Boundaries by Darylynn Starr Rank

Boundaries.  Definition: 1. a boundary denotes a line or an area separating one piece of territory from another; 2. any line or thing marking a limit. Relatively easy to do when you're drawing a line in the sand separating one team's playing area from another. Even easier when you're doing a survey marking the dividing line between your house property and mine.

But start looking at the boundaries between people…Start trying to delineate where your feelings leave off and your spouse's feelings begin…Where your child's successes, or failures, exist for your child but not for you…Where your needs are tangled up with everyone else's… That's where boundaries get seriously complicated, where the lines between us all get blurred, and limits can become both challenging to see and impossible to hold on to.

I have a girlfriend from high school…(She lives far away and nobody here knows her. I say this because this is one of those personal stories.) She was married for several years (yes - do notice the verb tense) from a very early age, to someone she loved very much. They were lovely together in all sorts of ways. But it's the other ways that were the problem. For example…

He was a social creature. Had a large group of friends and wanted to spend time with them - a lot. She was somewhat less sociable. And she really just didn't like his friends very much. Still, she struggled mightily to like them. To feel comfortable with them. To enjoy being with them. But time after time, when the whole group went out for an evening of fun, of dining and drinking, chatting and dancing - you know 'fun' -  she would hate it. She'd be miserable and unhappy, silent and withdrawn. And she'd sulk the whole way home.

She didn't like herself for doing that.

So she started expressing her desire to stay home sometimes. And encouraged her husband to go out and enjoy his friends alone. But that made him uncomfortable. He felt guilty. Convinced that if she'd just try harder, she, too, would have a lot of fun, he urged her to keep trying. After all, his friends were great…

If she insisted on staying home, he'd 'sacrifice' and stay home with her. But then he was miserable. Which made her feel guilty. So she kept trying.  

The pattern solidified. For years, she'd go out with the group and be miserable. At the end of every evening her husband would be upset that she was so unhappy. So they'd talk about her unhappiness, her inability to have fun. Her problems with socializing. In sum, they'd have long discussions about how neurotic she was. 'Why couldn't she just relax and enjoy an evening out'?

She and her husband both kept thinking her husband's feelings were the 'right' ones. Of course she should be able to go out with their friends and have fun.

Well, after many years, they split up. And after a while she met someone new. The new fellow likes to socialize, too, but not quite as much. So they go out, just the two of them (quite a lot), or they spend lovely cozy evenings at home. 

This time around, she likes his friends. And she discovered the astonishing fact that, when they do go out for a night on the town with people she actually likes, she actually does have a lot of fun. She talks and jokes. Sometimes she's even the life of the party.

Looking back on her younger relationship, she shakes her head in disbelief. She summed it up nicely. "Why couldn't I just tell him - tell myself, I guess - I didn't like his friends, didn't want to spend much time with them, didn't mind if he did, and leave it at that." 

I've imagined the perfect response from him as well. "I wish you liked them better, but if you don't, well, you don't. Let's compromise. I'll go out with them some of the time by myself. And some of the time you and I will go out on our own.  What do you think?"

I think that would have been better. I think they would have been a lot happier if they could have simply remembered that boundary line - the one that denotes 'separating one piece of territory from another'.

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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