How do you create boundaries?

It's something my therapist says I need to work on, but in dating I guess I just don't create good ones either. Where do I start? I'm kind of screwing things up but not creating them, and I just really am struggling in this area. Tips, advice, etc.

Well when it comes to dating, if you tend to have poor boundaries it’s important to date a long time without physical intimacy, well maybe hold hands but no sex or heavy making out.

Until you two are committed and serious. If a man is serious about you, he’d wait. Keep your dating outside of each other houses: parks, cafes, museums, restaurants etc

If he pushes for sex or you don’t feel it’s serious or you two aren’t in love, then you move on. Don’t continue dating. Most certainly don’t sleep with him to make relationship more serious. It doesn’t work this way.

Avoid alcohol if it makes you irrational.

Look for men in a higher quality circles. Hobby groups mutual friends, if using dating sites, avoid hook up sites and free sites. If a man talks about sex early on, he is not the one. Move on.

Consider journaling what it is you want from your relationships (and interactions with other people), and what you don't want. For me, I find writing this stuff out gives me better clarity and makes the thoughts swirling in my head more clear.

What is happening in your interactions with other people (often times, there's a pattern, and that's one reasons there's a call for boundaries, because it happens over and over) that you don't like?

One thing about creating a boundary, is that creating the boundary may be easy to come up with, but hard to stick with. For both parties. So you may come up with something, like (and this is just an example) "I will not engage with people who treat me poorly and make me feel badly." But its another thing to actually implement it and stick with it, especially if there's something else you may be getting out of the interaction. Or, the person may be your parent, and then, well, if they treat you badly, how do you get them to treat you well? You'd be better with limited contact if you were a child. And if you needed them, say, for financial support as an adult, you'd have to also use limited instead of no contact.

Does your therapist have any ideas for you on how to create better boundaries? I say ask your therapist how as well. Especially because they are the one who brought it up. And do you have specific boundaries with others that you WANT? That was not clear to me in your OP. I have read and responded to some of your other posts, but I also don't want to assume, or bring up something that may be inaccurate for you.

The simple answer is you refuse and say no.

In dating, you don’t set yourself up into a situation that makes it harder for you to say no. For example; if you don’t want to have sex with him, don’t go to his house for one more drink at the end of the night. Call it a night and go straight home.

You don’t really know what your boundaries are until someone tries to cross them. If you feel you are being pushed, just hold firm and say no. If they don’t like it, then they won’t see you again. Accept that’s ok. If they had one thing in mind that made you feel exploited, then they weren’t going to meet your needs in the long run.

Jumping into bed too soon was an issue I struggled with when I was single. I was in my 20’s and dating now in my 50’s I can only imagine the pressure from the men would be even worse. I was raised with a previous generation’s thinking pre feminism, and didn’t believe in those old school rules, instead thought my generation knew better and immediate sex was a good decision. But, when the guy didn’t call me again, I realized that wasn’t good of me to do if I wanted a committed relationship. The ones I didn’t get sexual with, did call again, usually, and turned into a real relationship. At least, this was my experience. I’m not judging or generalizing, and I have no idea about dating rules these days.

Aviza there are a TON of books about creating boundaries available to you through your public library as well as free articles and blogs about creating boundaries online via a Google search.

The way we create boundaries with each other is stating what our needs and expectations are to the other person. It's up to that other person, whether or not they will respect your needs and meet your expectations. We need boundaries in every area of our life; work, family, friendship, dating, school.

I am nearly 50, and I still practice creating boundaries with people because it's difficult to do when your self-confidence is low and when you attach your self-worth to external validation from others, and are codependent.

You can literally type this in your Google search for results, "How to create boundaries with..." and multiple search results pop up with different relationships.

From Psych Central's library of resources:

10 Way to Build and Preserve Better Boundaries

I’m working on this too. It’s a big problem for me. A few days ago my counselor suggested I write out my life story. That seemed like a bit much to me but I figured what the heck, I’ll work on it.

I started putting things in outline form with one brief paragraph per year. One thing stood out to me very quickly. By age 12, I was already taking it upon myself to do things for others without being asked. I thought about the reason for that. It’s because tension and stress was increasing in my household and I must have decided I could fix it. I thought if I asked for nothing and helped out a lot we could have a peaceful and happy life.

And here I am almost 40 years later doing the same thing... even at work I do it.

I hope that seeing for myself how and when I started this behavior will help me stop it. It was eye opening to see it written in my own words. I wasn’t looking to discover root causes of my own behaviors, I was just writing the things that came to mind. And there it was. The start of my people pleasing, co-dependent behaviors.

I plan to continue this outline and see how my people pleasing behaviors continue to unfold. I expect it will be painful to see this all written down in my own words as I reflect on my own behaviors through the years.

I did notice as I added more and more information to the outline that I was a pretty funny and quirky little kid. I had to laugh at that because I’m still that same quirky person all these years later. My childhood was not a loving one. I never felt secure which is obviously why I’m still such an anxious person all these years later.

I don’t want to dwell on the past but I do think seeing the patterns of my behavior might help me. I also hope I can develop better self compassion. We were all just little kids once, trying to do the best we could. It’s good for us to remember that about ourselves. Good luck to you. Please share with us your progress and any insight you gain.

Pete Walker, M.A. Psychotherapy

I’ve been reading about the ways we cope with threats (boundary pushers).

I definitely fit the Fawn Type and Codependent Defense. I think my mother was the narcissist and my father was the codependent or vice versa.

I’m too much the fight type, plus a little of all the others, and codependent.

It all rings true with me. Very interesting stuff. I’d say my mother was ‘good enough’ though, while my father was vacant and literally abandoned me by dying. Also notice how he talks about confusing PTSD with other diagnoses.

@ TishaBuv: Well, my father was emotionally vacant and my mother was very overbearing and controlling and would constantly sabotage me socially every chance she had with our relatives, with her friends, with my friends and their parents. I was her personal punching bag. Like, me asking for a drum set and her aka "Santa" gives the drum set to my sister who didn't even want it.

Or, the time she took us to a local pond to go swimming with some of our friends and their mothers. I was swimming and almost drowned when I tried to surface from being underwater, but was trapped by a large yellow raft because it was so crowded with people swimming.

Eventually, I found an empty spot in the water to surface and was coughing like crazy and fearful. And when I went up to our spot and told my mother what had happened, she accused me of over-reacting. I was 6 or 7 years old at the time. I couldn't believe it. She was accusing me lying and over-reacting. Who the hell says that to their child who almost drowned. I was just a kid looking for emotional comfort from her mother. But I didn't get it. I have so many examples of times she did that to me growing up. Invalidating or minimizing my feelings instead of comforting me or validating me.

Or, speaking for me instead of letting me speak up for myself. Or lying about me to other people to make herself look good. Or, not apologizing to me when she hurt my feelings or stick up for me when my father would neglect or ignore me. Like, she forced him to take me to the circus when I was in 3rd grade, as a way to increase our bond. He drove me there in total silence.

Then, he walked so far ahead of me around the circus before it started that I got lost. Eventually, one of the security staff reunited us, but my father just sat in silence next to me, while each act came on. I was like 8 years old. I'll never forget it. I was so sad and my mother blamed ME for being sad.

She conditioned me to associate self-loathing with negative emotions, by blaming me for responding sad that my outing with her husband/my father didn't go as SHE planned. When I was in college, and my father's cancer returned, he called a family meeting to tell us.

Prior to that, he hid his cancer tests from my siblings and I, sending us to our cousins after school on those days without explaining what was happening (his own shame, projecting it on to his children, asshole! like it was our burden to bare). When I expressed anger that it returned, he yelled at me to "Shut up! This isn't about you!" All I had said was, "I'm angry that your cancer came back." So, he was an asshole in a lot of ways.

^I share those feelings you describe of not being comforted, being invalidated. Maybe all of us here with boundary and self esteem issues share that experience.

If your boundaries are with men I suggest you treat it slightly like someone in AA with an alcohol addiction. So that would mean consistent, regular therapy and absolutely no men until you and the therapist agree you are ready. Obviously with an alcoholic they can never have alcohol again but abstaining from alcohol 100%b breaks the initial cycle of addiction and the rest is behavioral. I do not know what your dating track record is or know anything about your relationships but if it involves risk taking behavior like sleeping with them right away, and you keep doing it even though you know you shouldnt- to me this is a good reason to practice abstaining while you get the mental part in hand.

Boundaries to me are created by not doing anything that feels uncomfortable, or anything that goes against your values or standards.

I like this.

Say "no" to being mistreated, say "no" to things that you don't want to do, literally walk away if needed

There are some good books on boundaries that you might read..

I hope I haven't been too repetitive to what has been said earlier.

@Travelinglady

What are the book titles? Inquiring minds want to know, aka, me.

Cloud and Townsend have a classic book on this subject. Here's one source:
https://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Wh.../dp/0310247454

Perhaps our behaviour is governed by what we experience/see from parents and close relatives. My family can't handle that I now fight back (not physically!). As a child you think parents know best so go along with what they are saying/doing until old enough to realise some of it is a load of rubbish.

Sadly, I believe my mother's behaviour has shaped my life. In my twenties, I wanted to get away so hoped I'd meet a lovely guy. That didn't work out, but I learnt to handle things differently. I've become more private, so any new guy arriving on the scene now would have his work cut out removing the barrier. I shudder to think how I could have overshared with unsuitable people just because other relatives behave that way.

Love the boundary checklist!!

It's sad in that for many they learn all the wrong things from how their parents treat each other and treat them.