In the coaching session, Joe had the woman feel overwhelming love while he role-played a partner asking her to violate herself (“I need you to stop being Christian”). From that place of open-hearted dissolution, her response wasn’t compliance or anger — it was heartbreak. Grief. The impossibility of taking herself apart to keep the relationship.
This heartbreak is the boundary. When you’re fully in love and fully in the heartbreak of incompatibility, you can’t betray yourself — it’s not even an option. The woman recognized this: “That’s what my breakups have always looked like. It’s just taking a long time to get there sometimes.”
“It’s you allowing that overwhelm heartbreak when somebody is asking you to violate yourself to stay in a relationship — that prevents you from violating yourself to stay in the relationship.”
If heartbreak is the standard from the beginning — rather than something you arrive at after months of self-betrayal — then relationships either end quickly or they’re a genuine match. The functional relationship lives in the heartbreak together: “This sucks, and this is my truth, and I’m scared of losing you, but I’m not willing to violate myself, and I don’t want you to violate yourself. How do we do that?”
Related Concepts
- Surrender into love prevents self-betrayal
- Boundaries open your heart
- Boundaries are for you, not them
- Dissolution of self is what love requires
- We find love when we stop fearing annihilation
- Walking on eggshells guarantees resentment
- Full openness is the real protection from narcissists