I often find that people have confusion about why, when they set a boundary, it doesn’t work or they can’t keep people from blowing right through them. I hope to clear up some of that confusion.
First off there is a difference between a boundary and an ultimatum. An ultimatum is about what I want someone else to do. “You will not call me when you are drunk,” “You can’t play that music after 10,” or “You are not allowed to yell at me anymore” are all examples of ultimatums. On the other hand, a boundary is always about what I will or won’t do. “If you call me drunk, I will hang up immediately and will not answer again until the next day,” “I will turn off the internet at 10,” “I will walk away, if you start yelling at me.”
The second piece to boundaries is that they are enforceable. “I will make you turn off the music at 10” is not really an enforceable statement unless we mean to say “I will yell, display my displeasure, and loom over you until you feel afraid enough to comply with my demand” (BTW don’t do that). However, we can certainly turn off the internet, hang up the phone, or walk away.
We can also fail to hold a boundary by staying on the phone anyway or staying when we are being yelled at rather than hanging up or walking away. In that case, they are not violating our boundaries, We are.
Now, be aware that the other person can take a number of other actions to get us to engage with them. They can keep calling or follow us out of the room and we may need to set additional boundaries up to and including involving some outside support, possibly calling the police. We can’t control others and we can’t make them respect our boundaries. They will make that choice. And if they don’t respect our boundaries, we have the choice to continue letting them or to stop having contact with them. Of course, we can hope it doesn’t get that far before we have been able to work something out. Try not to set boundaries that will likely result in that kind of power struggle to begin with.
Working something out is another topic. More to come on that later.