What are some of your boundaries and with whom do you use them?

[Poison Ivy]

I don't know whether this is a boundary, but it sometimes feels like one: My sister has caregiving behaviors that sometimes cause her stress. Her ex husband will be living with her for several months after surgery. She visits our mother, who lives in a memory care facility, every day. My boundary is that although I offer a bit of empathy sometimes, I don't offer to fill in for her if she misses a day going to the memory care facility and I'm not going to help her take care of her recuperating ex husband. I also don't say to her, "Why are you doing this stuff that is causing you stress?"

[square]

Good job, PI.

We have been NC with MIL for over a year now, but a boundary I hadto work hard on was refusing to run interference on her behalf with H, namely prodding him to call or take time off work to visit her or whatever.

A long time ago, I'm sorry to say, I did in fact "remind" him to do his filial duties. Then I simply passed along her messages but refused to own the task of continuing to follow up. Then I "complied" by emailing him the messages, knowing he'd never see them, but I could truthfully say "I'll pass him the message."

But finally I told her that she could text him. "But he doesn't reply to me!" Well, you could send a follow up text if you want. But asking me to tell him is just me sending him a text, and she has a phone. She was furious over this.

It was hard for me to maintain that boundary because she pushed and pushed and got angry and said or implied I was being childish and unhelpful and maybe wasn't part of the family. My heart would be hammering as I told her no. But I did it.

[LemonLime]

Oh I love this topic! Boundaries are my new best friend.  I finally learned what a boundary is at age 55.  Yup....better late than never!  And now I can't stop making boundaries, everywhere I go.  It's addictive!

For PD sib/enabling mom:
1.  I won't sleep under the same roof with PD sib, or ever be in a kitchen with her, or be alone with her
2. I won't tell my mother anything about myself that I don't want my sib to know (cuz she will blab)
3. I will leave a conversation with sib at the first sign of abuse from her.  The FIRST sign.  I will interrupt a conversation, leave abruptly in the middle of a sentence, whatever it takes to stop the abuse in its tracks.  I don't care how awkward it is, who is there to witness it, or what kind of kerfuffle it creates
4. I share absolutely nothing "interesting" or personal about myself or my FOC to my sib, and as noted above I don't share much with mom since her currency seems to be passing personal information about others on to whoever..

For everyone else:
I no longer triangulate in any way.  I don't get in the middle of things.  I let people contact other people themselves.  I don't act as intermediary.   I keep my nose out of other people's business.
Also, I answer very few questions.  I don't share much info with many people.  I think "why do they need to know that?" before answer a question.  No more automatic answering any question that comes my way.   Instead I say "I don't know" a lot.

I am SO much freer these days!  Wish I'd done all this so many years ago!

[Rebel13]

I love this question, Poison Ivy. I had to give it a little bit of thought. And LemonLime, I love your answers! I am in my 50s also and feeling like I have just recently understood what boundaries actually are. I loved the analogy that SonofThunder posted the other day, where the construction workers put up the warning signs and concrete barriers to protect themselves. They don't ask us drivers to respect them or be careful, they just do what needs to be done to keep themselves safe, and any feelings we might have about their boundaries are simply a byproduct. For so long I thought having a boundary meant begging and pleading with people to respect it/my feelings. But nope!

As I thought about this question, I realized I don't have to set too many boundaries, because I have set a lot over the past many years, mainly having to do with keeping self-absorbed, emotionally immature, and other varieties of annoying people OUT of my life. My partner and some of my friends have friends that I won't spend time with. Right or wrong, those people set off my stress reactions from my childhood, and I'm just not having it. I've also let a few friends go over the past year because I was disappointed in the lack of support and concern I received from them when I had a major health crisis.

So that makes life simpler.

One boundary that I keep, and struggle with, is not complaining to my partner about things she does in the house that I don't like, or not doing things "my way." I got trained very well in childhood to do things a certain way to prevent reactions, temper tantrums, and punishments from my mother, and it's taken a long time to unlearn the fear, and the sense of entitlement about that, which my mom passed on to me. If I don't like how something is, I can either fix it myself, or ignore it. I don't get to be critical about it. My partner has always been very patient and forgiving about my household habits that she doesn't like, and my coming around to behaving more like her in this regard has improved our relationship immeasurably.

Another one is that I'm low contact and I share very little information with my sibling, because he was the golden child when we were growing up, and still is enmeshed with my mother to some degree. He seems to feel compelled to tell her everything, even though I am not in contact with her. I also tend to be hurt by things he does (or doesn't do) that I interpret as him not valuing me or our relationship. (I know that I've done things in the past that have damaged it, so this is not all on him, by any means.) So I don't contact him, and I use the brief-informative-firm-friendly (BIFF) method to reply when he contacts me. I never mention or discuss my mother with him, and if he mentions something she has said or done, I either ignore it or I say "Thanks for letting me know." I'm trying really hard to avoid the triangulated communications of our childhood and to not get my feelings hurt when he shows me our relationship isn't what I wish it was.

[Call Me Cordelia]

I've been thinking about boundaries around communication I have lately. There are certain people in my life who I let calls go to voicemail and I will simply not answer calls or texts until the following day, or at least for several hours.  Texting back quickly invites an endless and immediate back and forth so I just don't jump to respond anymore.

With my children and husband, I will not have a shouted conversation across rooms. If they call me, I'll answer, "Kitchen!" or wherever I happen to be, but that's it. If you want to talk to me, come to me. Otherwise it can't be that important. (Exceptions for bleeding and barfing and such like, obviously.)

[IsleOfSong]

I've been thinking about boundaries around communication I have lately. There are certain people in my life who I let calls go to voicemail and I will simply not answer calls or texts until the following day, or at least for several hours.  Texting back quickly invites an endless and immediate back and forth so I just don't jump to respond anymore.

With my children and husband, I will not have a shouted conversation across rooms. If they call me, I'll answer, "Kitchen!" or wherever I happen to be, but that's it. If you want to talk to me, come to me. Otherwise it can't be that important. (Exceptions for bleeding and barfing and such like, obviously.)

These are both great! I treat my phone like email these days — people can leave me a message, or a text can linger a bit. I'll respond when I'm feeling up to it.

And the yelling across the house thing — ugh! I actually was diagnosed with some mild hearing loss earlier this year, so I use that to my advantage by not participating in shout-versations between rooms. Even without the hearing loss thing, I always hated the idea of barking from room to room like that. When did that become acceptable?? Come find me if you need to speak with me, you lazy people!

[Rebel13]

With my children and husband, I will not have a shouted conversation across rooms. If they call me, I'll answer, "Kitchen!" or wherever I happen to be, but that's it. If you want to talk to me, come to me. Otherwise it can't be that important. (Exceptions for bleeding and barfing and such like, obviously.)

This is a great one! We need to institute this. We both have mild hearing loss also, and even though our house isn't that big, we often don't hear something said in the other room. It's annoying and frustrating, on both ends of that!

[Rebel13]

I found another one today! My partner has unexamined "stuff" with her FOO. Her parents are both dead, but she has siblings and things rear their heads occasionally, like they did today, naturally because of holiday things. I am realizing I need to not participate in discussions with my partner about her siblings. If I express disapproval about anything, it sets off her guilt, and then I become the one who needs to be defended against. Even though my goal is usually to protect her and help her feel better, I recognize that those are things she needs to do for herself in that area. I need to work out my loving medium chill muscle. "Oh really?" "Interesting." "What do you think about that?" "Why do you say that?" "What would you like to do about that?" I need to get very aware and clear what my boundaries are about visits etc., and that it is OK that I have them, implement them, and communicate clearly and lovingly about them when needed.