Boundaries

When I was living with Dad and Ellen I was of dating age, and Ellen sat me down and discussed boundaries with me. She told me I needed to think about what was important to me in a date, and to be clear and specific with my dates about my expectations, and then follow through if those expectations were not met. We talked a great deal and if I needed direction, I’d ask, and she’d do her best to figure out what I meant, and we’d come to a meeting of the minds, a plan of action, and some fairly easy guidelines for me to remember and follow.

One of those boundaries was lateness. The first time a date was late picking me up, and I was openly fretting about whether or not I’d been blown off, Ellen fixed me in the eye and asked, “What’s your time limit?” I was a little confused, so I asked for clarification. She said, “How long does it seem reasonable to you to wait for him to show up without calling to let you know he’s delayed and apologizing to you? After all, you’re ready, he should have enough courtesy for you to show up on time. He asked you out, he should be on time. How long are you going to wait?”

A little stunned by the clear logic of this, I replied, “Well, I don’t know, what seems reasonable to you?”

“Fifteen minutes,” she said, “he could have called as soon as he realized he knew he’d be late, and if he wants the pleasure of your company, he can plan ahead to get here on time.”

My Dad stuck his oar in the water. “Well, now,” he said “You know, there can be mechanical breakdowns [this was before cell phones] or something.”

“That’s true,” said Ellen, “but she should still not wait around like she has no self-respect and nothing better to do. It will make her seem pathetic and desperate. She can always listen to his excuse tomorrow and decide then whether or not it seems reasonable or like insulting nonsense.” She turned to me again, “Here you are, all dressed up and ready to go. You are showing respect for HIS time by being ready on time, and he’s not showing you decent respect by valuing YOUR time. What would you be doing if you hadn’t accepted a date with him?”

“I’d be hanging out with Cindy,” I promptly replied.

“Well, call her up and see if she wants to go hang out,” said Ellen, “she’ll understand. You do have to teach other people how to treat you, or they’ll wind up treating you like you don’t matter, and that includes friends as well as dates, especially dates. Men don’t respect women who act like they have no lives or are willing doormats.”

“That’s true,” said my Dad, “very true,” and he went back to his book.

All that served me very well as a teenaged girl going on dates and learning about the world. I also had a “three strikes and you’re out” rule – piss me off three times for the same thing, and we’re done. If it was ogling other girls while we’re on a date, showing up late with only some damn fool excuse, or behaving in a manner I found unacceptable (and I was and am a pretty reasonable, easy-going person, all told), then Mr. Date was too much trouble, there were too many fish in the ocean, and I was not going to waste my valuable time being treated like crap by some loser dude. I would tell them to their faces what it was they had done that I didn’t like, so it’s not like I was oozing unnamed anger or resentment at them, or that I would break things off seemingly out of the blue.

Some of them understood and took it well, others wanted to argue with me or call me cold-hearted (and the word that often goes with that), which only served to convince me that I was right in calling it quits. Others would ask for another chance, which I usually thought was OK, but not for a few months – I needed to not be mad at them. Generally, they didn’t follow up, and I didn’t care. Plenty of fish, you see, for both of us.

When I got married, things changed. Not at first, I think at first my husband was still in the wooing and courting and putting his best foot forward phase. Over time, though, as we both worked and bosses demanded overtime, he became more worried about not ticking off his boss, or seeming henpecked, or whatever extremely rude and inaccurate phrases men use to twit one another with so as not to show what they’re really feeling, which is envy that the other fellow has a wife. So, he became pretty lax about calling when he knew he was going to be late. It pissed me off, and I told him so and I told him why. We never came to a meeting of the minds, and he seemed to resent the idea that I was trying to “control” him, which was a complete and total misinterpretation.

Over the years, I simply became numb to it, turned my back on it, and tried to pretend it didn’t matter or that I could take it in stride. It did matter; it made me feel ignored, unimportant, devalued, and taken for granted. I no longer felt like a priority in his life, but like so much furniture – he could count on my being there whenever he chose to show up, and I wasn’t allowed to be angry, upset, or hurt by his rudeness and lack of consideration for my feelings. He even started to joke about it if I’d bring it up. “Oh, you know how I am,” he’d say, “I lose track of time when I get to talking.” Not very funny to me, though. Not ever.

When we were in marriage counseling, it came up again, not as a central issue but as a related issue. We talked about it there, we talked about it over two weekends at home, and finally, finally, it seemed like he understood that it wasn’t about me wanting to control him, it was about him valuing my time and giving me some information so that I could make plans for myself according to whether or not he’d be there for them. It’s not like I had ever said “no, you can’t do that” in response to a courtesy call. My answer was invariably, “OK, thanks for letting me know,” or “gee, that’s kind of a bummer, here’s what I was going to do, did you want me to wait until you get here or should I just go ahead,” etc.

In the months since our talk, he was doing fine. We mutually refined and affirmed the purpose of those calls, the reasonableness of telling me when he expected to be home, and the fact that regardless of whether or not he values my time, I value it, and that’s what these calls are about. On the day his father died, a HUGELY distracting, disorienting time for anyone, he still managed to call before he was expected home and tell me the news and that he’d be late. I was very understanding, told him to let me know if he decided to spend the night there, expressed my condolences, etc. I thanked him, as I had made a habit of doing, for calling as soon as he knew he’d be late. I thought, subconsciously, that that really showed he GOT it.

I was wrong. The last two weekends, while off visiting his mom and his sister, tidying up some of the myriad loose ends involved in dealing with a death, he has fallen off the wagon. This past weekend, it was particularly egregious and enraging. I could make allowances for his distraction, if. If. If there were a good reason, if I knew he was so discombobulated over his father’s passing that he was late for everything, if there were no cell phones, if there were a medical or mechanical emergency, if we hadn’t had so much discussion about it during the last six months. If I hadn’t made it crystal clear how important it is to me and felt we had a mutual understanding. Now, it just feels like old, bad, love-stifling habits coming back. If.

The old excuses are coming back, too. “Oh, you know how I am when I get to talking.” “Oh, I just lost track of time.” “Oh, we were in the middle of an important discussion. You understand how it is.” Yeah, I get it. I get that a dab of courtesy to me is the least important thing in his life, that there’s no acknowledgement that I am a privilege in his life. That there’s no understanding what while he’s out dealing with his things, I am holding down the fort with the children, just as I have done for all these years. That there’s no recognition that my feelings are at least as important as fixing mom’s locks or talking to sis, or that prioritizing an interruptable discussion with his birth family trumps a 2 minute courtesy call to his wife, who could be holding back dinner, deferring visiting her own father in the hospital in expectation of a parental handoff, or who would like to get on with her own life. I definitely get it.

And what I get that I don’t think he does, is that when he leaves me only two choices – wait around for him to remember me, like I’m so much furniture, or to lead my life as if he weren’t in it, I will take the one that doesn’t make me feel like unlovable crap, and he doesn’t get to piss on my leg about it either. Not any more. I am done putting up with petty, demeaning nonsense, and I am completely with the program of making myself happy, reinstating my self-respect, and treating myself like I matter, even when he doesn’t. Twenty-five years is enough, and if he can’t prioritize me and value my time in this teeny, tiny way, then I certainly can and should.

I have already asked myself if I’m being intolerant. After all, he’s grieving his Dad, and people react differently to grief. He’s preoccupied, indeed, over-occupied with helping out his elderly Mom, and that’s part of dealing with his Dad’s death. Cut him some slack, give him some rope, back off, take it in stride, pretend it doesn’t matter, ease up. Um, except those are the same, or similar excuses that I’ve been making for him for a quarter of a century, and they are no more valid, no more true now than they have been for last 25 years. They’re just ways that I forgive rudeness and disregard for the sake of false harmony – at the expense of my feelings and my sense of self-worth.

I know and support that he wants to keep visiting his Mom on weekends. It’ll make him feel better about his Dad’s passing, that he’s doing something helpful, something his Dad would have wanted him to do and would have appreciated. Maybe it’s his way of coming to grips, bit by bit, with the loss of his father. There’s no question that I understand that.

I also have the right to have a life, the right to not be left on tenterhooks when planning my weekend, when interacting with the kids, and I have the right to be treated with respect and dignity. I am done pulling old excuses out of storage and dusting them off at the expense of my self-respect. So, I will make myself happy, defuse resentment by picking up the reins of independence until things change, and get on with my life. It’s up to him to choose whether he wants to be a part of it or not, not me. While he’s preoccupied elsewhere, I don’t need to sit around in amber, waiting for him to get a clue or decide to care.

And, really, it’s not about him, per se, or doing anything TO him. It’s about doing something FOR myself; it’s about me choosing to take action to keep myself upbeat, happy, cheerful, satisfied and filling my time with things that I like to do and with people who are good for me.

So, the next time he heads off and tells me he’ll be home at 3, if I haven’t heard from him by 3:15, I will be elsewhere. I have spent many years teaching my children to be independent and self-reliant, and I’m not worried about them. They also need to learn that they teach others how to treat them, and that it doesn’t stop at dating. I won’t need to say a word to them about it. Or maybe I’ll take them to a movie, or miniature golfing, or out to dinner. We always enjoy dinner out together. Or I might call a friend and go for a drive and catch up on old times or the latest news. It is, after all, up to me to take care of myself.

I wonder what Cindy’s up to these days?