Setting boundaries is fine — until it isn't.
That's a dry sentence to open a piece that takes aim at an everyday, under-discussed tragedy: the women and men locked forever inside the pleasing pattern, who lost themselves along the way.
I mean all those who were placed by their families — usually unconsciously and unintentionally — into that very dangerous role: "the good boy." "The good girl."
It goes like this.
Parents are supposed to love the child, and the child wants — so badly — to win the parents' love. So far, a normal and undramatic equation.
And as we grow, we bump into a frightening truth of life: love always arrives with a price tag. Even if we begin life in a state of unconditional love, as we cross through school and out into the world, we discover that love comes with terms. As the poet Yehuda Amichai wrote: God has pity on kindergarten children; less on schoolchildren; and on the grown-ups, no pity at all.
Growing up is hard. No discounts.
The tragedy begins when the proportions break.
Put less dryly: the "good girl" is born when parents attach their expressions of love — and the protection they're willing to give — absolutely and exclusively to the child's proper behavior.
Meaning: we will love you as long as you behave. Step outside the lines, and there is a real chance we turn our backs.
And if the girl is normal and bright, she grabs that deal with both hands. She behaves beautifully, walks the line with all her strength — and at first she's delighted. Life is solved! She cracked the system! Just behave, and mom and dad's love is guaranteed.
And when that girl becomes a teenager and then a woman, slowly, invisibly, she begins to feel she's been cheated to the bone.
She no longer remembers what natural joy feels like. She's forgotten when she last moved through the world carefree. And worst of all — she replays the good-girl pattern with every new person in her life.
In her career, honestly, it works in her favor. Her bosses adore the flawless execution, and they don't much care that what fuels those wonderful results is a primal terror of being abandoned if she dares to fail.
In her love life, it's worse.
Simple and cruel: she is not occupied with what she wants and needs. She thinks, day and night, about what she must do to prevent the abandonment of the person she loves.
And she is efficient — spectacularly efficient. She performs, she gestures, she runs the kids and the house and the life, so that nobody here would ever dream, even in hint form, of leaving her.
Because the self running her is not her authentic self. She is addicted to what psychology calls the false self. Her thoughts, feelings, and actions all point at one question: "What must I do so they'll be pleased with me?"
Instead of the more normal question most of her friends live inside: "What would make ME pleased, and glad, and satisfied in this world?"
If you're raising children, take three things your child must experience — at least in the first five years — to stay clear of the false-self trap:
a. Full legitimacy, from you, to play all day and be carefree.
b. Ongoing interest — being seen, having their particular outline recognized, constantly.
c. Hearing from you, again and again, how wonderful they are exactly as they are.
Do that, and their odds in life get meaningfully better.