Setting Boundaries

Setting Boundaries

written by: Kosjenka Muk

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Many people want to live after spiritual ideals such as helping others, kindness, generosity, sharing and so on. Many books talk about ideal behavior which people should tend to develop.

Meanwhile it's usually forgotten that most people today are still at a rather low level of emotional maturity and awareness in relationships. Many people live in too much fear, or have too low awareness of the feelings and needs of others, to be able to respect other people's boundaries. Some people will consciously take advantage of the perceived weakness or complying of the other. sometimes partly unconsciously even, as children who test what can they get away with. So a person who constantly tries to be nice and help others can very quickly come into situation that many people will expect and ask it from her, and in this way exhausting her. In such circumstances there is no mutual giving and receiving, or a true pleasure in the relationship.

You don't own your time, love, or even friendship to anybody. Those are very abstract categories, in which we rarely think about setting boundaries and what we want or don't want. In this area it's even more common to feel guilty than about money or things. Our parents probably didn't give money to anyone - but most children watch their parents spend their time and energy to people they don't really want to be with, in order not to offend them. In this way we learn indirectly, and sometimes even after direct instructions, to behave in the same way.

Sometimes the best way to help somebody is to push him away, not to allow him to cling to us and waste our time and energy. In this way we help the person face himself and his needs, find his own strength and develop independence, while serving and helping would only increase one's feeling that it pays off to be dependent.

Even if you don't see anything negative in some people, maybe you simply won't be attracted to them as potential friends. There's nothing wrong with it and no reason to feel guilty if you refuse the possibility of a close friendship.

According to D. Tannen, women are particularly in danger to neglect their boundaries in this area, partly because of their common tendency to keep harmony and avoid conflict, and partly because our society expects a woman to give more and value her time less than a man. Many people will find it easier to ask for a woman's time or service for free, than of a man.

Talking about money and material side of life, many people, especially helping professionals, would prefer not to ask for money, or try the idea of asking for donations. It might be a good solution in an ideal society of emotionally mature people. Yet most people in our society still didn't develop a sense of balance in giving and receiving, or they are too afraid of losing money to be ready to give as much as you think your work deserves. Then you can feel exhausted, depreciated and exploited, not to mention the problems with paying your own bills. In order to make everybody feel that the exchange is balanced, money is in our society the most practical way of defining the value of what we offer and achieving balance of the exchange.

People who feel worried about spending money, might criticize you for this attitude and try to induce guilt in you, sometimes in quite a subtle way. They will often try to do it through calling upon your own ideals or insinuating that you behave in a way you most try to avoid.

A mature and responsible communication doesn't always mean trying to make other person feel good and avoiding hurting him. Often avoiding telling directly how we think or feel, or avoiding refusing a demand, only means procrastinating and making the problem worse. The other person won't get aware of the problem (and if we hope he/she would realize how we feel telepathically or nonverbally, this is usually fulling ourselves, since everybody has his own way of distorting reality and we can't expect anyone to be objective), so he will continue - probably more and more often - to threaten what we consider our boundaries, untill the situation escalates to either open conflict or avoiding, which both leave a 'bitter taste in the mouth'.

Here is the basic rule: you are responsible for your own behavior, but not for the feelings of others. That means: if you did whatever you could to communicate with respect and integrity, there's no reason to feel guilt even if the other person feels hurt and perhaps blames you.

In a healthy communication, if one person refuses to fulfill a wish or a demand of the other, the other person can check if she wants to change her demands and continue the relationship as it is, or wants to change the type or intensity of the relationship and search for what she wants in some other relationship. This can be done without hurt and blaming, as a natural process, if we see each other as equally important human beings with equally important needs, and communicate clearly. But if somebody can't see you as who you are, and projects instead his expectations from parent, partner or a child on you, he will feel hurt, dissapointed, and will basically make his hapiness depend upon your behavior, which is a recipe for suffering.

In any important communication, it's wise to make clear what every person included wants, and is it acceptable to the other one(s), especially if we have an idea that we might have different expectations. We shouldn't expect that the other person should automatically agree to fulfill our desires only because we want him to, or that he/she should want the same type of relationship we want.

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