Setting Boundaries with Love: How to Care Deeply Without Losing Yourself
Have you ever felt guilty saying ‘no’ to someone you care about? Or found yourself awake at night, worried about a friend’s problems? You’re not alone. While many of us understand the concept of boundaries in relationships, putting them into practice – especially with people we love – can feel uncomfortable or even scary.
Setting Boundaries Isn’t About Building Walls; It’s About Protecting Ourselves and Those We Care About
We can sail along without thinking about boundaries when relationships are going well. However, when a relationship hits a bump, we start feeling uncomfortable, exploited, or resentful, and we realize it is time to communicate our needs, limits, and expectations.
This topic became personal for me recently when I sought help from a therapist to address my own boundary challenges. What surprised me was discovering how many of my friends were wrestling with similar situations in their families and friendships. Our experiences inspired me to dig deeper and share what I’ve learned with our Sixty and Me community. In this blog, I offer a few guidelines to help ensure everyone feels respected, valued, and safe.
Often, we need to set boundaries in everyday situations that make our life difficult: a relative who continuously arrives two hours late to family gatherings or a friend who asks for advice, does not heed it, and comes back complaining. Consider these more challenging situations where boundaries become essential:
- Co-signing on a car loan, the person defaults, and your credit plummets.
- Lending money to someone who doesn’t pay it back and then asks for more.
- Receiving verbal abuse from a person with a mental health or substance abuse problem.
Whatever the case, we find ourselves giving beyond our means, feeling exploited, or, at the very least, made to feel uncomfortable. If we step back, we can see how fostering dependency actually enables the person to keep the pattern going.
Setting Boundaries Is Not Easy, But It Is Doable!
Of course, we want to be helpful and giving, but we need to ask ourselves if our giving is genuinely helping or creating dependency. A helpful book, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen and (Finally) Live Free by Terri Cole, provides practical suggestions. Cole explains that most of us, especially women, have been impacted by messages from childhood that cause us to worry that if we set boundaries, it would mean we are selfish and egotistical.
Yet, by not setting boundaries, we can develop co-dependent relationships with patterns that continuously repeat themselves. Sometimes, the very people with whom we need to set boundaries know how to pull on our heartstrings or manipulate our feelings. However, we can learn to decline a request without feeling guilty and maintain the relationship even after saying no. This might mean supporting someone’s efforts to solve their problems rather than trying to solve those problems for them.
Guidelines that Can Work in a Variety of Situations
Through my work with my therapist, I developed three straightforward guidelines that transformed my approach:
- First, identify realistic boundaries that reflect both your capabilities and limitations. This means being honest with yourself about what you can and cannot do, both emotionally and practically.
- Second, aim to maintain meaningful connections without compromising your integrity. Focus on fostering relationships that respect both parties’ needs and values. Sometimes, this requires temporarily or permanently ending the relationship.
- Third, offer help within your sphere of influence and in ways that create genuine positive change.
Following these guidelines has brought me a sense of inner peace. While I deeply feel compassion, I recognize that I cannot control another person. By setting healthy boundaries, we say yes to more balanced, authentic relationships, take care of ourselves, and live in harmony with our values. The path to establishing boundaries isn’t always smooth or easy, and there may be initial resistance or discomfort, but you and those you love and care about will be better for it.
Also read, What Are Boundaries and How Do We Set Them?
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Have you set boundaries with loved ones? What prompted those boundaries? How did you decide where your boundaries are?
I loved reading this!
Just for fun, I wanted to share a “teachable moment” story with you. When my son was in high school a young woman asked him to the prom. She was cute, very smart, and on the gymnastics team. He basically put her on hold for a few weeks until he heard back from a pretty, popular and rather buxom cheerleader, who eventually accepted his offer. The first girl then discovers why he declined her offer, taps him on the shoulder one day when he was at his locker and says, “So….you were just stringing me along, huh? I was not your plan B!” Thwack!! She slapped his face and walked off.
Despite his bruised ego and sore cheek, he got no sympathy from this Mom. In fact, I told him to apologize to her, and he did. She is now a successful attorney. I’ve often teased him about choosing the wrong gal. lol!
Interesting little footnote – there was a female teacher whom he knew well who was in the near vicinity when it happened. She walked by in the immediate aftermath, while he was standing there alone, rubbing his cheek and feeling quite embarrassed. She simply stopped for a moment, smiled and said something like, “don’t worry, you’ll work through it”. I thought that was classy. It showed confidence in him to fix things with the young woman. I love the sisterhood component there as well, since the teacher deferred to the girl’s judgement that a slap was fully warranted for this transgression, without the teacher knowing the details. We women have to stick together :)
Funny that this should appear in my email box this morning. Although not mentioned, having sex — or not having sex — with my husband is a boundary that is extremely difficult to navigate. He’s 82 and in poor health, but he still feels it’s okay to wake me up for sex (or something like sex) at least once a week. I’m 68, and love him dearly, but sleep is far more important than sex to me. He cannot possibly cuddle — which I enjoy – without seeing it as a sexual invitation, so I find myself avoiding even touching him in bed. In addition, since I have taken on the role of his caregiver, I simply no longer see him as a sexual object. If I turn him down, he’s angry at me. If I capitulate, I’m angry at myself. Has anyone else navigated a road like this? How can it be handled?
Cindy, There is a Christian writer who speaks to this issue, and her take is that
if you value the relationship, let your husband have his 10 minutes of “glory” at
a time of day that is convenient for both of you, in the midst of a particularly good day. Perhaps by you initiating “cuddling” then knowing he will respond in a sexual way, you can regain some of the control you feel you have lost. Maybe you can take a much needed nap afterward! Truly, I know how difficult it is to look at someone you Care-give for as desirable or sexually attractive, but the alternative is alienating. If he is “satisfied” at a more reasonable hour of the day, perhaps the weekly gropings will cease. If not, move into another bedroom and explain to him the real reason why. As a Caregiver, you absolutely need your rest. Good luck!
I share all of the same feelings! Yet at the same time, if I could grant one wish for my husband when he is suffering, it would be for him to continue to feel like a whole man. And so I love him sexually every time I can, like it may be his last.