A counselor explains the difference between control and boundaries. A real boundary isn't a demand on your partner but a decision about your own behavior: if your spouse is emotionally involved with someone else, you decide whether to stay. Threats are commands. Boundaries are personal limits you actually follow through on.
Let me ask you this. If we called, let's say, a good buddy of yours and he told you that his wife was doing what your wife is doing and his situation was your situation, what would you tell him?
I would tell him probably what you said, set boundaries and determine what you need to do to, to, uh, set some goals for yourself. That's why going back into the program and trying to understand why I feel this way, what's the cause of, of my issue. But it would be nice if the person on the other side would look at their own issues as well. But I know I have no control over that, Tim. I know that.
Well, you do have control over you. A boundary— a lot of people set boundaries and they're not real boundaries, they're threats. You can't talk to this guy. That's not a boundary, that's a need for control, right? A boundary is, I won't be in a relationship where my wife and I are struggling and she's actively involving another man into our relationship at a level that poses a potential threat to our emotional connection in our marriage because she's choosing to emotionally connect with this man. So it's not she can't emotionally connect with me, right? It's It's not that she can't emotionally connect in general, because she can with this gentleman. She can't emotionally connect and is choosing not to do that with me and work on our marriage. For that, I can't be in a marriage like that. So that is a boundary. I will not participate in a marriage where this continues to occur and you don't want to work on our marriage. Those are boundaries. Attempts for control— are you making commands and demands about how you want her to act to accommodate how you feel? That's— those aren't boundaries. But boundaries are— they're not about what you need her to do. The boundary is about not you telling her what to do or how to act. It's about what you're going to do and how you're going to act, right?
So hopefully she'll follow along.
Well, no, hopefully you'll follow along. Yeah, hopefully you'll follow along with your own boundaries. When you set those boundaries, hopefully you will follow through on the boundaries you set.
