Setting Boundaries in a Relationship—Your Questions Answered

You sent Minaa your most pressing questions, and in this episode she provides her insight and advice. You asked about managing boundaries with an emotionally abusive parent, how to talk about intimacy in a relationship when you and your partner might have different needs, cutting off contact with an ex-partner, and how to set boundaries with a friend who is consistently late.

The following Q+A has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Managing Boundaries With a Parent

Listener: Dear Minaa, I grew up in an abusive household and recently realized there was abuse from both parents. One parents openly disliked me, while the other was physically abusive and also love bombed. After therapy and failed attempts to set boundaries, I cut off the openly abusive parent. The other parent is sneaky about violating boundaries, plays the victim, and seeks sympathy

It's difficult for me to limit interactions with them and although I know it's not healthy, I struggle with completely cutting them out because the abuse seems unintentional. I don't know where to start. Discussions about boundaries become defensive and triggering and direct communication is the same.

Minaa's Take

Dealing with abuse from a parent can be extremely difficult to navigate, and what this listener is saying is something that a lot of people tend to struggle with in their homes—the idea that the abuse seems unintentional.

Sometimes we don't intend to hurt people. But what's important when it comes to holding yourself accountable as an adult, is when someone comes to you and says, 'Listen, when you speak to me this way, it really hurts my feelings. When you talk to me this way in front of my child, it really makes me feel uncomfortable.'

The first thing I want to encourage you to do is recognize that even if you feel that the abuse seems unintentional, you still have a responsibility to inform this parent of how they are making you feel. How they choose to respond will be telling. If they choose to continue in their behavior, that is problematic. If they decide to minimize, if they decide to judge or belittle your emotions, that helps you to understand where you stand with your parent and their ability to hold themselves accountable and commit to change.

When it comes to protecting your own sanity, sometimes erecting boundaries looks like understanding the consequence in place? What does it look like for you to protect your peace? When you are engaging with this parent, what does it look like to say, 'You know what? I'm gonna have to end this conversation right now because I shared with you many times that when you speak to me this way, it makes me uncomfortable. And here you are doing it again.'

What I also want you to understand is that people who are emotionally immature will engage in emotionally manipulative tactics, and they will minimize your feelings because they don't have the maturity to really own their actions and hold themselves accountable. When you say you are greeted with defensiveness, this might be a sign that your parent might be too emotionally immature to have a healthy conversation, which means, ultimately, that you have to stand firm in your boundary.

What this also means is that there is a strong likelihood that until your parent learns to do their own inner work, to recognize their own behavioral patterns, to pay attention to the ways that they cause emotional harm, they're not going to be okay with hearing your boundary or even abiding by your boundary.

So maybe you can't hang out all the time. Maybe you can't go to their house frequently, or they can't come to your house frequently. Maybe you have to adjust the way you interact with one another until you feel safe enough to decide if you can continue to have a relationship with them.

Now, when you ask, how can you protect your child from this torment while still maintaining a relationship with their grandparent, one of the things I want you to own and understand is that you have a right to do what you feel you need to do to protect your child. As the parent, you get to say 'These are the rules and these are the boundaries when it comes to interacting with my child. This is what makes me feel unsafe about you interacting with my child. This is what makes me comfortable when it comes to you interacting with my child.'

Your parent has to earn a relationship with your child and show you that they are safe enough to be around your kid. I want you to stand firm in also knowing that yes, it's natural for us to want close relationships with people in our families. It's also natural for you to want your child to have a close relationship with their grandparent. But if you realize that your parent is unsafe, and your parent also isn't doing the work to hold themselves accountable, the same harm they cause you, they may unintentionally also cause that harm to your child. Consider what boundaries you need to set for yourself as well as for your child moving forward.

How to Talk About Intimacy in a Relationship

Listener: Dear Minaa, I am a sex-neutral, asexual woman in a relationship with a man. How do I go about broaching the topic of intimacy in our relationship moving forward when I am not opposed to sex, but isn't a thought that ever naturally occurs to me?

Minaa's Take

Before we dive in, let's unpack what it means to be asexual for those who have never heard this term before. Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by a lack of sexual attraction or infrequent experience of sexual attraction.

Asexual individuals may not experience sexual desire or have a low interest in engaging in sexual activities with others; however, it's important to know that just because someone is asexual, it doesn't mean that they don't want to have sex. It just means that they have a low interest or a lack of sexual desire.

When it comes to approaching this topic in any relationship, communication is extremely important. It's really important to be able to communicate to your partner where you fall on the spectrum of sexuality. Letting them know, 'Hey, these are my preferences around sex. This is how my libido works. I don't necessarily have a high sex drive compared to other people, or maybe compared to you.'

When we hear the word 'intimacy' on a societal level, we're really quick to automatically think intimacy equals sex. But intimacy can mean many things. It could look like holding hands with someone. It could look like kissing, hugging, cuddling, and engaging in various forms of activity that doesn't require sex.

I encourage you to visualize what intimacy looks like for you even outside of sex. And the reason this can be important is because when you engage in nonsexual forms of intimacy, this can also lead to sexual desire. And when you engage in nonsexual forms of intimacy, you feel a greater sense of closeness to your partner and this can also bring up higher levels of arousal.

Now, here's something else that I think is really important to discuss. And it's about having open and honest communication about the goals of the relationship. Are you seeking to be together long-term? Or is this just a fling? And the reason why this is extremely important is because you want to ensure that you and your partner are aligned.

Your partner might say, 'It's important for me to be in a relationship with someone who matches my sexual desire.' And you might realize that as someone who is asexual, this is something that you struggle with and therefore you may not feel aligned to move forward. Although that is a really hard conversation to have, exploring it helps you discern how to move forward. Your partner might say, 'You know what? We do have different sexual desires, but I'm still interested in working with you. I'm still interested in figuring out how can we explore each other's bodies and sexual desires so that we can still have a sexually gratifying relationship.'

Going No Contact With an Abusive Partner

Listener: Dear Minaa, I went no contact with a person after five years of emotional, spiritual and physical abuse, I'm fighting with thoughts of confusion and anger. How can I deal with these feelings in a healthy way?

Minaa's Take

When we're in relationships with people who are abusive, we might find ourselves feeling a variety of emotions. And that is because in these relationships, no one person is all good or all bad.

Because of this, we might find ourselves having really conflicting emotions about letting the person go, and even after letting them go, we might still feel this sense of confusion. Did I make the right choice? Did I do the right thing? Could I have given this person another chance?

We might reflect and say, 'Yeah, this person abused me emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, but when they were good, it was great. When they were kind to me, when they were nice to me, when they were listening to me, taking me on dates.'

What I want to encourage you to think about is why you let this person go. Deciding to go no contact is a big deal. And so that shows that this person must have left a mark on you both emotionally, spiritually, and as you said, physically.

You realized 'If I stay, my mental health will continue to suffer.' I want you to be thinking about the why, and I also want you to think about the many ways you may have benefited after letting them go. But also, sit with the grief and loss that comes with letting someone go.

A healthy way to deal with our emotions is to first acknowledge that our emotions exist. But our emotions are not meant to tell us what to do. Too often, people engage in a cognitive distortion called 'emotional reasoning.' So we say, 'If I feel afraid, I must not do this thing. If I feel sad, that must mean something bad is happening to me. If I feel guilty, I must have done something bad.'

And so I want you to reflect around the feelings that you have. Maybe you can engage in journaling, including another form called audio journaling. This is helpful because when we talk out loud, we can hear the discrepancies in our thinking. So you might listen to yourself talk, or you might even listen to the replay of you journaling, and you might hear yourself saying things that are either false or not wise for you to act on.

Co-regulation is also a very important practice that we can engage in. Sometimes, we actually need to call a friend to hold us accountable and remind us of why we went no contact with someone. We might need them for advice. We might need them just to be a listening ear or provide us with emotional support. That is what co-regulation means. Using someone else's nervous system to calm our nervous system down.

Dealing With a Perpetually Late Friend

Listener: Dear Minaa, I have a friend who is consistently late for hangouts, often by three to four hours, and she has done this multiple times. I have expressed my frustration with her lateness, but she dismisses my concerns and tells me to let go of any expectations. This hurts because it feels like she doesn't care about how her actions affect me as a friend.

To protect myself, I have decided to distance myself from her because I was growing to resent her. Additionally, she expects me to prioritize her needs over everything else, yet she can't even make the minimal effort to be on time for hangouts. Please provide advice on how to stop feeling guilty about giving her space. It's a sad and unfair situation.

Minaa's Take

What I hear from this situation is that this person that you're calling your friend has shown you who she is, and has also communicated to you to not hold her to any standards or have any expectations of her. While this can be very hurtful to hear, I think on your end, what you may have to do is start setting boundaries not just with this friend but also with yourself.

When someone shows us who they are, we have to use discernment and sound judgment to decide how we are going to maneuver in a relationship with this person. According to what you're saying, this is a friend who is consistently late. It sounds like this person cannot meet your needs. I encourage you to think about what it looks like to move forward in this relationship knowing that this is someone who is probably never going to show up on time when you want to hang out.

This person has used language to state that they cannot commit to the things that you're asking of them. And so, the best choice here is to discern where you need to erect boundaries. Can you go on a hangout with this person knowing that they might be three to four hours late? Or can you realize 'This isn't someone that I can hang out with, because not only are they chronically late, they're okay with being late. And they have shown me, as well as expressed to me, that they are not able to be the person that I need them to be.'

To give you an answer, no! Sometimes we start to feel guilty about things that are healthy, and it's truly because of societal standards. Some of us are conditioned to believe that if we say no, we are bad people. If we set a boundary, we feel guilty about it because we've been told that it's not okay. We've been told that we have to self-sacrifice and put people's needs before our own. But this is someone who is expressing and letting you know who she is and what she can't give you.

Can you continue to maintain a relationship with someone like this? And can you continue to plan gatherings and get-togethers with someone who does not care about your time? It is a sad and unfair situation, but I don't want you to feel like you are powerless. You have choice in this situation as well. You have the power to discern what you are willing to tolerate.

Instead of feeling guilty about giving your friend space, learn to reframe that and say, 'I am giving my friend space so that I can protect my peace. I am giving my friend space so that I can uphold my boundary. I am giving my friend space because my needs matter too. And if this friend can't meet my needs, and if this friend is expressing to me where they stand in this relationship and what they can give, I can use discernment to decide how to move forward in this relationship.'