Unconditional Love; Conditional Access

How To Use The Intimacy Dial To Titrate Safety & Closeness Ethically

For those who don’t even know what a boundary is, let’s start from the beginning. Setting a boundary means expressing with someone else what’s okay and not okay with you while also communicating clearly what’s going to happen if that person continues to behave in the way that’s not okay.  Let’s start by talking about certain privileges that come with being intimately connected with someone, and how those privileges can be granted or withdrawn in a well boundaried way, not as an unkind or manipulative ultimatum or threat, but as a way to give other people free will choices in a clear and caring way that both protects you and considers the other person.

When we’re emotionally or physically intimate with others, we tend to grant them certain access to us and they get to enjoy privileges that might go with that access. These privileges can be extended or taken away based on whether or not someone behaves in a safe way that demonstrates that they can be trusted to protect our boundaries. Setting limits gives people choice. If they step over the limit, they lose privileges. If they respect boundaries, they can enjoy certain privileges.

Wouldn’t that make love conditional, violating the tenets of every major religious teaching and meme about love? No. The love can be utterly unconditional, but access to those privileges that come with being close needs to be absolutely conditional upon someone being a safe person who is able to respect your boundaries. What kind of privileges am I talking about? As an example, being emotionally or physically intimate with someone might give people access to any number of privileges, including things like: 

• Staying in your home or living with you 

• Eating meals you shop for, pay for, and prepare

• Intimate access to your vulnerable emotions, secrets, and traumas

• Sharing the benefits of what your money can buy

• Gaining access to your social network of friends and family

• Being invited to your parties and social events

• Physical touch and/or sex if you consent

• Traveling with you

• Having access to alone time with you

• Getting your full attention when others need someone to talk to

• Getting your help and support when others are in need

• Privileged access to your bandwidth, energy, time, and prioritization

The Intimacy Dial

When boundaries are healthy and the relationship is an equal, safe, reciprocally trusting and close bond, such privileges tend to be dialed up.  When you trust someone and are more intimate with them, they get more access to you. If they mistreat you, take advantage of you, abuse these privileges, fail to respect your boundaries, prove to be unsafe people, or lose your trust, you are entitled to withdraw access to these privileges that come with intimacy.

 As I’ve said many times with my clients, “Unconditional love; Conditional access.”

Before my own boundary wounding recovery, I used to obsess over and idealize the Alanis Morrissette song “You owe me nothing in return.” In it, she sings:

“You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving, it's my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return

I bet you're wondering when
The next payback shoe will eventually drop
I bet you're wondering when my conditional police
Will force you to cough up

I bet you're wondering how far
You have now danced your way back into debt
This is the only kind of love, as I understand it
That there really is.”

Having been raised Christian, this kind of unconditional love typified by Jesus appealed to me, and it felt good (for a while) to offer it to people who were not necessarily treating me well or being kind to me. I spiritualized this kind of love and arrogantly fluffed myself up for being able to love this big, convincing myself that this was the only kind of love worth giving and giving myself a pat on the back for being superior to those who couldn’t love so unconditionally. 

What I hadn’t realized (because this was before my exposure to the trauma healing path of Internal Family Systems) was that I was not offering unconditional love to myself.