Why It Isn’t All About Your “Vibe” When It Comes to Boundaries and Consent
By: Hayla Wong
Tags: Boundaries, Personal Development, Consent, Relationships, Social Justice

Why It Isn’t All About Your “Vibe” When It Comes to Boundaries and Consent

A learning experience that didn’t need to happen.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

This story is about boundaries and expectations. This story is about why, as much as I’d like to trust the world and people completely, I do not. This story is about why I do not fully rely on my own decisions, intentions and “vibes I put out there” to determine how another person treats me.

I was determined, post-trauma and retreating a tiny secluded town, to no longer live in fear for my safety, to be the creator of my own reality, to have my vibrational frequency be my power. I felt in control of myself, my emotions, my surroundings. I moved back to Boulder, CO and proclaimed that if I choose a certain frequency for myself, others should respond accordingly, right?

Not so simple.

I had an Instagram follower who was very curious about me. He shared a lot of philosophical musings with me in my DMs and I engaged. Clearly he didn’t need or want a coach, but I figured it wouldn’t be harmful to have these mentally stimulating conversations.

Soon he told me he was taking a road trip and would be passing through Boulder. At the time, I publicly shared my general location.

Tea? Sure, why not. I felt energetically sanitary in my self-portrayal and intentions, and I was a clear communicator.

I made it clear that it was only tea and that I was not interested in anything beyond acquaintance, at most a friendship, before he even arrived. He acknowledged that he understood and even questioned why I needed to clarify. Why was I so on edge? Of course, it was just a conversation and tea! I felt guilty and silly for having been so presumptive and guarded.

Tea was had and I went on my merry way.

Then he showed up at the gym I went to. Fine, I had no reason to be alarmed. Few gyms here, free three-day pass, I got it. He was still messaging me non-stop, and asked if I’d go for a hike. Sure, still no reason to assume anything right because I’ve put up my boundaries, right? So we go on a hike on a well-trafficked trail.

Toward the end of the hike, I shared that I was emotionally and romantically involved with someone.

He was not thrilled to hear this. Furious, really.

Why the hell did he drive all this way to meet me if I was already involved with someone else?? Certainly, I had misled him.

Notice the 180 from prior conversations.

I left and went home and received a barrage of angry messages about how I don’t let people in, how I’m a warped individual who needs to unlock her soul, let go more and share a deep experience with someone, presumably him. He called me a hypocrite for sharing my heart so personally on social media but unwilling to share it with him. I did some emotional labor trying to talk him down into sense, asked him to stop, then I blocked him when that didn’t quell the slew of harassing messages.

He showed up for 5 hours at my gym the next day — I know because I left when I saw him the first time and tried to go back later. Then the next, then the next, and even the next, beyond the three-day free pass. I stopped going for the next few days, and borrowed a friend’s car so he wouldn’t recognize the car I had driven to the trailhead if I needed to run errands around town.

I went back to the gym a few days later and never heard from or saw him again and for that I count my blessings (seriously).

What an enlightening learning experience that didn’t have to happen.

Takeaways for days:

(Trigger warnings: consent violation, harassment, victim-blaming language)

This is a cautionary understanding of how sovereignty goes in both directions.

Even though I was verbally and energetically clear with my intentions, I had no control over his, despite what he had portrayed. I learned this one the uncomfortable, verging on dangerous, way.

The LOA “vibes” narrative is incomplete and potentially harmful.

This is why I continue to share that we do not entirely create our own realities and that the Law of Attraction principle of like-attracts-like is an incomplete understanding of human behavior.

To blame this or any experience of harassment on a “vibe” that I was potentially emitting to attract this kind of character would be incredibly damaging to any movement toward justice for survivors. It lacks any accountability for perpetrators/violators. By this logic, if a vibe or energetic output is fully responsible, then anything that happens in relation to it (including being violated by a perpetrator) is on you.

No one attracts their assault. No one attracts their murder.

My vibe was “I trust the world and people to treat me with respect” and yet, people unfortunately have the freedom to violate that vibe. Vibe aside, I had communicated my limits clearly.

The conversation shouldn’t be about the vibe, it’s about the actions — stalking and harassment — that happened and the person who committed them. To that end…

It should not be your responsibility to ensure that other people uphold your boundaries.

And it IS your responsibility to not transgress another’s boundaries. And while unfortunately no one is actually obligated to respect your boundaries, we can always endeavor to be as mindful and respectful of others’ as we can, as well as set up safety measures to fortify our own boundaries.

This is not a naive message that is advocating for not protecting oneself; it is an expression of grievance that we still have to be on constant alert for the ways others behave in dangerous ways.

It is unfair and backwards that the onus of responsibility falls on people to not be _____ (insert form of violation here), rather than on people to not commit those acts of violation.

The “well, you shouldn’t have done that” response.

Could I have done something better or different? Sure. I wrestled with this experience for quite some time and did not share it with anyone at first out of guilt that perhaps I was in the wrong.

I’ve gone back and forth between even sharing commentary on this part. For the sake of clarity and of absolving myself and anyone who has experienced something like this of shame, I’ll address this piece with a series sarcastic rhetorical questions:

Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if people could stick to their word’s integrity?

Wouldn’t it be dandy if when someone confirms that “it’s just tea” and “yeah, I understand, nothing more than acquaintance/friendship” they actually mean it?!

And wouldn’t it be just swell if we didn’t have to interact with the world as if folks are dishonest with their actual expectations and will intimidate/harass you for not getting what they want even when you’ve been clear on what you are able to offer them?

These things that shouldn’t be too much to expect somehow aren’t the default. No one should feel guilty or be shamed for expecting and believing the best in others and then being misled.

Additionally, I took my safety precautions anyways.

This is a glaring example of how boundary transgressors operate.

People who violate boundaries do so by manipulating your emotions so that you are actually the one to betray your own boundaries, leaving them almost innocent. A common tactic is to punish you for having boundaries, often targeting your character. This individual engaged in that very practice by pointing to my social media openness as a reason for why I should open myself to them, character attacks, and using psycho-spiritual jargon (something I was very susceptible to at the time).

If a person uses manipulation to get you to consent, it’s not actually consent.

Consent and context.

I share consentingly on my social media platform; just because I’m openly expressed in my controlled environment does not mean I need to extend that same energy to any certain individual. This reeks of “what were you wearing?” and “well, she has a history of boyfriends/stripping/etc.”

Right now there are also so many overly-simplified conversations happening about OnlyFans. One logically-fallacious commentary tries to draw an irony between teens being upset that their nudes were circulated in high school but are now charging money for the same type of content. Again, this is a conversation about consent and being in charge of what is shared and with whom. Nudes being circulated = no consent; creating nude content to sell = consent.

There is so much more.

This is obviously a bigger topic around men expecting a woman to be interested in a sexual/romantic interaction simply for being courteous or for going out of their way without being asked. It is also a larger conversation about protecting oneself vs. teaching others not to violate people, though I really wonder why this needs to be up for debate. I’m not unpacking these today and mention them only to place this one experience into a larger context of social and interpersonal issues that require remedy.