A Mission 22 Blog Series on Relationship Healing, Divorce Recovery, and Healthy Vulnerability.

PART IV: Good fences

Imagine this scenario. Thanksgiving is coming up, and the proverbial in-laws are obliging themselves once again to stay at your house.

The last eight years have always been the same; despite there really not being enough room, you are made to feel guilty for “kicking us to the curb whenever we visit!”

A very logical solution exists. The town has several reasonably priced hotels and we all know, Dad, that you can well afford it. Yet they keep obliging you to accommodate.

I’m going to take some details for granted, but let’s suppose that in actuality, everyone would be happier if the in-laws were “kicked to the curb” (i.e., just ask them to stay in a hotel); but some personalities and family history get in the way, and rather than not succumbing to the guilt trip, the young couple capitulates and allows them to stay every time, even though it’s causing stress for almost everyone.

Your building resentment may be an indicator that a good boundary has been violated.

Setting Healthy Boundaries

But we often don’t enforce that kind of boundary.

Why might that be, when, in retrospect, everything for everybody clearly would have been better, even if there was an upfront cost to saying “no” (tactfully)?

We can fall into a people-pleasing paradigm where a version of you might be scared that if you say no, a relationship will be threatened, and thus your survival will be threatened. Even if, in our day and age, it’s not really true that your life isn’t exactly in serious peril at the loss of one relationship, our nervous system isn’t wired that way.

The nervous system is scared that if you say no, you’ll no longer be liked, and that would be bad, even worse than standing up for yourself.

It becomes less effortful in the short run to allow that boundary to be violated now versus enforcing that boundary with some effort now but a bigger payoff in the long run.

Putting oneself in the perpetual peace-keeping role may seem like we are doing good at the moment, and we may come to believe about ourselves that we are most liked when we allow our boundaries to be compromised, but do people really have a higher regard for you if you always agree, if you always say yes?

When we are able to say “no, that doesn’t work for me” in our close relationships, in the long run, we will be respected far more than we will be resented. And if we are resented by the other person for enforcing a boundary, that may be further evidence that the “no” needed to be stated in the first place.

What Gets in the Way of Setting These Healthy Boundaries?

One factor could simply be a personality trait taken too far. I’m speaking specifically of the trait “Agreeableness.” This trait describes how good of a team player one is. Higher or lower Agreeableness describes one’s strategy of weighing individual needs against the needs of the group. And as with other personality factors, there’s no best way to answer that question.

Highly agreeable people are great on a team and great at taking direction, but are not so great at negotiating and may have a hard time saying “no”, due to placing a higher weight of importance on the group’s good versus individual good.

This is why, on this specific personality trait, it can be very good to have two people on opposite ends of the Agreeableness spectrum to balance each other well.

A Pattern of Constant Deferral

But if one individual takes this trait too far, then they fall into a pattern of constant deferral.

Do you know anyone in your life who refuses to take a break just for themselves for the constant sake of the team?

We saw that saying “no” can feel like a threat to survival and that personality can bias you toward saying “yes” all the time. Why else do we have a hard time saying “no”?

People-pleasing, saying “yes” to social and familiar pressures and obligations all the time, can also come from attachment challenges. It’s that “back door” method of getting needs met we talked about before. Obsequiousness is a behavior pattern that can work as a strategy to get your needs met, but it’s not exactly a long-term strategy that works for all parties.

Why? Because you tend to never take the time to say “yes” to yourself by saying “no” to someone else.

I’ve experienced first-hand what happens when someone lives in a state of perpetual deferral to other people. At first, the person seems very attractive because they tend to agree with you all the time. Over the years, though, there is a growing resentment on their part, and all of a sudden, (“And I’ve never liked your spinach puffs…EVER!” ) it can come erupting forth to the shock and horror of the other person, an apocalypse of hidden, unmet needs that can instantaneously change the course of the relationship’s future, what’s left of it.

This is why the ability to say and to mean “no” at the right place and time is so important.

Why is Saying “No” So Important? 

READ TIM FERRISS’ BLOG ON HOW TO GIVE A GRACEFUL NO

When I was a young Rear Detachment Commander, I had an FRG (Family Readiness Group) leader who was roundly seen as obstinate, irrational, highly emotional, and an all-around difficult person to work with. When I took over the commander role, she projected onto me her bad experience with the previous commander, and almost out of the gate, I was being accused of all sorts of things I had nothing to do with.

It almost didn’t matter how many times I reminded her that we had the same mission, to help families while Soldiers were still deployed; the combative nature of the relationship persisted. Until I said a firm “no” to her.

We were on a call, and I was making an effort to plan our next event. She starts going off on me, cutting me off mid-sentence, about all the ways she was upset.

I’ll admit, the next thing I said was a bit out of character for me, but it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. I called her out with a much stronger voice than normal for interrupting me. I set a firm boundary.

And in short order, she respected me for it. She said later I was the best commander she’d worked with.

Doesn’t mean I was perfect. But I was surprised by her sentiment…at first. Until I appreciated the utility of a well-timed “no.” When she saw that I was willing to risk the relationship for the higher good of serving the company, she came to respect me.

She wasn’t a bad person; she just needed a little bit of a healthy pushback as to when one boundary started and the other ended. I needed to experience that first-hand as well because it was not something I was explicitly taught early on. At the end of the day, we were better able to articulate where my job ended, and hers began because boundaries had been made extremely clear.

Embracing the Well-Timed “No”

Boundary setting reorganizes the lesser goods (temporary peace-keeping) for the higher Good (long-term health of the relationship).

The well-timed “no” is also important for another reason: integrity.

The Bible says, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” This leaves no room to be halfway in with your decisions. You cannot be lukewarm in your responses if you desire long-term harmony with the in-laws. After all, if I cannot trust your ‘no,’ how can I ever trust your ‘yes’?

You might not like it when someone says ‘no’ to you, but how much more, in the long run, would you prefer a firm ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ with a hidden asterisk?

What kind of yes’s and no’s are you providing?