My upbringing didn’t prepare me for the concept of boundaries. Instead, I learned that privacy was seen as a negative and equated to secrecy. I also learned that self-sacrifice was one of the cornerstones of love and that to say no to someone you loved made you a mean, evil person. Needless to say, I left home primed and ready for victimhood, codependent relationships, and heartbreak.

I found myself in situation after situation where I was constantly made a doormat. It didn’t matter how nice I was or how often I changed myself, the expectation was for me to take all of my partners’ negativity and smile while doing so. It had gotten to the point where mistreatment was so normalized, I could never see the warning signs and found myself in one soul-sucking relationship after another.