Happiness Blog September 9, 2019

Knowing what fidelity and loyalty mean to you can help you understand the actions that reflect loyalty and fidelity. Giving yourself permission to consider your own values allows you to gain a deeper understanding of what you do and do not want, what you will and will not tolerate. A good example of this is that society tells us that if the people in our lives make one fidelity mistake, they should be out of our lives. This works for some people and for some relationships. Being honest with ourselves about who we are and what we value allows us to move beyond what society, friends, and family tell us our fidelity boundaries or rules should be.

Being completely honest with yourself, contemplate forgiving a friend for violating your trust or your intimate partner for violating fidelity. What would you want the consequences for such violations to be? Do you see a path that would allow you to forgive such violations and, if so, what types of violations would you want to be able to forgive? Be specific and detailed. Look back over your history and reflect on things you tolerated that you regret tolerating and things you did not tolerate that you regret not tolerating. It is ok to regret cutting people out of our lives too quickly or not forgiving when time and distance tells us that perhaps we could have forgiven and that forgiveness would have led to greater happiness and contentment now. The reverse may true, in that we forgave and allowed the person who violated us to stay in our lives and time tells us we would have been happier and more content if we had let them go.

It doesn’t matter what our lessons were, but rather that we use the lessons of the past to inform our fidelity and trust boundaries in the present. Our history tells us who the happiest version of ourselves is and what we need our boundaries to be. It is important to reflect on the growth that we have had when looking to our past to inform our present, because we are most likely not the person who those things happened to. We are most likely wiser, older, and more aware of our needs. We can use the past to guide our present wisdom and inform how we craft our boundaries for the here and now. I find it helpful to write boundaries down and reflect on them. I find that by writing them down and reflecting on them, I can refine them before communicating them to anyone else. I can also ensure that when my moods and mindset change, the boundaries fit all the shapes of me.

Posted on Monday: 09 September, 2019