Boundaries 1

If you’ve read the blogs or watched the videos to this point, you might be thinking: “I’ve tried to do those things you talked about, BUT MY SPOUSE WON'T TRY AT ALL!” 

If you especially agree with the all caps, I think we should consider something else before we go on.  It’s possible for anyone dealing with long-term reoccurring frustrations to have difficulty viewing the situation clearly.  So in order to really evaluate if you’re understanding it correctly, let’s look at a definition of a healthy relationship.  This one is from Leslie Vernick (http://leslievernick.com):

A healthy adult relationship is one where both people in the relationship give and both receive. There is a safe and open exchange of ideas, feelings and thoughts and all perspectives are considered and valued. There is also the freedom to respectfully challenge, confront and strengthen one another.

Does that sound like your relationship?

If you would say it’s generally true, but there are some things that frustrate you, it’s possible you just need to give your spouse permission to be human.  

What if it doesn’t describe your relationship at all?  What if you read the word “safe” and thought “I don’t feel safe”?  If so, it would be wise to take a look at some of the online resources about abuse.  Googling “am I in an abusive relationship” will provide you with several quizzes and lists of characteristics that can help you to answer that question.  It will also give you resources that can help you if you need to get out of a violent relationship.  And that's the most important point to get from this: if you are in an unsafe relationship, get to a safe place!

If the relationship isn’t abusive, but you feel like your spouse never tries to work on it, my first suggestion would be to ask God for wisdom.  James 1:5 tells us “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”  Since God is glad to give us wisdom in perplexing situations, insight from Him might help you to better understand if how you view your relationship is really accurate.  You may be dead-on in your assessment; I just wanted to point out that it can be difficult to see a situation correctly when we’ve felt frustrated for a long time.  Input from a trusted friend who knows both of you well might also be helpful.

So, your spouse not willing to work on the relationship, even though you’ve spoken to them, encouraged them, nagged them, cajoled them, etc...  Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend have written several excellent resources about boundaries that might help.  The following thoughts are from their book “Boundaries In Marriage”.

To start with, what is a boundary, anyway?  It’s a line that separates ownership of parcels of land or even different spaces.  Depending on where you live you may be able to go to a plat book or a website and see the boundaries of the property where you live.  When you know property boundaries you can quickly tell who owns what. 

In the same way, boundaries within relationships are about ownership.  Knowing the boundaries in a marriage helps us to know who “owns” things such as feelings, attitudes, and behaviors.  When we talk about “owning” something we are really addressing the issue of responsibility.  So boundaries are about taking appropriate responsibility in the relationship.

I have talked to couples who spend a lot of time focused on how the other person did not meet their needs, or made them feel.  And in these cases, the boundary lines get blurred.  She is blaming her harsh words on him: “If he would just talk with me more, or want to be with me for anything other than sex, than I wouldn’t get so mad and say such mean things.”  Meanwhile he tells me he doesn’t want to spend time with her because of the critical things she says to him.  And as long as they are blaming each other for their reactions, they can’t fix the relationship.  The cure for their relational woes is not under their control.  The solution, to quote Cloud and Townsend, is that “we must actively participate in the resolution of whatever relational problem we might have, even if it is not our fault”. 

I will talk more about ways to actively participate in relational problems in upcoming blogs/videos.

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