My original solution to having bad boundaries was to never be in a position where I would have to have them.
Once I realized that there were people who did not have my best interest at heart, and that I had been conditioned from childhood to appease aggressive people, I started avoiding aggressive people like the plague.
And I still stand by that.
As a strategy, it’s fantastic for protection.
The problem is that it hinges on your ability to control the people in your environment.
So it fails as soon as you have to go to work or deal with police officer, or any situation where you don’t have a choice about whether you can opt out or leave.
It also doesn’t help build our ‘psychological immune system’.
It’s good to develop the proactive ability to assert yourself and your boundaries.
Not only is it a core line of defense for how you protect yourself, it’s your MAIN line of defense legally.
- If you allow people to trespass on your property, and they create a trail or road they use frequently and without your objection, you may have given them an ‘easement’ on your property.
- If someone builds a fence on your property but you never contest it, they may actually be able to claim your property through ‘adverse possession’.
- If you allow someone to stay with you, after a certain amount of time, they are legally a resident or tenant: with rights. A situation you may not have ever intended, and one that means you may have to actively evict them to get them to leave.
- If a police officer stops you, you often have to actively assert your rights in order to preserve them.
A lot of people are non-confrontational.
They ‘go along to get along’, and in the process, can accidentally disempower themselves legally or otherwise.
As the economy gets worse, takers take harder.
And if you’re an over-giver or someone who struggles with boundary and confrontation, it’s important to realize how crucial it is that you’re able to set boundaries.
They’re going to have a sad story, and it may even be true, but you have to figure out where your “no” lies because it isn’t possible to give them everything they want or need.
And if your boundaries are poor, you can end up with a tenant in your house you never intended.
It isn’t just hobosexuals, it could be anyone who ‘just needs a place to stay’
…and then pushes and pushes and pushes to stay, until they’ve suddenly established residency or tenancy without you even realizing it.
It’s one thing to decide you want to help someone, it’s another to be coerced into giving them what they want.
…or to be tricked into giving them rights in your home.
This actually happened to me with my abusive ex many years ago.
He was suddenly living with me, and when I told him I wanted him to go back home (to his momma’s house – I know) it was our first big argument. I said I wanted to be able to decide when we did that, not ‘slide into it’, and he insisted that he didn’t live here, just ‘stayed here’. And then told me I was the one who wanted him there, and hadn’t he done all these things to help around the house and make it better? And apparently letting him be there was a irrevocable choice that I could never re-evaluate. Then he told me I was weaponizing my ‘power’ over him because I had the ability to make him leave, and that was abusive.
Oh. my. god.
And now it’s years later, and I’m watching people be evicted from their homes onto the street. People that young-me would have jumped to offer a place for them to stay, where current-me knows that I have to be extremely careful who I allow in my house. Not just for legal concerns, but because I have a child, and their safety takes precedence.
What I can do is help them self-rescue.
Provide respite, a place to charge their phone or take a shower, give them a tent (I should own stock in tents), direct them to specific resources, make calls on their behalf.
I can still be on their side.
But if I took no-boundaries Invah and brought her to today, she would be eaten alive.
I mean, I’m still working on it.
But I’m doing better. And I hope everyone in this community is doing better too, because it is going to be a mass disaster.
And when people are drowning, they will drown the rescuer.