Relationship Boundaries: Who's more accountable?

[Xantippe]

Sometimes, especially when you’re in school or some other situation that sort of enforces a social circle on you, you get stuck taking the whole group or taking nobody.

**In that case, I would suggest making a point of cutting your closer friends from the herd occasionally.

Everybody doesn’t always need to do everything together. **

Still, you do have some latitude about how seriously you take someone’s boundaries. There is a middle ground between acquiescence and advocating for something “fair,” which is abiding by the rules but not keeping your mouth shut about whether they make any sense.

“Yeah, Sarah, I know. You don’t hug your male friends. Well, except Frank and Ted, but Frank is cute, and Ted is–well, I don’t know what Ted is, but apparently some category that I’m not in. Yes, Sarah, I get it.” Then you let Sarah stammer around about how she’s not being inconsistent. IOW, you don’t get to argue with her and you don’t get to cop a hug she says she doesn’t want, but as a consolation prize you do get to express that you’re not buying what she’s selling in terms of an excuse.

**Ted may be gay, which may make Sarah more comfortable about hugging him. This fact may or may not be generally known. Meanwhile, Sarah and Frank may be a couple already, but haven’t announced it.

I really don’t think we ought to be bugging people about why they don’t want to hug us. The answer may be, “I feel comfortable hugging Frank and Ted and I find you creepy.” Who wants to hear that?

There is no right to hugs. I don’t even make my kids hug me if they don’t want to and I definitely wouldn’t make them hug a relative. People (no matter how small) deserve to be able to define their physical comfort zones and to decide who they will and will not be physically intimate with, even if it’s just a hug.
**

If she claims she never goes drinking as a reason to not go out drinking with you when she absolutely does go drinking and everyone knows it, you can cough into your hand while saying B&%$#t. You’d be wise to leave her out of your plans to visit a bar, though.

**Maybe she’s recently realized she has a drinking problem and she needs to cut back or stop.

And maybe the group’s bar runs are killing her finances. Or she’s lost her job and can’t afford the gang’s expensive lifestyle anymore.

I don’t approve of white lies, but I know that other people frequently use them to spare themselves and other people embarrassment. They are often used by basically good people.
**

If she says she never loans anybody money and then she hits you up for a loan, you can say “I thought you said that loaning people money was a sure way to ruin a friendship. Wouldn’t want to ruin our friendship, you know, Sarah.” But she’ll still be mad if you don’t loan her the $20 she wants. (I’d say “so what,” and let her go without, unless she was going to be in some danger if she couldn’t pay for a taxi or something like that.)

**A real friend would find out what she needed the money for and just give it to her as a gift if she really needed the money, wasn’t misusing the money, and if they had the money to give. **

Others do not say all these things, but they think them, and they take Sarah’s stock down many points in their blue books. That is the price Sarah pays for the way she keeps her so-called standards–she loses the respect and trust of those who know her best. I think the best friends are the ones who call her on this stuff, because we are all tempted to give ourselves mulligans, but you’ll figure out pretty quickly whether or not she is quite that open to friendly reality checks. If she shoots the messenger, keep your mouth shut and let her figure it out herself. Nobody has a lot of sympathy for a guy who has lived on the sea all his life and still can’t figure out which way the wind blows, either.

Or, alternately, they might feel like Lost Wanderer is harassing Sarah.

I note that he has mentioned repeated similar behavior from women. He says that other people don’t think he’s being creepy, but I have a feeling that those other people are male. Am I right?

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

He says that other people don’t think he’s being creepy, but I have a feeling that those other people are male. Am I right?

Nope. I’ve had girls actually encourage the ‘harassment’ too. Heck, if the subject matter was with regards to finance or business policy, girls actually outnumber the guys! I don’t know about you but some women simply put up unjustifiable boundaries.

 

[DarkLight]

Nope. I’ve had girls actually encourage the ‘harassment’ too. Heck, if the subject matter was with regards to finance or business policy, girls actually outnumber the guys! I don’t know about you but some women simply put up unjustifiable boundaries.

Could you perhaps give us an idea of what an incident of trying to cross what you think is an unjustified boundary would come up? Are we talking about just physical boundaries, or are there other things around too?

 

[Xantippe]

Could you perhaps give us an idea of what an incident of trying to cross what you think is an unjustified boundary would come up? Are we talking about just physical boundaries, or are there other things around too?

Yes.

I continue to think it’s suspicious that it’s a gendered thing and that Lost Wanderer is having more trouble with young women and boundaries than young men.

With regard to other women cheering LW on, there could be some warped motives for them doing that. (You might wish to review Mean Girls or Heathers for the possible reasons why a girl might encourage an awkward guy to violate another girl’s boundaries–it might be because she wants to humiliate both the awkward guy and the other girl, punish the other girl for some reason, or just to amuse everyone at your expense.)

For LW:

It doesn’t matter if it’s an “unjustified boundary”–a boundary that you can’t live with is one that will cause a sensible person to reduce their contact with the problem person as much as possible. We don’t get to choose other people’s boundaries for them.

 

[EasterJoy]

Or, alternately, they might feel like Lost Wanderer is harassing Sarah.

I note that he has mentioned repeated similar behavior from women. He says that other people don’t think he’s being creepy, but I have a feeling that those other people are male. Am I right?

The point is the if Sarah says, “I don’t hug my male friends” and then turns around and makes all sorts of exceptions, of course her male friends for whom she makes no exceptions are going to take her down a few notches on the estimation scale, because she says one thing and does another.

If, OTOH, Sarah simply answered a query about why she doesn’t hug Lost Wanderer with “I’m not comfortable with it. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings,” then that really is that. If he pressures her into coming up with a reason and that reason doesn’t hold water, he has himself to blame as much as anyone. She does not owe him an excuse, and forcing her to come up with one is forcing her into a false position. It is one thing to discuss these things with your friends in order to enhance your understanding, and quite another to start a “discussion” in order to buffalo them around to doing things your way because their boundaries have an intuitive basis instead of an easily-articulated one that therefore passes as “more rational.”

What if she says she has no money, goes along on an outing, racks up spending on her credit card that she can’t afford, and then blames her friends for “letting” her spend so much? Again, they’re going to take exception to that. If, OTOH, she says she does not want invitations for their expensive outings and they try to pressure her to do otherwise, then I think she has a complaint. They know the boundaries she is trying to set for herself, and they’re only making it hard on her.

In the end, people have the sole right to set their own boundaries. They don’t owe anyone else a defense, but if they offer one, it is fair to expect it to be an honest defense. If it is not, then there is nothing wrong with calling them to account for the dishonesty. That does not imply that the right to set the boundary has changed one bit.

 

[EasterJoy]

Nope. I’ve had girls actually encourage the ‘harassment’ too. Heck, if the subject matter was with regards to finance or business policy, girls actually outnumber the guys! I don’t know about you but some women simply put up unjustifiable boundaries.

Maybe your problem is that you think you have some right to hear a justification. Other people have a right to set their own boundaries without owing anyone else a defense. You ought to expect yourself to abide by those boundaries, because you respect the person who made them as having the human dignity to say “yes” or “no” about their own life decisions.

If the person is less diligent than you are about respecting their own previously-announced boundaries, then that is a reason to take their word with a grain of salt. If they do not respect their own boundaries, who would trust them with someone else’s boundaries, when no one is looking? If they say they do one thing, but do another, who will take their word at face value? That does not mean, however, that their right to say “yes” when they want and “no” when they want has changed one bit. It only means that they have taught you to take their “yes” and their “no” with a grain of salt, in terms of predicting their behavior.

Does that make sense? You have room to complain about the difference between what someone else says and what he or she does, but even dishonesty does not give you the right to deny anyone else their human right to give consent or withhold it, as they see fit. The police can sometimes take people prisoner on account of their self-serving lies, but you can’t. The only “punishment” you can deal out is to quit trusting that what they say will be backed up in action, and to give and withhold the consent that is yours to decide accordingly.

 

[St_Francis]

The point is the if Sarah says, “I don’t hug my male friends” and then turns around and makes all sorts of exceptions, of course her male friends for whom she makes no exceptions are going to take her down a few notches on the estimation scale, because she says one thing and does another.

If, OTOH, Sarah simply answered a query about why she doesn’t hug Lost Wanderer with “I’m not comfortable with it. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings,” then that really is that. If he pressures her into coming up with a reason and that reason doesn’t hold water, he has himself to blame as much as anyone. She does not owe him an excuse, and forcing her to come up with one is forcing her into a false position. It is one thing to discuss these things with your friends in order to enhance your understanding, and quite another to start a “discussion” in order to buffalo them around to doing things your way because their boundaries have an intuitive basis instead of an easily-articulated one that therefore passes as “more rational.”

What if she says she has no money, goes along on an outing, racks up spending on her credit card that she can’t afford, and then blames her friends for “letting” her spend so much? Again, they’re going to take exception to that. If, OTOH, she says she does not want invitations for their expensive outings and they try to pressure her to do otherwise, then I think she has a complaint. They know the boundaries she is trying to set for herself, and they’re only making it hard on her.

In the end, people have the sole right to set their own boundaries. They don’t owe anyone else a defense, but if they offer one, it is fair to expect it to be an honest defense. If it is not, then there is nothing wrong with calling them to account for the dishonesty. That does not imply that the right to set the boundary has changed one bit.

I thnk perhaps Sarah is not putting her boundaries clearly when she speaks with others about them. If she were clearer, then they might understand better.

So, she doesn’t hug people she doesn’t know well, rather than she doesn’t hug people. She can’t make it that night, when she can’t afford to go.

We are not owed an explanation of other people’s decisions unless we are in authority over them, and it could be that Sarah has in the past endured people continually coaxing and pleading and expecting explanations for her decisions.

 

[EasterJoy]

Yes.

I continue to think it’s suspicious that it’s a gendered thing and that Lost Wanderer is having more trouble with young women and boundaries than young men.

With regard to other women cheering LW on, there could be some warped motives for them doing that. (You might wish to review Mean Girls or Heathers for the possible reasons why a girl might encourage an awkward guy to violate another girl’s boundaries–it might be because she wants to humiliate both the awkward guy and the other girl, punish the other girl for some reason, or just to amuse everyone at your expense.)

For LW:

It doesn’t matter if it’s an “unjustified boundary”–a boundary that you can’t live with is one that will cause a sensible person to reduce their contact with the problem person as much as possible. We don’t get to choose other people’s boundaries for them.

It could just as easily be that Lost Wanderer has a world view within which he expects all of his choices to agree with an over-arching philosophy–that is, his goal is to live life and make decisions in a very rational way that can withstand the scrutiny of logic and be defended by evidence of the gains and losses to be expected by setting a certain standard of behavior.

His friends, meanwhile, and especially his female friends, probably make their decisions in a much more intuitive way. They decide as they go along what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. They don’t feel a need to force themselves into anything because they don’t have a set of principles that they can readily articulate which lead them to act in a certain way. They may go by cues that they sense, rather than a rational check-down list that leads to the “green light” or the “red light.”

If their inability to understand each other does stem from this very different set of decision-making habits and if he wants an explanation for how others set their personal courses, of course it is going to be impossible for them to come up with one that is going to satisfy him. If he pressures them, they might try, because it is the expectation now that people ought to have a rational basis for their decisions. In truth, however, intuition can be a better guide in some instances. This is particularly true when dealing with manipulative people. You can’t “out rationalize” them. You have to be willing to trust you gut instinct, and just say, “You know, I could be wrong, but this just does not feel right.”

In the end, the person setting the boundary is the one that is going to have to live with it. The psychologists and neurologists will tell you that the human brain does not make more unerring decisions when the frontal lobe is calling all the shots. Emotion and intuition have their own “rationality,” too, based strictly on results. For that reason alone, it is not rational to expect other people to restrict themselves to act on purely rational lines of thought. That doesn’t lead to the most satisfaction and the least regret or the most correct guesses and the least wrong ones. It is a mistake to teach them otherwise.

On that account, Lost Wanderer, I’d give up on trying to force your friends to “justify” their boundaries. You do not know it, but you’re trying to take tools out of their decision-making arsenal, and very useful tools at that.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Regarding women and sexual boundaries, fair or not, women have been made to be the gatekeepers with respect to them. But the difference is that in the past, they had help enforcing their sexual boundaries via chaperones and other social conventions. Now we’re asking women to do said boundaries on their own and we’re asking men to respect same when we know many men don’t. Then we’re surprised we get the results we see in greater society? Boundaries are a social matter more than they are an individual one …

 

[EasterJoy]

I thnk perhaps Sarah is not putting her boundaries clearly when she speaks with others about them. If she were clearer, then they might understand better.

So, she doesn’t hug people she doesn’t know well, rather than she doesn’t hug people. She can’t make it that night, when she can’t afford to go.

We are not owed an explanation of other people’s decisions unless we are in authority over them, and it could be that Sarah has in the past endured people continually coaxing and pleading and expecting explanations for her decisions.

Your guess would be my guess, too–that is, that this inexplicable female friend makes her decisions for reasons that she can be certain of without being able to articulate them, yet she feels that she “ought” to be able to put her decision-making process into words because such decisions are “supposed” to be rational.

Well, no, deciding who you will hug and when is not likely to be a 100% rational decision. There will be intuition involved. There will be unpredictable issues of how you feel at the moment involved. Your sense of the person right in front of you in a particular moment will come into it in a way that dry theory cannot predict. Lost Wanderer would do well to realize that this is legitimate, and encourage his friends to honor their own internal sense of what they do and don’t want to do. That is the kind of support that makes a friend into gold–that is, the friend may offer their more dispassionate sense of things, but in the end allows each one the unquestioned authority to decide his or her own way, including room for mistakes that are not met with any well-deserved “I told you so” comments afterwards.

 

[manualman]

But that’s exactly the point. In fact, what if your example extended to more than just one party? Say you’re the only person being singled out to uphold a particularly rigid set of boundaries by someone else. Every other person is free to violate them. You both share the same friends who are calling the other person to stop being so biased. Why then should this picture be regarded as some hapless victim being pressured by the peers?

| know someone’s going to say, “Depends on the boundaries or the morals.” It’s just that it is as you said: There are people who only hold a few hapless individuals to certain boundaries while letting everyone else scot free for just the pettiest reasons!

Thus, one can conclude that the person creating said boundaries should be tasked with maintaining the core responsibility where everyone else’ compliance will rest upon.

I skipped a couple pages, but this strikes me as dangerously close to the “but she wore a skimpy red dress and we ALL know what THAT means” defense.

Hopefully I just am reading you wrong…

 

[DarkLight]

Physical boundaries can be especially fussy. I’ve had times where the real reason is that if people touch me a certain way it reminds me of my ex. But the whole ex story is not the sort of thing that I really want to share with people I don’t know too well, because to make it actually make sense gets to be too much information for a lot of relationships. And really “you remind me of my crazy ex” isn’t something most people want to hear.

Lost_Wanderer, what I’d recommend is you try to look at things a little differently. Don’t spend so much mental energy on how it’s not fair. For little things like different levels of physical contact, try to consider that they might have reasons that are more personal than they want to share. Or they might just not be very good at expressing things well. But either way it’ll make things a lot nicer for you going through your life.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Hopefully I just am reading you wrong…

You are. Badly. Very badly.

Maybe your problem is that you think you have some right to hear a justification. Other people have a right to set their own boundaries without owing anyone else a defense.

I’m just saying that from my personal experience, this ‘right’ has a limited lifespan. I can only close myself off from the same people for so long. (Then again, maybe it’s only more proof that I don’t live in America.) People like to stretch my position to the creepy extreme but I know what I went through. It’s just as extreme to always emotionally migrate from here to there because other people wouldn’t respect my ‘space.’ If you ask me, that sounds like a psychopath: a brooding nomad who was always mad at the world.

The only “punishment” you can deal out is to quit trusting that what they say will be backed up in action, and to give and withhold the consent that is yours to decide accordingly.

Yet some people call this abuse, harassment, and downright ‘creepy’ too. Go figure.

Or they might just not be very good at expressing things well. But either way it’ll make things a lot nicer for you going through your life.

I know you think you’re suggesting some revolutionary way that could wonderfully impact my relationships with other people but… it’s not.

I’ve tried. I only got hurt. I only got used. Someone’s so-called ‘boundaries’ shouldn’t be an excuse to tyrannize my life. And yes, there are times when you are the bigger person when you stand your ground instead of walking/running away (like I always did).

 

[on_the_hill]

In my experience, trustworthy people very rarely demand trust.

I imagine the cliched used car salesman saying, “Trust me! She’s a reeeeaaaal cream-puff! Would I lie to you, friend?”

 

[DarkLight]

I’ve tried. I only got hurt. I only got used. Someone’s so-called ‘boundaries’ shouldn’t be an excuse to tyrannize my life. And yes, there are times when you are the bigger person when you stand your ground instead of walking/running away (like I always did).

See this is what’s confusing people. You talk about people tyrannizing your life. But then your examples are of people not letting you touch them - a thing that to most of us would be at worst an annoyance when coming from someone who’s not a romantic partner. Most of the time it wouldn’t be worth more than a shrug.

I’m guessing there’s something more going on that isn’t coming through in this thread. But none of us know what that is from what you’ve said.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

See this is what’s confusing people. You talk about people tyrannizing your life. But then your examples are of people not letting you touch them - a thing that to most of us would be at worst an annoyance when coming from someone who’s not a romantic partner.

Why are you so caught up in my hypotheticals? They’re just illustrating a point. Said point is: Why should I follow rules that a person constantly violates and change every single second, to the point that even people who’ve known said person longer think they’ve gone completely uncorked?

You and other couple posters here seem to have this distorted impression that I give the third degree to every woman I meet. Kill that assumption. Now. It’s pretty clear that your traumatic experiences with men give you a right to be fearful but I am not those men.

On the bright side, it’s really showing how we’re all coming from two opposite extremes of bad experience. One is when boundaries are exceedingly violated by others and the other is when others use their boundaries to control other people’s behavior.

 

[DarkLight]

Why are you so caught up in my hypotheticals? They’re just illustrating a point. Said point is: Why should I follow rules that a person constantly violates and change every single second, to the point that even people who’ve known said person longer think they’ve gone completely uncorked?

Because if the rules are (1) fairly minor, and (2) don’t harm you, you ought to be a decent person and follow them. And if the above two criteria are met, the proper response to someone who keeps changing the rules is to just leave them alone. If someone’s inconsistent with whether or not they are ok with being touched, you just don’t touch them. Problem solved.

Whether or not you’re actually being harmed (as opposed to annoyed) is extremely relevant to the response. I’ve had to tell my mother no on some boundaries that she set, because she wanted both to not have me tell her what she could and couldn’t say and to say hurtful things and then set boundaries on what I could and couldn’t say in response. That boundary involved things that were actively inappropriate and harmful to me, so I had to say no that’s not how things are going to work.

It really does make a big difference what sort of boundaries we’re talking about, what sort of things are involved. The response to X sort of inconsistent boundaries is different from the response to Y sort. Your examples are X sort but some of the things you say make me think you’re dealing with Y sort.

 

[St_Francis]

Why are you so caught up in my hypotheticals? They’re just illustrating a point. Said point is: Why should I follow rules that a person constantly violates and change every single second, to the point that even people who’ve known said person longer think they’ve gone completely uncorked?

You and other couple posters here seem to have this distorted impression that I give the third degree to every woman I meet. Kill that assumption. Now. It’s pretty clear that your traumatic experiences with men give you a right to be fearful but I am not those men.

On the bright side, it’s really showing how we’re all coming from two opposite extremes of bad experience. One is when boundaries are exceedingly violated by others and the other is when others use their boundaries to control other people’s behavior.

How do others use their boundaries to control other people’s behavior?

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

How do others use their boundaries to control other people’s behavior?

Simple. Be a walking dictionary of don’t-do-this and don’t-do-that, all the while washing, rinsing, and repeating obscure reasoning ad nauseam.

 

[DarkLight]

How do others use their boundaries to control other people’s behavior?

The example I listed above with my mother is actually a type of that. She’ll claim boundaries that mean (1) it’s no ok to ask her to not say certain things to me, and (2) it’s not ok for me to be upset or respond negatively if she says those things. Or she’ll try to say things like she gets to determine what sort of physical contact she has with me and any attempt to tell her no is a violation of her boundaries. Or she’ll have inconsistent rules for how it’s ok to speak to her that seem to change whenever she doesn’t like what’s being said.

It is an attempt at control. She’s claiming boundaries and using them to try to act how she pleases with me, while making me out to be the bad guy for not smiling and putting up with it. And I’m working on responding the way you respond to people like that - limited contact and keep it superficial.

That’s what I was trying to say earlier - it matters a lot whether someone’s boundaries are something appropriate for them, something within their own sphere, so to speak. So my mother can make boundaries about how she wants to be spoken to, or touched. She cannot make boundaries about how she gets to touch me or speak to me. I don’t respect those sorts of boundaries because they’re not hers to make. It’s not a violation of her boundaries if I walk away because she’s being rude to me, no matter how much she might say it is.