Actually blocked my mom on all comm aps. We communicate only work related stuff by short emails. Did this a couple of months ago before getting to read you.
You cannot begin to imagine how my life has taken a turn for the better since she's had the volume turned down. Most people think it's heinous. She gave me life not extended her life though mine.
"You only have 3 tools to enforce a boundary in the modern age: your attention, your affection, and your commitment."
Rian taught me a language for boundaries that I'd never known before:
"I don't date girls who do that."
Too many people think that boundaries are a matter of controlling OTHER's behavior, and that's where they get messed up. Boundaries are about YOUR behavior.
What I learned from Rian was that when I'm using words to communicate a boundary, I start with the first person pronoun "I" followed by the verb "don't."
More examples for me:
"I don't stay in conversations with people who insist on telling me what I think, feel, or want" and
"I don't invest my (time/money/energy) in people who ignore my advice."
If there's a difference between a boundary and an ultimatum, and I'm not sure there is, then maybe the difference is in the subject of the sentence.
An ultimatum sounds like "You do X or else Y."
A boundary sounds like "When I am confronted with X, I do Y."
Before I learned boundary language, the best I could do at boundaries was to communicate "don't wants." For example, before my marriage dissolved, I told my wife:
"I don't want to be married to a drunk anymore."
In retrospect, my language was mushy and porous. Maybe it would've been better to have said "I won't be married to a drunk anymore," because stating a "don't want" is an invitation to a negotiation -- not the same as a boundary. Nonetheless, it was the best I had at the time.
Like most of us, I learned the language of ultimatums long before I learned the language of boundaries.
For example, after telling my wife what I "didn't want," I said "Either you quit drinking, get yourself into a program and sober up, or we will be divorced." The ultimatum felt a lot easier to communicate than the desire.
T. Torero used to bang on about Boundaries On Bullshit(B.O.B) that I found very useful in which you remove attention to the level of bondary that was broken. Happy to have this reenforced by a switched on RP writer . Nice one man!
Actually blocked my mom on all comm aps. We communicate only work related stuff by short emails. Did this a couple of months ago before getting to read you.
You cannot begin to imagine how my life has taken a turn for the better since she's had the volume turned down. Most people think it's heinous. She gave me life not extended her life though mine.
it's simple boundary enforcement
Fantastic post, thanks.
"You only have 3 tools to enforce a boundary in the modern age: your attention, your affection, and your commitment."
Rian taught me a language for boundaries that I'd never known before:
"I don't date girls who do that."
Too many people think that boundaries are a matter of controlling OTHER's behavior, and that's where they get messed up. Boundaries are about YOUR behavior.
What I learned from Rian was that when I'm using words to communicate a boundary, I start with the first person pronoun "I" followed by the verb "don't."
More examples for me:
"I don't stay in conversations with people who insist on telling me what I think, feel, or want" and
"I don't invest my (time/money/energy) in people who ignore my advice."
If there's a difference between a boundary and an ultimatum, and I'm not sure there is, then maybe the difference is in the subject of the sentence.
An ultimatum sounds like "You do X or else Y."
A boundary sounds like "When I am confronted with X, I do Y."
Before I learned boundary language, the best I could do at boundaries was to communicate "don't wants." For example, before my marriage dissolved, I told my wife:
"I don't want to be married to a drunk anymore."
In retrospect, my language was mushy and porous. Maybe it would've been better to have said "I won't be married to a drunk anymore," because stating a "don't want" is an invitation to a negotiation -- not the same as a boundary. Nonetheless, it was the best I had at the time.
Like most of us, I learned the language of ultimatums long before I learned the language of boundaries.
For example, after telling my wife what I "didn't want," I said "Either you quit drinking, get yourself into a program and sober up, or we will be divorced." The ultimatum felt a lot easier to communicate than the desire.
https://seagertp.substack.com/p/how-i-got-my-wife-to-quit-drinking
T. Torero used to bang on about Boundaries On Bullshit(B.O.B) that I found very useful in which you remove attention to the level of bondary that was broken. Happy to have this reenforced by a switched on RP writer . Nice one man!
Hard to find signal in the moanosphere noise glad I stumbled upon your material