August 06th, 2015

A Summary of Boundaries in Marriage – Speaking the Truth in Love

My intent in doing these blogs is to introduce good resources for marriages and families.  In the current series about Boundaries in Marriage I’ve discussed what boundaries are and how they work.  I wanted to spend the rest of this entry going over some of the other boundary-related issues addressed in Cloud & Townsend’s book.  These are discussed below.

The requirement for the “oneness” that most of us want in relationships is two healthy individuals.  All of us need to overcome our tendency to think the world revolves around us to become emotionally healthy.  A healthy individual allows the person they love to have freedom in the relationship, not control.  An unhealthy person will assume they always need to be happy, and this will damage all of their relationships. 

Instead of this unhealthy mindset we need to make the following positive choices.  Choosing to love God, to love your spouse, to be honest, to be faithful, to be compassionate and forgiving, and to be holy will put your relationship on the path to being the best it can be.  When we love God, we are willing to obey Him, and He gives us reasons to stay together and the power to change.  When we love our spouse we identify with her to the point that we feel the effects of our behavior on her.  When we are honest with each other, we are more likely to talk about things that, though difficult, can lead us to greater intimacy.  When we are faithful to each other it will mean being sexually faithful and also faithful with our hearts.  When we are compassionate and forgiving, we are able to deal with the fact that both of us are not perfect.  When we choose holiness we are without blame, pure and whole, better able to pursue love and to get rid of things that get in love’s way.

There is always a danger of intruders in the marriage relationship.  Both spouses must diligently guard against the intrusions of such things as work, children, TV, in-laws, church, etc.  All marriages need outside support, and no marriage has all of the resources both partners will need, but be careful what outside supports you chose.  For example, the wife who confides more in her mother than in her husband is likely preventing growth in her relationship with her husband.  The husband who is overcommitted to his job (or ministry) is also damaging the relationship with the one he committed his life to.  It’s also very important to remember that parenting is temporary while marriage is supposed to be permanent. 

Cloud and Townsend identify several types of conflict including: sin of one spouse, immaturity or brokenness of one person, hurt feelings that are no one’s fault, and desires of one person versus the needs of the relationship.  They also describe some “rules” for how do deal with each type of conflict. 

When conflict involves the sin of one spouse, humility and grace are needed.  Then the offended spouse will be able to understand they are not better than the one who offended them.  But while we need to be soft on the person, it’s important to be hard on the issue. 

When conflict is due to the immaturity or brokenness of one partner, it will be necessary for the other partner to accept the reality of the situation, communicate support to their spouse, and develop a plan. 

When feelings are hurt but no one is to blame, develop a plan to avoid causing the hurts in the first place.  When there are conflicting desires, don’t moralize your own preference, and consider meet your spouse’s needs before your own.

If conflict is around the needs of one person versus the needs of the relationship, it’s good to remember that marriage needs to come first, but individual needs should also be considered. 

A final note on boundaries in marriage is that they can be misused.  Boundaries are not about escaping responsibility.  If a spouse doesn’t communicate when they have set boundaries but only enforces them, this is a misuse of boundaries.  Also, if the spouse who sets the boundaries isn’t willing to take ownership of their part of the problem, a misuse of boundaries has occurred. 

Overall, Boundaries in Marriage by Cloud and Townsend is a great resource for your marriage if you struggle with maintaining a sense of individual freedom and personal integrity in the marriage.  The authors do a great job of helping the reader apply Ephesians 4:15  (“… speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,” NASB).  And that’s the way I want to summarize the concept so it’s easy for us to remember: Boundaries are about speaking the truth in love.  Here’s an example to help us with the overall concept.

Jay is a very structured person; he’s on time, on schedule and organized.  Terry is less so.  She’s very artistic and creative, and sometimes she gets so involved in the moment that all of her other responsibilities, commitments and obligations are forgotten.  Obviously, this is pretty frustrating to Jay, he’s been annoyed by it since they’ve been married and has nagged, criticized and complained about it over the 10 years they’ve been married.  But then he’d make excuses for her or try to prevent her (or both of them) from experiencing the consequences of her poor time management.  Finally someone directed him to a book on boundaries, and he decided to set up a boundary around this issue.  He realized he will have to speak the truth to Terry, but do it in a loving way.  So he came to Terry after dinner and asked if they could talk.  He knew this was about the lowest stress time in her day, and he chose it because they needed to have a hard conversation. 

Jay: “Terry, for the last few years I’ve nagged you a lot about trying to get places on time, and I’ve realized that’s not what I should be doing.  Even though I’ve said things and been upset with you, I’ve never stood up for what I wanted in this area.  But now I want to try something different.”

Terry: “I still don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but what are you going to do?”

Jay: “It is a big deal for me, and it’s inconsiderate of others.  So I’ve decided that when it’s time to leave for anything we’re planning to go to I’m going to leave if you’re ready or if you’re not.”

Terry didn’t like the idea, but Jay realized he needed to give her the freedom to experience the consequences of being irresponsible with her time management.  The test came a few days later when they were supposed to go to dinner with friends.  They were scheduled to meet at 6:00, and it took 15 minutes to get there.  At 5:45 Jay saw that Terry was still working away in her studio, so he left for dinner without her.  When Terry finally realized that Jay had left she was too embarrassed to join them for dinner and chose to stay home by herself.  This kind of thing happened several times over the next few weeks, with Terry opting to stay home each time. 

But the game changer was an invite to Terry’s parents’ house about a month later.  They were supposed to come for lunch on Saturday at noon.  Since they lived an hour away, Jay was ready to go at 11:00, but Terry was in the middle of a project and clearly hadn’t thought at all about getting ready to go.  Jay didn’t want to go by himself and he didn’t want both of them to drive that far, but he knew he needed to maintain this boundary so he left.  When Terry got to her parents’ house (two hours later) Jay and her parents were as kind to her as ever.  Terry’s sisters weren’t.  After that, Terry got an appointment calendar app on her phone to warn her in advance of scheduled events. 

Since then Terry has seen that it was good for their relationship for Jay to set up a boundary around this issue.  They are having less conflict about it, but also Jay is more pleasant to be around because he’s not as frustrated about her poor time management.

In this example, Jay suffered in silence some of the time, but found that his frustration was often coming out as the nagging and complaining.  After setting the boundary, he saw that it was actually not loving to prevent Terry from experiencing the consequences of her irresponsibility.  This had prevented her from growing and experiencing victory in an area where she had felt like a failure for years.  His boundary helped her develop her own boundary.

So if you have identified yourself in any of the information I’ve shared, pick up a copy of Boundaries in Marriage by Cloud and Townsend.  You may find that setting boundaries with yourself and in your marriage is one of the best things you’ll ever do for your relationship.

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