I’m not sure about you, but I use a lot of words. Don’t most women? I am a communicator and depending on if it’s written, verbal or non-verbal, what you say isn’t necessarily what people hear. I know this. I’ve studied these various forms and taught on them many times over the years. Tone can be misunderstood in text and emails and your face can speak volumes without a word coming out of your mouth. How we knit all of these together and use them creates how we do, or don’t communicate with others. Because miscommunication is such an issue in work and life, I tend to want to cover all the bases or be as crystal clear as possible in order to close the gap for misunderstanding. When you are married you tend to hope that your significant other “gets you” or can read your mind. Sorry folks, it doesn’t always work that way. No matter how long you are in a relationship with someone, you still need to communicate and have hard conversations about what your needs and wants are. The longer you are together the more assumptions you might make. One of those I took for granted where the parameters surrounding what was healthy for me in my marriage. What snuck up on me was my lack of boundaries.
Andy Stanley has an excellent series called Guardrails. The idea is the guardrail is there to protect you. To keep you from danger and going over the cliff. What is so good for couples is to have discussions and know what the guardrails are in your marriage. Guardrails is a great conversation starter to clarifying those boundaries.
Once you have defined those boundaries, the challenge is keeping them. This is where I got lost for many years. My desire to verbally ask for what I needed and attempts to hold others accountable for my boundary, didn’t magically cause others to respect my boundary. My thinking was, we agreed on a guardrail or boundary, so why are you crossing it, causing hurt and not respecting it? I must not have communicated it clearly enough. So I would make a request. While my request may or may not have been considered, what I lost sight of was the lack of control I had to influence others decisions to respect my boundary. My boundaries were being walked all over and I just kept asking for them not to by making requests. Phrases like “please don’t” or “will you promise” didn’t enforce anything. The story I kept telling myself is, we set a guardrail, I’m pointing it out, that should be enough to autocorrect. I didn’t enforce the boundary though. Boundaries are only as good as the ability to follow through. I desired to be loved and to show love to the point of allowing myself to compromise my health and boundaries. While I thought I was clearly communicating, what I discovered was a pattern of making requests and not upholding boundaries. So when someone would tell me they had moved our agreed guardrail because it didn’t work for them over and over, I compromised my boundary instead of holding firm.
This plays out in many areas of life. Marriage, kids, work and friendships. What areas of your life are you making requests instead of holding firm boundaries?
Short of the story, I found my voice and set my boundaries. It may have taken too many years and a lot of hard lessons followed by immense hurt that I was trying to avoid, but it’s healthy and it’s good. God gave us boundaries. Some might say they are His idea. I believe He does want the best for us and that can be found in His Word.
-Jennifer
*Also check out Lysa TerKeurst book, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes. A great tool to help you see who you are and how boundaries can be good.