By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Back in the days when wars were fought with bows and arrows, swords and slings, soldiers wore armor to protect themselves from the enemy’s weapons. Various kinds of armor were designed to protect the soldiers, while at the same time giving them the ability to move. At each of the places that were left open so that the soldier could move, there was a “chink” in the armor. This was where an enemy’s arrow, spear tip or sword could pierce between the plates on either side. So the term “chink in the armor” came to mean the places where we were vulnerable to attack, even though we were covered everywhere else by protective armor.
As far as I know, there was never any perfectly designed armor that would totally protect a soldier from weapons. Even the tanks and humvees of modern times, along with the “bullet proof vests” worn by our soldiers and policemen, don’t totally protect them from attack by enemies.
Our own armor
Each of us has some boundaries to protect us. Just as armor is for protection of soldiers, the boundaries are for protecting us in dealing with others ”¦ both friends and enemies. Boundaries are the armor that we use to keep others from wounding us. Boundaries prevent others from getting too close, stabbing us emotionally or piercing us to the core financially.
Of course, these boundaries keep people from closer, more intimate contact as well. The more boundaries we have between us and someone else, the less intimate we can be with them, the less trusting. However, we must have some boundaries with all other people ”¦ some limits that we place on how those people treat us, even people we love.
Boundaries in intimate relationships
In most marriages, one boundary is that sexual intimacy is reserved for the two of them only. This boundary is fairly frequently broken, though, with statistics showing that 60% of married men and 40% of married women have, at one time or another, violated that boundary at least once.
What is the consequence of violation of that boundary? Will trust ever be totally restored between those two people if that boundary is violated?
Another (usually) unspoken boundary between people who are in an intimate, loving relationship is that there will be no physical violence between them. Too frequently in our country, we read in the newspapers where this boundary is broken and domestic violence occurs. Should a person who has experienced physical violence from someone they love and are romantically involved with give that person another chance? And another?
Where do we draw the line?
Chinks in our armor
The “chinks in our armor” are those places between our boundaries were others can sink their weapons and wound us to the core. There is no way that any one person can have enough boundaries to protect themselves from any wound, physical or emotional, from everyone they know. If we could have, we would be like the soldier who was so encased in plate steel that he could not move, but was trapped inside a metal statue.
Sometimes though, the chinks in our armor are so large that we are very easily wounded, because our armor (boundaries) are so flimsy or loose that it is easy for a person to get around them and sink an arrow into our hearts. When we don’t set boundaries that protect us, we allow others to treat us with contempt and have no respect for our individuality. No respect for our person-hood. When this happens, people can repeatedly treat us with hostility and get away with it.
Reasonable boundaries
Having “reasonable boundaries” (and deciding what those boundaries are) is important for our healthy development. We must be able to stick by those boundaries when the going gets tough and people try to circumvent them. We must be able to stand up to someone and say, “I will not allow you to treat me that way,” or “If you want to have a relationship with me, then I must be able to trust you.” And mean it. We must be willing to walk away if someone is not willing to treat us with respect.
I’ve heard many (mostly) women say, “Well I took a vow ’til death do us part and I have to stick to it” when their husbands were cheating on them, beating on them, and not supporting their children. I never really understood why these women felt that their vows were important to keep, when their mate’s were out the window. The chinks in their armor were so wide that there literally was no armor, they just stood there while their spouses repeated “stabbed” them over and over.
It’s hard setting boundaries. I know. I’ve stayed when I should have gone. I’ve waffled when I should have stood firm. I’ve given in when I should have kept on fighting. But I’m learning. Day by day, as the occasion arises, I am learning to stand up for myself and to require others to treat me with the same kind of respect that I accord them. I am realizing that many times people will only treat me as well as I insist that they do. For those that won’t treat me well no matter what I do, then I just have to write those people out of my life.
I’ve come to realize that no vow I took, and no DNA donation I’ve received or made, allows others to treat me with contempt or disrespect. I’ve come to realize what my boundaries are, what I will tolerate and what I won’t, and to draw the line in the sand and stick by it. It will probably always be difficult, because I didn’t learn healthy boundary setting as a child. But the more I practice it the better I get, and the easier it is.
So close up some of those chinks in your boundary armor, and you’ll end up with fewer wounds to treat later.
Joyce, fantastic article! Thank you so much for writing this.
Yes, boundaries will always have flaws, at some points. Even Achilles was untouchable, except at that one spot that you know about, yourself, Joyce! But, the “chinks” in the armor can be compassion, kindness, benevolence, empathy, and trust….they can be a host of things that are negative, as well: shame-core, abandonment, molestation, etc.
I acknowledge that I have myriad chinks in my armor, and that it’s going to be a challenge to sort most of them out.
Thanks, again, for writing what I needed to read WHEN I needed to read it!
Brightest blessings!
Oxy:
Thank you! Great post! It’s something I think we all needed to hear.
I was with my first sociopath from age 15 until 33 off and on. I would go back by twisting what you’ve said above and giving him grace because WE DIDN’T take that vow! My grandmother who was a model and beautiful had been married 7 times (I had 0 respect for this) but she once told me, “don’t ever marry expecting things to get better or to make the relationship work. It doesn’t”. I heard her because after all, she should know.
So my young love who had occasional outbursts with physical violence finally officially proposed. It was at a lovely place and my heart loved him enough to marry him but I was afraid of him. I said no in front of everyone! I am haunted with that memory. I have always wondered if I could have handled that differenly. I told him his anger was the only thing that made me say no and if he would just get that under control, I would marry him. After about a year more, we split up for good. I ended it believing I wasn’t what he needed. (He seemed to hate me at times) He showed up 5 months later and beat the hell out of me. I could’ve died but lived. (sort of) I was taken by ambulence to the ER. I always believed it was something about ME that brought this out in him and he liked it that way. I can say he has had 3 lengthy relationships since our break up. Each woman has been blessed with broken noses and I am not kidding! Hindsight 20/20.
After about a year of being a shell of who I once was, I came back with armor but timid. With emotional wounds, it’s tough to know where the chinks in the armor are to protect.
I am in that place again after this family court nightmare and psycho 2, who came in on the tail of psycho 1 and intentionally sabotaged contraception to impregnate me. This was after a year of healing from psycho 1. It feels like my armor is full of holes. I am slowly seeing progress but I am more timid than before. I thought psycho 2 couldn’t penetrate my armor because my hole from psycho 1 was in my heart. I did not let my heart get involved with psycho2 so he got there from a different angle. My child. HIS child. YUCK! Be careful is all I can say. Like OxD says, she doesn’t believe any armor was full protection.
Eralyn,
spath 2 sounds worse than the first one. To intentionally sabotage contraception means that he has no limits to what he will do to control you. His own offspring is meaningless to him, except as a form of control. That’s about as shallow as a person can get.
Skylar,
You are exactly correct. A friend from about 10 years old of mine, asked me during this horrid court battle who I thought was worse as she knew spath 1 very well. I didn’t even have to think about it and it is spath2. He’s the lowest of lows. The more I learned, he made spath 1 look like a damn angel! Spath2’s best friend told me he poked the holes in the condom although I confronted spath2 about it, I really couldn’t wrap my head around someone doing that. Of course he said his best friend was a jealous pathological liar (identifying himself here) and my life was forever changed. Look at what he said at the ultrasound. “We can always try again”. I immediately said spitting, “we weren’t trying in the first place!” But I guess h/we were……………
A**hole changed my life and it was a total control move. He threatened to murder us and cut baby out of my stomach to psychiatrists!! Said the devil was telling him to do it when I said “we don’t HAVE to be married just cause there’s a baby”. Must have been the wrong answer, huh?
I found out the real horror of all he was saying in the mental ward during our court case and we were in serious danger! I was told by 3 different sets of professionals to keep this baby safe from him! When he filed 10 years later for rights and unsupervised visitation coming out of the gate with a fraudulent letter from a psychologist saying he was of no danger to the child whatsoever, I was in totoal fear for her safety. The courts said the information was too old EVEN though he filed from PRISON!??
No protection. At least I’ve got the revokation of the psychologists license on my wall!
Eralyn,
The only protection from that kind of spath is “selective gray rock”. That means you feign a vulnerability that you don’t actually have in order to refocus his attention on something that doesn’t matter to you. In a way it is a backspath because spaths do something similar when they wear a mask.
I feel so sorry for you having to deal with that monster, but at least you did get a wonderful little girl from the ordeal. She sounds like a smart cookie.
Both oxy and Eralyn says two very interesting things:
Oxy: “I am realizing that many times people will only treat me as well as I insist that they do.” and ” ” some limits that we place on how those people treat us, even people we love.”
Eralyn: “I have always wondered if I could have handled that differenly.”
When I put these two togheter it creates the haunting question in my head that’s been whirling around like a ghost for a long time. If I had handled it differently, would the outcome have been any different? Meaning would the person who I loved (ex) still have done the same? Since Healthy people also break boundaries and they will treat you like sh*t if you let them is it still me as a persons fault?
The way I’ve seen boundaries since a child it’s my responsibility to also show respect to another persons boundaries. I may have a friend who don’t have boundaries or I may know about the chinks in their armor, but does it mean its a free way for me to do what ever I please with that person? NO, not for me, but it seems like others tend to think:” Well, if she doesn’t set her boundaries, she had it coming what I did.” To me this is also a way of signing away the responsibility for one self. Seems to me there’s always a flipside to the coin.
This is a piece of math for me, because boundaries have always been universal for me. When I say no I expect respect without any arguments and the other way around goes for me as well. I always ask my self one question: Would this be allright if somebody did this to me? If the answer is no, I don’t do it. If the answer is yes, I ask how they may feel about it and give them time to think. Many people I’ve met through the years who have talked about their problems to me, this question seems to be unfamiliar to them: It’s ok for them to cheat, but not their partners for example.
I don’t make a mess at home by the dinner table therefore I don’t do it when I eat out either. This is something strange I’m seeing in my country. People are very hysterical about cleaning in their own homes, but once they go out to eat, they put chewing gum under the tables, throwing trash on the floor or spill ketchup on wall – just because they can;someone else is hired to clean after them. And yes I’m talking about grown ups. Point being, it seems to be ok as long as it doesn’t affect them. Their own actions or how they contribute is a non topic. I am thinking about this as a boundary because it is a “universal” or unwritten norm that is set to instruct our behaviour- ergo it’s a norm boundary in society. “This is how you behave or there will be consequenses” just in a larger scale.
And btw, just came to think about it – Breaking boundaries is for a spath THE game its self.
He has destroyed my business that provided for us and me a decade before her. Our quality of life has changed so much and I don’t even have insurance for my daughter because I had to cancel it due to lack of funds. I had preexisting conditions and was paying $1000 per mo. just for my maintenance of my chronic issues which I used to function with but all of it became symptomatic after giving birth to my daughter. Some believe he may have poisoned me through my air conditioning unit since he’d go up there and leave a card on the door saying he serviced it just to continue harrassment and stalking. I finally qualified for Obamas pre existing condition insurance. My daughter still has none and I am still not functional after this round of abuse.
I did the selective gray rock (not knowing what it was:) over the 10 years when he called I would start talking about how busy I was and how broke I was (which meant to him I might ask for money) and he’d hang up. This went on for years every few months after the constant harrassment and stalking for the childs first 3 years of life. It tapered off as I would feel him when he was near. When he went to prison, I hadn’t spoken to him in years. He wrote a letter throwing bait to me. Instead of selective gray rock, I just said ‘leave us alone. I stepped up. You stepped off and a child doesn’t have time to wait. You have added nothing to our lives but drama trauma and upset and she can’t handle that now. Bye” (OOOOOPS!)
He didn’t ask about the child after years. He just puked his good deeds and progress and blew obsession in my ear eye mind like “God will reunite us wholly and completely as I have prayed 680 days and God does nothing in half measures.” The next day he wrote another page saying 681 days today. After I sent my letter, he thanked me for the scent in it!!! It had no scent! It sat on my floor of my room for months before I had the nerve to send it. It may have smelled like paper/ink/catlitter…. Dilusional!! Scary!
2 months later I got served with a pack of lies demanding rights and it never stopped. Our lives were under attack and they make sure you are a lone fighter in your battle even with attorneys. I wish I could kill him. Many times I said “Richard Ramirez at least had the decensy to kill his victims”. The grass is always greener even in death……..
You’re welcome, Louise, and truthy.
When I write an article…it is usually aimed at myself more than “teaching” others because this is where I need to focus and learn.
I realize that I was taught as a child that setting boundaries was (for most things) a “no no” and I had to let people that I shared DNA with walk all over me and worse, pretend it never happened.
WOW!~ How wide did that make my chinks? How flimsy did that make my armor?
Learning to have thicker, more substantial armor and to protect myself from the “slings and arrows” of others has been a steep up hill learning curve for me. Every time I stand up to someone, confront them, I feel like a little kid who has had their first successful ride on a 2 wheeler without the training wheels.
Recently, I confronted the people who rent my pastures on my farm. These people keep THEIR farm immaculate. It looks like something out of “perfect farm magazine” with the big white house on a hill, fields perfectly manicured, fences looking new…everything a “class act” but they had allowed my gates to fall down, damaged my gate to the road so that it was impossible for it to shut, let the weeds grow up in the pasture and along the fence rows. I had “mentioned to them” several times and then mentioned again….and received promises….but after 2 or 3 nights of losing sleep over it, I got my lease in hand and went over to the big house on the hill and said “You know, you guys keep YOUR place immaculate and weed free, so I KNOW you KNOW how to keep a place looking nice and the pastures free of weeds, and I’ve had to ASK and ASK to get the weeds in the pasture taken care of, and there are still 5 year old trees growing up in the fence line and I can’t close my gate to the road because one of your crew hit it with some equipment and broke the post off and bent the gate. It embarrasses me to have to come over here time after time and nag at you all to do this or do that…you’re adults, you know how to take care of the place and all I have ever asked is that it is kept in as good a shape as you got it in. I won’t ask again, the next time I HAVE to ask it is a 90 notice.”
Well, within 2 days they had a 4 man crew over here cleaning fence rows (one cedar tree was so big one of the Mexican hands took it home as a Christmas tree!) and setting new gate posts and rehanging gates and tightening fence wire.
I am right righteously proud of myself for confronting them. The thing is I thought of them as “friends,” and I HATED to have to confront them as “friends”, but they apparently thought of me simply as the land owner of some of the land they rented, not as “friends.”
In fact, I told the woman (her husband was the one I had told and told and told) of the couple, she said she had not known there was a problem (which I don’t believe as she has been over here moving horses multiple times) I said “I consider you friends and I hate to have to come over here like this and confront you about it” and as I left she said to me, “We value that LAND and I will see it is taken care of”—Notice, she did NOT say “we value your friendship and I’m sorry we haven’t done as well as we should have on your land we will get it done and do better in the future” she said they valued renting the LAND. Well, I hope so because I am done with begging them to take care of it.
Oxy,
Thank you for writing about boundaries.
I didn’t even know what boundaries WERE until I found LF.
Like you, I was taught that we don’t have boundaries when it comes to your family. On the contrary, I was taught to be a doormat. Based on that, I considered my spath a family member and never set boundaries.
Now, I look at my armor and it mostly consists of an early warning system. That system is my emotions. If I get any indication that my emotions are being meddled with, it’s a red flag.
The chinks in my armor are still my reactions. Though I know what is going on, I have a hard time re-learning how to respond without emotions.