What to Do When Your Boundaries Are Continually Crossed. (OR: Boundaries! Going once, going twice, GONE!)
Let’s cut right to the chase: What are you supposed to do when someone continually crosses your boundaries, makes you repeat your boundaries (after you’ve set them several times), or ignores them altogether? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind…just kidding (if you know that song).
Determining how to respond will come down to a few questions:
How important is this person?
What is your metric for someone who crosses a boundary (i.e. can you determine the difference between a minor slip or blip vs a total lack of regard for your boundaries?)?
What changes can you make to adjust and protect yourself?
Do you feel fully and totally entitled to your needs and boundaries AND can you honor them without guilt?
For many of the folks I’ve worked with, having a person like a parent or friend who cannot respect or even understand their boundaries is a huge source of conflict and pain. When someone that we’ve had an established relationship with cannot seem to meet us where we’re at and respond to our needs respectfully, this usually raises a few red flags of concern. Ultimately, we are faced with the biggest question: “What am I supposed to do?”.
If you find yourself in that place of questioning, I am going to suggest you take a moment to look at what is behind that question. Take a second to identify the feelings or beliefs that are operating underneath the question and just be with what is. Our feelings offer us such a rich source of information and even if nothing concrete comes from this, I invite you to simply acknowledge and notice whatever is happening inside of you without judgment or evaluation. Just notice.
Usually, “what am I supposed to do?” signifies an internal conflict. One part of you is super not cool with what’s happening, but another part is bound up by a sense of duty or obligation to the person or relationship. This is where we can get confused and discouraged.
A lot of the time people end up ghosting, ignoring the person, ignoring their own boundaries and justifying the behavior of the other, tolerating the boundary violation/crossing, or doing nothing. If you’ve found yourself doing any of the above, I invite you now to show some compassion to yourself. Can you take a second and register just how difficult this is? I don’t expect anyone to simply know what to do, especially given the very real lack of education and modeling we have to go off of.
The next step, after compassion, is action. There are going to be instances when you’ve set a boundary such as “hey, I won’t be able to talk today, but I’ll reach out when I can” and the person keeps reaching out regardless via text or calling or emailing. You can either remind them with a response “Hey, I don’t know if you got my first message, but I won’t be able to talk today, I’ll reach out when I can” OR simply not respond and assume that they will eventually figure it out.
That might feel akin to ghosting, but it’s different because you’ve already set the boundary to begin with. Think of boundaries like store hours; when we’re closed, we’re closed and the person banging on the door will have to find a way to manage their disappointment or frustration (or they might even simply go, “Whoops! Didn’t see that. I’ll come back later”).
If you set the boundary a second time and the person continues to bother you, then we’re dealing with someone who is not likely going to hear you. For some reason, this individual has decided that you don’t mean what you say and is in a relationship only with themselves. Their relationship with you is based off of what they want. It’s a container of sorts for them to get their needs met, but not yours.
That is not okay.
If you are finding that this is the type of “relationship” you are in, it’s time to reevaluate it and reconsider your role in it.
This is often where things can get a little murky, especially if this individual is a family member. In my book, I talk about the difficulty of going no-contact with a narcissistic mother. There’s a kind of consensus in narcissistic recovery that going no-contact is typically the inevitable reaction and I do tend to agree. However, just because it is common doesn’t mean it’s required. This really comes down to personal choice and using your own value system to determine how to move forward.
There are some individuals who choose to maintain a relationship with the person in question, but with strong internal and external boundaries that they’re comfortable reinforcing when needed. There are others who do a very low-contact kind of relationship, one that author Susan Forward calls the “tea party relationship”, which is essentially having polite, but superficial conversations and meeting with the person minimally. There are some individuals who find that not having a relationship with their parent or friend is too overwhelming and choose to practice other kinds of skills to keep themselves physically and emotionally well while maintaining that relationship.
Whatever you choose, do it from a place of valuing yourself and your needs. Going no-contact is perfectly reasonable, especially when we’re talking about an individual who is not being respectful of your boundaries.
There will be times when you will feel compelled by a sense of guilt (usually toxic) or obligation to break your own boundaries for the sake of the other. If you can, I invite you to recognize that guilt as a force masquerading around as though it represents some kind of truth. Most of the time when you feel healthy guilt, you move towards the person you harmed willingly and lovingly to make a repair. You don’t spend a ton of time laboring over whether you should or shouldn’t; you just do it. When you’re experiencing the useless kind of guilt, you end up being stuck in a massive inner conflict about whether or not you’re a good person, worrying about what the other person is thinking, getting caught up in an unproductive back and forth about what you should be doing.
When we break our own boundaries out of a sense of toxic and useless guilt or sense of obligation, we are sending ourselves the message that our needs aren’t really that important and this serves as a self-betrayal.
If someone crosses your boundaries or isn’t honoring the limits you’ve set, it’s a good time to consider the importance of the relationship and whether or not it’s healthy for you to be in it. You can think of your relationship like a dial, turning up the interactions or turning it way down. You can even turn it off if you need (hello, no-contact-breakup). If you’re eager to express to this person your healthy boundaries, let’s start by trying out a few scripts and see how they land for you.
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“Hey, Ted. It seems that lately when I ask you to respect my boundaries, you have a hard time doing so. Our relationship is important to me and I really want to find a way to resolve this. I would like to talk more about how I will be responding moving forward so that you’re in the loop. My responses may start to look differently if we can’t come to a place of understanding.”
“I am going to take some time off from our friendship for a while. I understand that this may be hard to hear, but it’s been really difficult for me to be in relationship to you when you continue to cross my boundaries and not respect the limits I’ve set.”
“Hey Jasmine, I am trying something new by being more vocal about my boundaries. You haven’t really experienced me as a person with boundaries in this way, so I’m letting you know now that things will be a little different moving forward! I’m going to be going to bed around 10pm, so I won’t be able to hang out super late anymore. Another thing I’m going to be implementing is phone-free days on the weekend, so I won’t be available to text or chat. Let me know if you have any questions!”
“Mom, when you call me several times per day, it really throws me off and I’m finding it disruptive. I know you’re used to me being available, but starting now that’s going to change. If you call me during the day, I will not answer the phone, but I’m more than happy to set up a time on the weekend to connect. Let’s find a day or time that could work for both of us.”
Generally, when it comes to our boundaries, it’s important that we allow people a little wiggle room to mess up. Depending on what the boundary is and how it was set, there may be times when people simply forget! Be gracious, while letting the offender also find grace and course correct, and remind yourself that we’re all human and we’re going to get things wrong sometimes.
There are exceptions to this. If someone violates a boundary of yours in a way that causes you significant harm, you can throw that little grace nugget out the window and do whatever you need to regain your sense of wellbeing again. That means you can cut the relationship off, block their phone number, not respond to texts, etc. We are all going to have boundaries that exist on a spectrum. There will be some that we can be more flexible with and others where our firmness and rigidity will be incredibly healthy. Similar to the green, yellow, and red light system we have on the road, you’ll know how to respond to each light appropriately. The same goes for your boundaries.
Ultimately, it is up to us to appropriately communicate what our boundaries are to the people in our lives, otherwise they will cross them without meaning to. And after we’ve communicated them and the person STILL crosses them, it’s time to consider the type of relationship you’d like to have with them. There are going to be instances when severing ties with people who continually cross your boundaries will be the healthiest thing for you to do.