Boundaries are a topic guys can listen to. They are something that deep down we know we need to pay attention to, but the one most important is also the most avoided and most painful to implement. It is rooted in fear, fueled by anxiety and mostly dreaded by all married men, boundaries with their spouse.
In chapter 9 of Boundaries, the situation is unfolded. We go there. The difficult, the challenging and also dangerous areas of our life.
It does not just begin with marriage, it is established during the dating phase of relationships. Some of the biggest challenges facing married people is reestablishing the false, unhealthy boundaries set during the dating period.
The biggest challenge seems like an obvious one. Boundaries foster separateness, while marriage has the goals of oneness. The whole idea of becoming one, leaves a mental concept of no separateness. More marriages fail because of poor boundaries than for any other reason.
What is your assessment of boundary definition in relationship with your spouse?
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not; Each participant in a relationship still has his or her own life. We each have our own identity. There is the clean spouse, and the not so clean spouse. There is the loud and outgoing spouse and the quite, reserved spouse. Each couple as two sets of characteristics molded together to create a new.
Boundary problems arise when one person trespasses on the other’s personhood, when one crosses a line and tries to control the feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, and values of the other person.
When was the last time you were guilty of a boundary violation with your spouse?
Feelings
Everyone’s got them, whether they share them, express them or attend to them. With that comes responsibility. One of the most important elements that promotes intimacy between two people is the ability of each to take responsibility for his or her own feelings.
The definition, and status of feelings can get real messed up when boundaries are fuzzy. A person’s expectations and pride mold and shape boundaries and the status of our boundary impacts our emotions and feelings.
A spouse can be disappointed and sad because of the actions of the other person, or for unreasonable expectations. We can compare how things used to be and how things should be. One of the most challenging sections of the chapter was the explanation of the spouse trying to share their feelings. (pg. 159). The challenge is to be able to share feelings and not focus on the justification or assumptions or disappointments.
We do not communicate our feelings by saying, “I feel that you…”
Feelings are a warning system telling us that we need to do something. When we stuff our feelings, we are promoting denial and making a decision to ignore the God given gift of feelings. As men we grew up with this mysterious ability to feel, it was uncomfortable and some times embarrassing and so we learned to adapt our feelings, to hide our feelings and to alter our feelings.
Desires
Desires are another element of personhood that each spouse need to take responsibility for. Our desires are many times defined by our expectations. Sometimes our selfish desires spur-on unreasonable expectations and then our feelings are impacted by the situations. The example in the book (pg. 160) was almost comical, but I know for me, I have lived out both sides of that story multiple times.
One person has expectations of the other. When the other does not live up to the expectations, it impacts us, and we put the whole blame and give full credit to our experience to the one that did not live up to our expectations, and that paints our emotions. We justify our emotions and even admit they are not healthy, but blame the actions of others on our feelings. When in reality, we have not taking our own responsibility of communicating our desires that have consequences on our emotions.
Problems arise when we make someone else responsible for our needs and wants, and when we blame them for our disappointments.
That problem is rampant in relationships; friends, co-workers, parents/children and most importantly, marriages.
How would you assess your feelings and desires in your marriage or relationships?
Problems arise when we blame someone else for our won lack of limits. In all relationships it is easier to blame someone for being inappropriate or irresponsible than it is for us to establish boundaries and defend them.
The easy route is for one to be angry and blame a bad relationship on the behavior of another, when the first responsibility is for the person to establish and communicate boundary definitions and the consequences of the invasion of the soul. We can all point fingers, whine and complain about what someone did to us, and easily ignore our part in the disaster. We did not defend our soul. We did not tend to the boundary that was poorly established. We ignored the big draft coming in under the door, and now we are cold.
Laws or Boundaries in Marriage
When boundaries are not defined and known, consequences are equally unknown. It concept is practical, but avoided repeatedly. If our spouse continues to do something that impacts us and we don’t communicate the issue, define a boundary and discuss a consequence, we just throw oily rags in the corner and wait for the fire…
We cannot change our spouses, all we can control is our responses to them. If it seems difficult, it is because it is, but the truth of the matter is, we can’t heal a wound by saying it is not there.
The challenges in all the laws presented are common, we need to take power over what we can control, ourself. We need to give up trying to control and have power over someone else.
Boundaries always deal with us. Setting boundaries to say what you will do and what you will not do. Only these kinds of boundaries are enforceable, for you do have control over yourself.
What are some areas in your marriage that you allow to continually impact your soul? Are their any boundaries defined in those areas? Have they been communicated? Have consequences been evaluated? Have they been shared?
Men, we need to own the truth about our feelings and hurts and communicate those feelings directly to our spouse with love. The communication has to be done in a way that does not make the spouse feel punished, but knows that they are experiencing the result of their consequences.
This will not come in an instance. This will take some time, but as responsible soul keepers, we have the right and duty to defend and protect our soul and help our spouse be the best they can be as well.
People have control over their own behavior, they have control over the consequences of that behavior.
Resoluiton
Beginning on page 171, we get a helpful action plan that we need to each take. It would be very beneficial, instead of just trying to do things we have always done and getting what we always get, to try the checklist of actions provided;
- Inventory the symptom – recognize and avoid denial.
- Identify boundary problem – how did it or does it occur?
- Find origin of the conflict – what is the common behavior that may be established from former relationships or even the family.
- Take in the Good – use your community group, your accountability team to help support the definition of your boundaries.
- Practice – improve the definition and practice engagements with your boundaries with trusted friends (if you don’t have a community, you might struggle in this situation) and practice defending and communicating boundaries. Practice with safe people enables and prepares us for boundary conflicts with all the other people in our life.
- Say not to the bad -put limits on the bad in your marriage. Say no to unreasonable demands. Stop demanding unrealistic expectations of others.
- Forgive – to not forgive is to lack boundaries. Unforgiving people allow others to control them.
- Become proactive – decide limits, communicate and defend.
- Learn to love in Freedom & Responsibility – loving comes out of freedom.
When we are in control of ourself, we can give and sacrifice for loved ones in a helpful way instead of giving into destructive behavior and self-centeredness. This kind of freedom allows one to give in a way that leads to fruit. Remember, “no greater love has anyone than to lay down his life for his friends” . This is to . live up to the law of Christ, to serve one another. But this must be done out of freedom, not boundaryless compliance.