Boundaries VII - Activity, Exposure

We are now through eight of the 10 Laws of Boundaries: (1) Sowing and Reaping, (2) Responsibility, (3) Power, (4) Respect, (5) Motivation, (6) Evaluation, (7) Activity, and (8) Exposure.  We’ll go over nine and ten this time.

Next is the Law of Activity. It deals with the need work at fixing problems instead of being passive.  When one spouse is active and the other is passive, a number of problems can develop.  The passive spouse may become too dependent on the other’s initiative.  The passive spouse may resent the other.  The passive spouse may be controlled by the active one.  It’s easy to see that the active spouse will generally be in a better position in the relationship than the passive one, but it’-s possible to change.  Cloud and Townsend encourage the passive spouse to tell the active one how difficult it is to be more active, and to ask them for help.

The Law of Exposure is the 10th Law.  It asserts that we all have boundaries in our marriages, but we may not always tell our spouses about them.  A boundary can only work when we communicate with each other about it.  The idea here is to promote both love and truth in our relationships.  If we love our spouse we need to tell them the truth.  Let’s have another Jack and Jill story to illustrate.

In comparison to each other, Jill is active while Jack is passive.  In some ways this works to Jill’s advantage, since Jack tends to disengage when he came home from work.  Because of this, Jill rarely fought with Jack about parenting since Jack really didn’t participate.  Earlier in their marriage, they had a few knock-down, drag-out verbal fights about his strictness and her permissiveness.  But Jill was better with her words and Jack ended up retreating to his corner defeated.  This only happened a few times and Jack decided he didn’t want to continue to lose these fights.  So Jack disengaged from parenting.  This hurts him because he’s not as close to his kids as he could be.  It hurt her because she could benefit from his participation in parenting.  It also hurt the children because they need a dad. 

After talking to a counselor, Jack uses the law of exposure. He tells Jill that he wants to have a conversation with her about how they argue.  Jack tells Jill that when it comes to verbal debate he feels like she comes to the fight with a fully armed battleship while he comes with a cap gun.  So he knows that if they are going to have a verbal debate he will lose.  He tells Jill, “I’m not always wrong; I’m just not as good at arguing as you.”  And then he asks Jill if she will help him to present his side of the argument instead of just shutting down.  She is willing to try since she wants him to be engaged with the family anyhow.

At the end of this list, I would like to reiterate: the reason for going over these laws is to help us understand principles related to setting boundaries in relationships.  These boundaries can sound selfish or harsh at times, but they really reflect a level of honesty that sometimes can be lacking in relationships. 

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