have stayed silent, resented her, and slowly disappeared. Or I would have pushed harder, over-explained, and made myself smaller to keep the connection. I wouldn’t have known what reciprocity was – let alone ask for it.

Because for 37 years, I didn’t know what boundaries were.

The 16-Year Pattern

There was a relationship that taught me everything I know now about boundaries – by showing me what happens when you have none.

I saw the pain in her eyes the first time we met, and I think it was our shared wounds that tethered us to one another. She was magnetic, hypnotic, and confident, and I was captivated. She made me feel like I was special, and wanted.

We were both carrying abandonment trauma, both wired with disorganised attachment. We were caught in a cycle: build up, tear down, protect, destroy. And she wasn’t the only relationship where this pattern showed up. It repeated across my life. I was conditioned to believe the world wasn’t safe and I needed protection. I was addicted to the chaos because chaos felt like home.

When we didn’t live together, I was valued. The moment I moved in, I became invisible – or worse, property. The pattern repeated with others too. Closeness seemed to activate something in her nervous system that required absolute control to feel safe.

She could build me up and tear me down in the same breath. She introduced me to meditation, breathwork, mindset tools – the very practices that would help me to reclaim myself. She supported me after I was isolated following another destructive relationship. She cared, in the way she knew how. And her behaviour was vitriolic, malicious in ways that left marks I couldn’t see – but could definitely feel.

The Control We Both Used

Her behaviour was cruel. The threats, the manipulation – they caused real harm. And she was operating from a wounded nervous system that only knew control as safety. I stayed. I kept going back. I enabled the dynamic because I didn’t have boundaries, so I allowed behaviour that wasn’t okay.

She used control to feel safe – dominating, manipulating, playing games. I used control too, just differently. I ran. I fawned. I people-pleased. I abandoned myself to keep the peace.

We were both trying to control a situation that felt inherently unsafe. Her nervous system mobilised into fight. Mine collapsed into flight, fawn, and freeze. Our survival instincts mirrored and triggered one another in an endless loop. Neither strategy was “worse” – they were just different survival responses to the same underlying terror: abandonment.

But there was an asymmetry: I would respect her boundaries at the expense of my own, and I didn’t have boundaries, so I allowed behaviour that wasn’t okay.

Her words had subtle double meanings I had to stay alert for. Was she joking? Was she threatening? Was I reading too much into it or not enough? The constant decoding had me questioning my own reality – maybe I was making it up, maybe I was too sensitive, maybe I was the problem.

I could hold boundaries with people who respected them. But when someone tried to dominate me, I would let them win. Every time. My nervous system would collapse into fawn – it was safer to give in than to risk the conflict, the anger, the potential abandonment.

We used to match each other when we were younger – competitive, playful, ego-to-ego. But I’d learnt to stop fighting. I’d seen how destructive it could be. So when she kept competing, kept pushing, I just… stopped. I let it happen. I think she interpreted my stillness as indifference. In her world, fighting meant caring. In mine, not fighting meant peace. We were speaking different languages, both shaped by our wounds.

The First Time I Tried to Leave

Years before the final break, I tried to leave. Someone said she was manipulating me, and the pattern fit. I decided to move at short notice. My flight response was fully activated and I needed to get out.

She blocked the doorway. I was trapped, with nowhere to run. My nervous system went into freeze. She threatened to hit me. Her fight response met my flight response, both of us in crisis. My legs were shaking with adrenaline as I dodged insults and made my escape, and I insulted her back for the first time – which was terrifying in itself.

I moved next door – I was out, but not safe yet. Living in chaos and with the very people who would condemn me for being gay. I couldn’t grieve the loss. My body trapped the grief so deeply that I developed an eye twitch that lasted for weeks. The unprocessed pain kept me stuck in the cycle. I’d see her drive past, and my nervous system would activate all over again. 

The proximity made it impossible to heal.

Photo credit: Jan Tinneberg

The Breaking Point

There was a tension between us that she would deliberately play with – leaning into it in private, denying it in public. It became a game for her, one where I was always off-balance and she held all the power. When I told her I had feelings for her, her nervous system went into fight mode. She tried to keep me small, implying that I should stay closeted, that I should only date men. I almost did – but something in me resisted.

Shortly after I told her, she outed me to everyone before I was ready – not just exposing me, but painting me as the one in the wrong. Her wounded nervous system was trying to regain control the only way it knew how: by reframing the story before I could leave.

It wasn’t her story to tell. The pain was unbearable. I learnt to breathe through the tightness in my chest because I couldn’t talk to anyone – I hadn’t told another soul.

I held it together until I left. Three months later, when I was finally in a place where I felt safe enough, I grieved. I didn’t know who I could trust anymore, but thankfully I had one or two people who restored my faith in humanity. I grieved both the recent violations and the pain I’d carried since I was young – grief I’d never allowed myself to feel. It was excruciating, but I needed to feel it to let go of the attachment that had kept me stuck.

Photo credit: Jeremy Bishop

The Shift

Everything started to shift when I began calming my overactive nervous system with nutrition and cold immersion. Once I could regulate even slightly, I began studying psychology to understand the dynamic we were caught in. Meditation taught me how to stay present with my nervous system instead of running from it. Stoicism taught me how to respond rather than react and how to observe my thoughts without being consumed by them.

And then I found the temple. I learnt about non-attachment, and I actually started practising it. I stopped chasing, stopped reacting, stopped letting her control the dynamic. I started doing what I wanted for the first time in my life.

When I did finally start setting boundaries with her, she pushed harder – amplifying the control, testing every limit. Her nervous system felt threatened by my newfound clarity, and she fought to regain the power she was losing.

She panicked. I remember her sitting with her head in her hands saying, “Can’t you just let me control something?” Her nervous system was screaming. The pattern she needed to feel safe was breaking, and she didn’t know how to exist outside of it. Neither did I. But I had the tools. And I kept practising.

I chose homelessness over staying. Not because of her – but because I realised what I was modelling for my son. I didn’t want him to carry the same abandonment wound we both had. He needed me. And I needed to choose myself.

Not long after, I went on my first date with a woman. I was terrified – my nervous system still raw from everything I’d just walked away from. She was understanding, kind and thoughtful.

But the safety itself felt dangerous. My nervous system didn’t know what to do with kindness – it was expecting harsh criticism or judgement, which would have felt safer because it was familiar. I had to learn that safety doesn’t always feel safe at first. It just feels uncomfortable.

She gave me a small gift. It was the first time anyone I’d been interested in had given me anything. This tiny gesture – thoughtful, intentional, reciprocal – meant everything.

I’d been attracted to women before, but it was never mutual. For the first time, a woman told me that she liked me back. The pain I once experienced taught me that I deserved better, but it was this moment that proved it.

The Cost and the Freedom

Now my system freaks out when I get close to anyone I’m attracted to. I’ve tried dating since leaving – and even when I’m consciously telling myself I’m safe, my nervous system screams danger. But I’m responding differently now. I can recognise my triggers, I can have honest conversations about needs and capacity. I can adjust boundaries with care instead of losing myself.

Healing isn’t about thinking your way out of it. It’s about pendulation – slowly, gradually exposing myself to closeness in small doses, building new evidence that intimacy doesn’t have to mean losing myself.

Photo credit: Grant Ritchie

What I Know Now

I loved her. I really did. I could see through her pain in a way most people couldn’t. When I realised she was hurting me to feel in control, I knew: she wasn’t capable of reciprocity. Not because she was a bad person, but because she was so wounded that control was her only way to survive. And I had to accept that love without reciprocity is just self-abandonment.

Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re not rejection. They’re not mean. Boundaries are how you love yourself and others. They’re how you stop repeating the pattern. They’re how you separate behaviour from the person. Her behaviour was harmful, AND she deserves compassion and healing. Both are true.

You can care for someone and still say, “This isn’t safe.” You can understand why someone behaves the way they do and still choose to leave. You can honour someone’s humanity and still protect your own.

Freedom doesn’t look like I thought it would. It’s not loud or dramatic. It’s quiet. It’s subtle. It’s saying no without my heart racing. It’s not answering a text immediately and feeling okay about it. It’s choosing myself and not spiralling in guilt.

Freedom is space. Space to breathe. Space to choose. Space to be myself without constantly managing everyone else’s emotions.

This is what 37 years without boundaries taught me: boundaries aren’t about keeping people out. They’re about keeping yourself intact.

If you see yourself in this story – if you’ve been the fawn, the runner, the one who gives everything and calls it love – I want you to know: you’re not alone.

I spent years learning these lessons the hard way. I studied nervous system regulation, polyvagal theory, attachment patterns, and boundary work because I had to – because my survival depended on understanding what was happening to me. And once I understood it, once I started to heal, I knew I needed to share it.

Not because I have all the answers. Not because I’m fully healed. But because I know what it’s like to live without boundaries and mistake it for love. I know what it’s like to finally choose yourself and feel terrified that you’re doing something wrong.

Boundaries are how you get free.

Anna Roters

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