On Boundaries

Almost every woman I sit with eventually says a version of the same sentence. It rarely comes in the first session. It arrives later,  once she’s decided I’m not going to think less of her for it.

He’ll think I’ve gone cold.

She won’t speak to me for days.

I said no last week and I felt sick about it until Sunday.

I have boundaries. I hold them without much drama, and I’m aware that can look, from the outside, like something I was handed at birth. It wasn’t. It took years, and most of those years went on undoing what I’d been taught about being good.

So I know what’s underneath the fear, and it isn’t really about the child. It’s the belief that closeness is conditional and love is something you keep topped up by never being difficult, and that one no could drain it.

What I can see from here is this. A boundary isn’t control. Control is about the other person - what they do, how they behave, whether they fall into line.

A boundary is about me.

It’s a statement about where I end. My child can be as furious about it as he likes, and it doesn’t stop being true.

There’s no other show tonight. That’s not a punishment, and it isn’t a negotiation either. It’s just where the evening finishes today.

A few things are not only helpful but necessary: always say it while looking at them, the tone matters more than the words, and children read tone long before they parse sentences.

Try to keep it short. Every extra sentence of justification makes it sound like you’re not sure, and they can hear that. When I'm wishy-washy with my boundaries, my children pick up on it immediately, and the negotiations last much longer.

Leave them something to choose. No more telly, but you can pick a book or drawing. The limit holds, and they still get some say inside it.

And do it before you’re at the end of yourself, not after. Boundaries I set while regulated tend to hold. The ones I set at half past eight with my jaw clenched come out as something else entirely, and then I’m apologising for the delivery instead of standing behind the decision.

Nobody in my house growing up said no kindly. It was either a door slamming or it was nothing at all, and I had to work out the middle option as an adult, in real time, with real children watching.

They push against mine constantly. Daily. That’s the whole point.

You can’t lean on something that isn’t there.

With love,

Ewelina