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Marriage is first and foremost about love. It is bound together by the care, need, companionship, and values of two people, which can overcome hurt, immaturity, and selfishness to form something better than what each person alone can produce. Love is at the heart of marriage, as it is at the heart of God himself (1 John 4:16). Yet, love is not enough.
Many people believe that as we humans grow up physically, we automatically grow up emotionally as well, but that’s simply not true. Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up.
If you aren’t in control of yourself, the solution is not learning to control someone else. The solution is learning self-control, one of the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23).
there was her desire to go back to school and finish her degree. They had agreed on that when she had dropped out of college her senior year to put him through law school. But every time she brought it up, he explained why it was not a good time right now for them. Stephanie had a hard time understanding that. What he really was saying was that it was not a good time for him. Many other scenes came to her mind, but that phrase—“for him”—seemed to encapsulate all of them: Their relationship was more “for him” than it was “for them,” or even “for her.” As she thought about it, her detachment
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In some cases, the confusion hides itself behind the simplistic explanations that problems such as addiction, irresponsibility, control, or abuse provide. “If he just weren’t so controlling.” Or, “If she just would stop spending.” Partners think that they can explain why their relationship lacks intimacy by the presence of “the problem.” They are surprised to find that even when the “problem” goes away, the person with whom they can’t connect or find love remains.
Boundaries help us to determine who is responsible for what. If we understand who owns what, we then know who must take responsibility for it. If I could get Joe to see that his reactions were his problem and not Caroline’s, then I could help him to responsible for it, then we are in the driver’s seat of change. For the first time, we are empowered. When Caroline got a sense that she was responsible for the misery she thought Joe was causing, she was empowered to change that helpless, powerless feeling of misery, no matter what Joe was doing. Once she began to take responsibility for her
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this presumes that no actual wrong is being done to each other by each spouse. “you’re responsible for your feelings” assumes that you can control your feelings—you can’t. you can control if and how you act upon them, but saying “you’re just responsible for them” means that you have total mastery over your mind and heart; that you’re a fictional samurai master or a Jedi Knight.
as for the presumption that no wrong is being done, this section falls apart when a spouse is confronted with wrongdoing or actual sin (there is, believe it or not, a difference). you wouldn’t tell your wife, “I look at pornography because that’s what men do to satisfy their visual needs and urges, especially when you aren’t around or aren’t willing to get in bed, so you need to be responsible and control your feelings about my porn.” in this scenario, the wife’s feelings of shame and betrayal and loneliness are a direct result of HIS actions, which means HE IS RESPONSIBLE.
which flies in the face of the previous section. if something isn’t your fault, why do you need to help with resolution? if the spouse’s reactions and feelings are THEIR responsibility, why does the other spouse need to get involved at all?
did the authors flunk out of Logic 101?
“There’s nothing I can do. This is the way he is, and I just have to live with it.” I could not tell if she was sad about what she perceived as a hopeless case or angry with me for suggesting she had choices. As we talked further, I discovered an underlying problem that kept Jen from making such choices. She did not experience herself as a free agent. It never occurred to her that she had the freedom to respond, to make choices, to limit the ways his behavior affected her. She felt that she was a victim of whatever he did or did not do.
“Limit the ways his behavior affected her” assumes a generous amount of stoicism on the offended spouse’s part. it is true that you can let someone else “get to you” too much and put ALL the responsibility for your well-being on someone else (which is a lack of boundaries on your part). but what the authors continually fail to acknowledge is that you can’t just decide to let something not bother you (especially when you are the one paying the price for your spouse’s unrepentant behavior), and spouses ARE responsible for one another to a large degree. they assume people exist in isolation from each other; people in bubbles that never intersect.
the authors need a lesson in how to read the Bible. Galatians 5:1 is written in the context of not being bound by the constraints of the Mosaic Law; that Christ fulfilled the Law and instituted a new covenant with His people. one can broaden the interpretation and say that we are no longer under the yoke of sin. It is not that we are free from ALL systems of control; we are submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus, which means His control.
caps for emphasis: IT IS A TOTAL MISUSE OF SCRIPTURE TO INTERPRET THIS VERSE THE WAY THE AUTHORS DO.
Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.
where there is no freedom, there is slavery, and where there is slavery, there will be rebellion. Also, where there is no responsibility, there is bondage. Where we do not take ownership and do what we are supposed to do with our own stuff, we will be stuck at a certain level of relationship, and we will not be able to go deeper.
slavery is not the only cause of rebellion.
again, complete misuse and misapplication of Scripture. the passage cited does not remotely support the authors’ point.
Regina finally gave Lee a choice to own his problem and take responsibility for it, or to move out. She would no longer allow his drinking and anger to affect her and the children. She would take protective steps to “guard the good” and not let evil destroy it.
again, IT ISN’T ABOUT LETTING SOMETHING “AFFECT” YOU. you have little control over what consequences YOU suffer from SOMEONE ELSE’S behavior TOWARDS YOU. what Regina did was assert a healthy boundary and create real consequences for her husband’s unrepentant sins against her (and more importantly, her children).
My client could not say to her husband, “You can’t speak to me that way.” This demand is unenforceable. But she could say what she would or would not do if he spoke to her that way again. She could set a boundary “on herself.” She could say, “If you speak to me that way, I will walk out of the room.” This threat is totally enforceable because it has to do with her. She would be setting a boundary with the only person she could control: herself.
and now to speak positively of the authors: what they are saying is that this approach to boundaries is just being a sledgehammer, which solves nothing and only exacerbates the issue. while I think there are legitimate reasons to tell someone straight up to stop something, 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t work because the other person has to respect and love you enough to actually listen.
When you build a fence around your yard, you do not build it to figure out the boundaries of your neighbor’s yard so that you can dictate to him how he is to behave. You build it around your own yard so that you can maintain control of what happens to your own property. Personal boundaries do the same. If someone trespasses your personal boundaries in some way, you can take control of yourself and not allow yourself to be controlled, or hurt, anymore. This is self-control.
again, there are real limitations on how much you can let someone else hurt you; it would be more accurate to say “I will not give you the power to hurt me as much as I have in the past.”
If we are not being truthful with each other, our real relationship goes into hiding. Then, instead of one real relationship, we have two relationships: the outside relationship, which is false; and the inside, hidden relationship, which is true. Intimacy is lost, and so is love. Love and truth must exist together.
God has given us the Law of Sowing and Reaping (see chapter 2 for a fuller explanation of this law) to communicate what is acceptable and what is not. If we just use words, others sometimes do not “get the message.” In fact, people in denial are deaf to words of truth. They only respond to pain and loss. Consequences show where our boundary line is.
Because none of us is pure, we have to search our motives for establishing boundaries to make sure that they serve love and not our impure motives. Using distance or withdrawal of love, for example, to punish the other is a sign that we are setting boundaries not to resolve the conflict, but to get revenge.
When she thought about what was hers and what was his, she realized that she could not blame him for her loss of herself. She was the one who had complied with his wishes. She was the one who was afraid of conflict and so chose to adapt to what he wanted. She had to take ownership of her passivity.
She took responsibility for her own misery and began to work on it in the relationship.
and in this case, she was miserable because SHE (for a myriad of reasons) had chosen to become a doormat and surrender herself to his selfish desires. by learning to assert her inherent dignity and rights as a person created in God’s image, she was able to achieve freedom from the misery she had chosen for herself (and it is possible, if not probable, that becoming a doormat was a learned response to past trauma and abuse, which makes her effort all the more heroic). but we don’t always choose misery for ourselves.
Boundaries are only built and established in the context of relationship. To run from a relationship as the first step of boundaries is not to have boundaries at all. It is a defense against developing boundaries with another person. The only place boundaries are real is within relationship.
They learned how to be separate people who were free to love each another. The missing ingredient all along had been a deep sense of intimacy, something the Bible refers to as “knowing” someone. But without clear boundaries, they could not know each other, and without knowing each other, they could not truly love each other.
the key problem reasserts itself: in the authors’ minds, you become two entirely separate people and live separate lives in the name of “boundaries,” but by being these two separate stoic sterile entities, you actually achieve intimacy, which by definition is an entwined person—NOT ENMESHED—but entwined, “one flesh.”
this principle means that our actions have consequences. When we do loving, responsible things, people draw close to us. When we are unloving or irresponsible, people withdraw from us by emotionally shutting down, or avoiding us, or eventually leaving the relationship.
which stands at odds with their overarching argument that spouses aren’t responsible for each other’s feelings!
The relational part of marriage involves the emotional tie two people have to each other, such as how deeply connected they are and how they feel about each other, both positively and negatively. The functional part of marriage has to do with the “doing” aspects of the relationship, such as paying bills, managing time, cooking meals, keeping house, and rearing children. In the relational aspect of marriage, sowing and reaping has to do with how spouses affect and impact each other’s heart.
go back to page 20 and read about how spouses can’t be responsible for each other’s feelings when they are acting unkindly to each other and hurting each other, then read this part again and watch your own head explode from the sheer cognitive dissonance of it all. you’re separate people doing separate things separately, but marriage is about being one and sharing lives with each other.
a husband may sow overspending, while his wife reaps the result by having to get a job, or by scrimping on food and other necessities to meet the family budget. Or a wife may sow careless housekeeping, while her husband reaps discomfort in his own home and embarrassment when company comes over. In either aspect, the problem is the same: The one who has the problem isn’t facing the effects of the problem. And things don’t change in a marriage until the spouse who is taking responsibility for a problem that is not hers decides to say or do something about it. This can range from mentioning how
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the cognitive dissonance is so obvious! I thought we weren’t supposed to let the spouse’s failures “affect” us! but suddenly, there are real consequences to a spouse’s lack of respect for their partner’s needs and rights, and NOW they’re supposed to do something about it?
We have no power over the attitudes and actions of other people. We can’t make our spouse grow up. We can’t stop our spouse from exhibiting a troublesome habit or character flaw. We can’t force our spouse to come home on time for dinner, to refrain from yelling at us, or to initiate conversations with us. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control, not other-control (Galatians 5:23). God himself does not exercise such power over us, even though he could (2 Peter 3:9).
What you do can affect your spouse.
but on pages 20, 22, 23, and 27, it says to not let your spouse’s negative traits or actions affect you. make up your minds!
When two people marry, two lives blur together to make a new one, two become one. The blurring of expectations and feelings can become an issue.
Don’t storm into the living room with a list of “how things are going to change around this house.” Tell your spouse you want your boundaries respected, and ask him if he feels his are being respected also. Let him know that you value and desire him to be free to say no, even if you don’t like the answer. Ask him some of the following questions: How might I be crossing your boundaries? Do you feel I respect your right to say no to me? Do I give you guilt messages, withdraw, or attack you when you set a limit? Will you let me know the next time I don’t respect your freedom? These humbling and
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this is a book written to the masses and therefore needs to make the most general statement in order to avoid confusion or overexplanation; that said, it is acceptable for a spouse to try to convince the other to do something. this is not manipulation on its face. “respect my no” is not an ironclad principle, and saying “no” isn’t a be-all end-all to most issues.
“You’re right. I really don’t look forward to your resentment,” Tom responded, “and I’m sure it makes me avoid you. The other day, I was going to be ten minutes late. When I thought about facing your wrath, I figured I might as well make it thirty minutes, since I knew you’d be angry anyway. So I dropped by the drugstore to pick up some film.”
This anecdote reads like it's been heavily overdramatized. But it also illustrates his childish mentality. "If I'm going to be a little late, I might as well be super late.” that isn't how adults ought to think.
Lynn solved a small but chronic marriage problem by making an important shift in her attitude. She stopped trying to change Tom, and she started making changes in herself. Lynn moved from seeing the problem as Tom’s lateness to seeing it as her unhappiness with Tom’s lateness. This opened the door to things she could control. When you cease to blame your spouse and own the problem as yours, you are then empowered to make changes to solve your problem. To do this, Lynn set a couple of limits on herself. First, she reined in her impulse to attack Tom for his tardiness. This was not easy, as she
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The authors don’t explain why it's her problem, they just reframe it as being hers even though they immediately acknowledge that she is in the right. it would be more accurate to say that her approach to solving the problem (i.e., being a sledgehammer) is counterproductive and only exacerbating the situation.
Boundaries in Marriage is not the same as Boundaries on Your Spouse. This book is not about changing, fixing, or making your spouse do anything. It is about bringing boundaries into the relationship to provide a context in which both mates can grow.
Though you may share no blame in creating these problems, you probably need to take some initiative in solving them. This often seems unfair to people. They will say, “Why should I have to solve a problem I didn’t cause?” This is a legitimate question. However, the question exposes a demand for fairness that will never exist in a fallen world. Such a question keeps people protesting and complaining while still mired in the problem. God sees it another way. He says that no matter who causes a problem, we are to take steps to solve it. If our brother has something against us, we are to go to him
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The “innocent” spouse needs to see what part, active or passive, he plays in the problem.
We are more concerned about the person who is making us crazy or miserable than we are about the state of our own souls. Blaming someone else shifts the light of truth from us to someone else.
We need to realize our need for limits because we need to submit ourselves to the same rules we want our partner to submit to. Submitting to the boundary process is the great equalizer in marriage and keeps both spouses in a mutual relationship instead of in a one-up or one-down one. Both need to accept and respect the limits of the other; no one plays God, doing what he wants and expecting the other to comply. When one mate protests her spouse’s disorganization yet will not look at her own controlling tendencies, she stands little chance of seeing him change. She is being a hypocrite in that
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When you set limits on yourself, you create an environment in which your spouse can become free to choose and grow. It is tempting to try to change your spouse. Controlling, nagging, complying to seek approval, and blaming are all futile in helping your spouse to grow. Your spouse will only react to your control. He won’t experience his loneliness, need for love, gratitude, healthy guilt, or the consequences of his actions. He will be more concerned with staying free of your attempts to change him, or even with retaliating, to show you how it feels to be him.
Nagging and complaining doesn't achieve anything except self-gratification. When all we do is berate the other spouse, it gives them permission to keep doing the things they're doing. This is different, though, from an honest conversation about what's going on. But it doesn't take much to turn that into a struggle session.
You cannot make your spouse grow up—that is between him and God. But you can make it easier for him to experience the love and limits he needs. When he faces the consequences of his immaturity, he stands a better chance of changing than if he faces your nagging and hounding. Become truthful, not controlling.
Liz and Greg are friends of mine. Liz illustrates the idea of setting boundaries on our own character as well as anyone I know. Her marriage to Greg is less than satisfying. He’s a good person, but he’s self-absorbed and uninterested in personal growth. He will listen to Liz talk about a seminar she has been to, or page through a book she wants him to read, but that’s about it. Greg’s disinterest in personal growth has been a loss for Liz over the years of their marriage. She had wanted to pair with someone who seeks after God and wants to continue to grow as she does. However, she has adapted
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This is an area where the metaphor of earthly marriage reflecting Christ and the Church falls short: there are areas where our spouse falls short and can't be who the other person needs them to be. Christ has no such needs. Does there come a point in time where a spouse's continual failure to meet those needs invalidates the marriage? If Liz has to find those things outside her marriage, should she really stay with Greg if he refuses to be what she truly needs?
The highest calling of a spouse is the call to love, just as it is the highest calling of our faith: loving God and each other (Matthew 22:37-40). Love means doing what you can for your spouse. And setting boundaries on your own character weaknesses is one of the most loving things you can do in your marriage. When you grow, you become more tender, more empathic, and yet more honest and firm in your convictions. You become someone who is better to live with.
we are unable to change ourselves, in and of ourselves: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15). However, we do have some power and choices. We can choose to tell the truth about our faults. We can choose to bring those faults into the light of relationship. We can choose to repent of them and to work them out and mature them.
And there's a difference between being honest about our faults vs. acknowledging them.
By human nature, we try to play God instead of seeking him. We need to continually own this worst and most hurtful aspect of our character. By playing God, we miss the mark in loving, being responsible, and caring about the welfare of our spouse.
Though the ideal of marriage is that all parts of one spouse connect to all parts of the other, most couples struggle with their tendency to withdraw their hearts from each other. Withdrawal makes them feel safer and more protected. However, when they allow withdrawal to continue unchecked, they can condemn their union to slow starvation. Marriage requires love to sustain itself.
Ever since the Fall, we have protested the reality that our lives are our problem and no one else’s. All of us desire either to have someone else take responsibility for us or to avoid the consequences of our actions. This is how children and immature adults go through life. They argue that “it’s not fair” that they have to shoulder their own burdens. They drive their spouses crazy trying to shirk their jobs in life. Some of us have more difficulty with taking responsibility than others do. For example, you may leave certain projects, chores, or financial tasks undone at work or in your
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Of all the aspects of ourselves we need to set limits on, our tendency to control our spouse is probably the most crucial. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we have tried to run each other’s lives. The strategies, manipulations, and tactics spouses employ to change their mate are endless. And if there is any sure-fire way to destroy trust and love, control is it. We must give our love freely. We may not say, “I will love you if you do this or that.”
How can you determine if someone is attempting control? Here are several indicators: Not respecting the other’s no. The husband will make several attempts to change the decision of his spouse and disregard her feelings. Punishing a “wrong” choice. When the husband chooses to do something the wife doesn’t like, the wife will act put out or like a victim, or she will accuse her husband of not being loving or caring. Not valuing freedom. The husband will be more interested in his wife’s making the “right” decision, than in her free, heartfelt choice. Bad results. The wife who is being controlled
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How can you determine if someone is attempting control? Here are several indicators:
Not respecting the other’s no. The husband will make several attempts to change the decision of his spouse and disregard her feelings.
—again, because the book is written for a general audience, you need to take the general principle, but persuasion and convincing someone are not the same thing as manipulation or “disrespecting someone’s no.” At some point in time, if the other person won’t listen, it’s best to stop beating your head against the wall (assuming of course that there is no extreme wrongdoing you’re trying to address). But the point stands.
Punishing a “wrong” choice. When the husband chooses to do something the wife doesn’t like, the wife will act put out or like a victim, or she will accuse her husband of not being loving or caring.
—it isn’t our job to punish each other, and passive-aggression and manipulation absolutely play a role here, but the authors fail to differentiate this from “creating consequences,” which they have said is necessary… which inherently shows disregard for the other person’s “no” in the sense that they are unwilling to do the right thing.
Not valuing freedom. The husband will be more interested in his wife’s making the “right” decision, than in her free, heartfelt choice.
—sometimes we choose the wrong thing and require loving correction. The authors would do well to explore “as iron sharpens iron,” if they are going to dispense advice from a generally biblical perspective.” (Scripture also has things to say about those who reject reproach.)
Bad results. The wife who is being controlled will be resentful, act out, or retaliate.
—it’s been established that being a sledgehammer doesn’t solve anything.
Guilt messages are intended to make our spouse feel responsible for our welfare. In other words, guilt controls by creating the impression that our spouse’s freedom injures us. By choosing differently from us, our spouse has thus been unloving.
The authors fail to acknowledge that sometimes, in fact many times, this is true. We wrong each other. We mistreat one another. They have acknowledged that in previous pages.
Often, when one spouse wants something the other doesn’t, the disappointed mate will become angry. Anger is our basic protest against the fact that we are not God and that we cannot control reality.
This delegitimizes anger, which is downright dangerous. Anger on its own is not wrong, and Christ himself shows us that it can be righteous.
Persistent Assaults on the Spouse’s Boundary One person will say no, then the spouse will make attempt after attempt to change the other’s mind. Like a strong-willed door-to-door salesperson, the spouse will argue, wheedle, and plead until the other has been worn down. Like a child who has learned to keep asking until he hears the answer he wants, the spouse refuses to live with the boundary of the other.
I have addressed this several times.
No matter how much you would like to believe the opposite, your spouse will not change her decisions, opinions, or feelings until she is ready to. You may need to realize that you live with someone whom you can’t “make” do the right thing. This helplessness is often a very painful emotion. Angry control moves may give us the illusion that we have power over our spouse that we don’t have. Accepting helplessness hurts, but it’s where reality lies.
But they encourage you to create consequences for hurtful behavior! Which one is it, guys?
