There are a few things you can know with certainty.
You can know your motives.
You can know your intentions.
You can know what you feel, what you need, what you are willing to participate in, and what you are no longer willing to tolerate.
You know these things because you have access to what is happening inside you. But there is something you cannot know with the same certainty: what is happening inside someone else’s mind.
One of the biggest shifts I have had to make in my own life was recognizing how often I assumed I understood another person’s motives or intentions. They hadn’t told me. I was relying on the story I had created in my own mind about them. Once I noticed that pattern, I began intentionally catching myself whenever I crossed that invisible line. I started calling it staying in my lane.
Staying in my lane has two equally important parts:
- I have to be careful not to step into someone else’s lane.
- I have to be careful not to surrender my lane when someone else tries to step into mine.
Healthy relationships require both. This post is about the first. Part 2, publishing next week, covers the second.
What Belongs in Our Lane?
My feelings belong to me.
My thoughts belong to me.
My boundaries belong to me.
My decisions belong to me.
My motives belong to me.
My intentions belong to me.
My interpretation of my experiences belongs to me.
And yours belong to you.
That means I can’t tell you what you feel, and you can’t tell me what I think. I can’t decide which boundary is right for you, and you can’t decide which boundary is right for me. I can’t tell you what your intentions are when you haven’t expressed them.
We can influence one another. We can offer perspectives, disagree, ask questions, and even recognize patterns the other person may not see yet. But there is still a line separating one human being from another, and healthy relationships respect it.
Don’t Step Into Someone Else’s Lane
The first part of staying in our lane is recognizing when we assign meaning to another person’s behavior that we cannot actually know. We can observe behavior. We can recognize patterns. We can listen to what someone tells us. We can evaluate the impact their behavior has on us. But observation and interpretation are not the same thing.
There is an enormous difference between saying:
“This person repeatedly speaks to me disrespectfully.”
and:
“This person speaks to me disrespectfully because they want to destroy my self-esteem.”
The first describes observable behavior. The second assigns an intention. Maybe that interpretation is correct. Maybe it isn’t. But I don’t need to solve that mystery to decide what I am going to do about the behavior.
This became very real for me in one of my relationships. I reached a point where I was no longer willing to participate in conversations that consistently included insults, labels, character attacks, blame-shifting, or put-downs. I established a clear boundary: if I was not spoken to respectfully, I would disengage from the conversation. If the pattern continued, I would further limit that person’s access to me.
I didn’t need to tell myself:
“They are doing this because they want to hurt me.”
“They want to destroy my confidence.”
“They are deliberately trying to make me miserable.”
Maybe one of those things was true. Maybe none of them were. That part wasn’t mine to determine. What was mine to determine was that the behavior was not acceptable to me. It was hurting me and destabilizing me. That I can know for certain. From that place, the next move is not analyzing why the other person did what they did, but deciding what I will do next. That’s my lane. That’s when my boundary gets implemented.
My statement was:
“If you choose to communicate with me this way, I will not participate in the conversation.”
I’m not controlling what another person says. I’m deciding what I will do when it happens. Their intentions belonged in their lane. But their behavior gave me enough information to make decisions inside mine.
The same distinction shows up in everyday moments:
Observation: She declined the invitation.
Interpretation: She declined because she doesn’t want to have a relationship with us.
Observation: He hasn’t responded to my message.
Interpretation: He’s ignoring me because he wants me to suffer.
The observation tells us what occurred. The interpretation attempts to explain why. Our brains naturally fill in missing information, and sometimes we have good reasons to suspect a particular explanation. But suspicion is still different from knowledge.
A healthier response might be:
“She declined the invitation. I feel hurt and disappointed. I don’t actually know why she declined unless she tells me. But she has a right to decline, and that doesn’t change our relationship.”
Now I have returned to my lane. Her decision belongs to her. My feelings about it belong to me. I can experience disappointment without requiring another person to remove their boundary so that my discomfort disappears. Staying in my lane means I don’t hand someone else responsibility for regulating the emotions their decision created inside me.
It also makes room for curiosity. Instead of “You’re just trying to hurt me,” I can say, “When that happened, I felt hurt. Can you tell me what was happening for you?” And if they have already explained themselves, staying in my lane means accepting that their answer belongs to them, even if I don’t like it.
This Matters Even More in Harmful Relationships
This principle becomes especially important when navigating harmful or abusive behavior. I say this from personal experience.
When someone hurts us deeply, one of the most natural questions is: Why? Why would someone who says they love me behave this way? Why would they hurt me? Why do they keep doing this? I have spent hours, days, weeks, and at times much longer, trying to understand another person’s behavior.
But eventually I discovered something important:
I don’t need to understand someone’s motive before I protect myself from their behavior.
If someone repeatedly insults me, I can respond to the pattern. If someone violates my boundaries, I can establish consequences. If someone behaves aggressively, I can take steps to protect myself. If someone’s behavior consistently leaves me feeling unsafe, I can take that impact seriously. I don’t have to diagnose them, determine exactly what they intended, solve their childhood, or prove what is happening inside their mind. Their internal world belongs to them.
And there is an important safety distinction here. Staying in your lane does not mean ignoring danger because you cannot prove another person’s intentions. If someone’s behavior becomes threatening, aggressive, unpredictable, or makes you believe you may be in danger, you do not need certainty about what they intend before taking reasonable steps to protect yourself. We can avoid pretending to know someone’s internal motives while still taking observable behavior and safety concerns seriously.
Bring Your Attention Back Home
There will always be moments when our minds want to cross the line. “I know why she did that.” “I know what he really wants.”
When our attention becomes consumed with another person’s internal world, our energy moves away from ourselves. Why did they do that? What are they thinking? Did they mean it? I can spend enormous energy climbing into someone else’s mind, far from the only place where I actually have agency.
So I return home.
How is this affecting me?
What behavior am I observing?
What am I willing to participate in?
What am I unwilling to tolerate?
What boundary do I need?
What belongs to me, and what belongs to them?
Your Practice This Week
This week, when you catch yourself assigning motives, intentions, thoughts, or feelings to someone else, stop and ask: Do I actually know this, or am I filling in the blank?
Then return to your lane: to what you know, what you feel, what you need, what you can do, what boundaries you may need to set, and what you will and will not tolerate. That is what belongs to you.
Return what belongs to them back to them, and come back to yourself.
That’s the first half of staying in my lane. But there’s a second half: what happens when someone steps into mine. That’s where we’re going next time.
