Boundaries with Difficult People

I hung up on my difficult person the other day. I did. I pressed that red circle on my cell phone screen, then tossed my phone on the couch and walked away.

It felt good. It felt so good.

Enforcing a boundary I’d set intentionally gave me a sense of control over this difficult relationship. It took me years—twelve years, to be exact—to be clear on what I needed and what I would and would not tolerate, but boundaries are necessary in every relationship.

Boundaries are everywhere. Your front door is a boundary. Whether you live in an apartment or on a farm, the front door marks the boundary of your living space. Not everyone is welcome to cross your boundary. Boundaries at a zoo serve an important role: keeping both humans and animals safe. We can enjoy and interact and observe one another from those safe distances.

Different relationships require different boundaries. The goats in the petting zoo? They can nibble kibble out of our hands. The grizzly bears? They’re behind two fences and thick panes of glass. That’s how boundaries work in relationships as well. Some relationships are the close, hand-feeding, and nuzzling-at-your-pocket kind. Others are healthiest and best when there’s an enforced distance.

Close relationships are life-giving and nourishing to both people. They’re healing and safe. Toxic relationships, though, can be soul-crushing, usually for only one of the two people involved. They’re sources of pain, anxiety, and stress.

God has used boundaries from the beginning of time. Light and darkness. Land and sea. People and animals. Good fruit and forbidden fruit. Boundaries exist to keep us near God, and to bring us into communion with him. When we fail to abide by a boundary, the consequences can be severe. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Eden. Moses was forbidden from entering the promised land. David lost a child.

But God gives good gifts with his boundaries. In Numbers 34, he bestows the land of Canaan and details the extent of the Israeli kingdom. “Then the boundary will go down along the Jordan and end at the Dead Sea. ‘This will be your land, with boundaries on every side’” (v. 12 NIV).

God essentially said to them, “This is your gift. This is where I can keep you safe.”

Friends, the boundaries we set with the people in our lives, particularly the difficult people, are there to keep us safe. What if you believed that being in a relationship with you is a gift, but a gift you could choose who to give it to and its size? What if you believed relationships can have rules to keep you safe? And if those rules were violated (like eating an apple from a forbidden tree), there would be consequences (like banishment from the garden). How would that change your difficult relationships?

I’ll give you an example:
My difficult person doesn’t respect family time, particularly holidays. He thinks holidays are silly and a waste of time. One Christmas, my young children sat at our living room window for hours, staring at our road, waiting for him to arrive. Finally, thinking something must have happened—because surely they wouldn’t disappoint the children on Christmas—my husband called. They hadn’t even left for the two-hour drive to our home yet.

That was the day I said, like drawing a line in the sand, “No. No more. I will not spend my life waiting for this person to honor us and our holiday invitations.” Then I made a boundary: they would always be invited to join us for holidays and events, but we would give them the exact time we would eat or the activity would start, and then they could choose whether to attend. But we would never again wait for them.

I cannot tell you how much lightness I felt from that day on. I never got angry about their lack of respect for us. I never felt bad for my kids. I never got stressed out over an over-cooked meal. We continued with our plans as scheduled. The first couple of times, we welcomed them warmly when they arrived, and then they ate re-heated holiday dinners. They soon learned that we would go ahead with our plans with or without them, and they managed to get to events on time.

Boundaries are healthy. That one boundary has protected my heart from anger toward relatives on holidays. It has protected my kids from my words of frustration and stress. And it has allowed us to enjoy our relatives, because the success of an event isn’t tied to the time—or if—they arrive.

This was the first boundary I drew with my difficult person, but it wasn’t the last. I hung up the other day because another boundary, the one where I determined how I would consent to being talked to, was crossed. The consequence was that I ended the conversation then and there.

These boundaries keep me safe. My difficult person cannot control my family’s holidays, nor can he communicate with disrespect and anger. I can more easily love him when my boundaries are enforced.

Who are the difficult people in your life? What boundaries can you put in place to protect your heart? Your family’s heart?

If you need help defining and setting healthy boundaries, Dr. Henry Cloud is an amazing resource. You can find him at  https://www.boundaries.me/.

Annie Carlson is rooted like a turnip to the plains of North Dakota where she raises great food, large numbers of farm animals, and three free-range kids with her husband. You can find her with either a book or knitting needles in her hands as she dreams up her next adventure.

Photograph © Aron Visuals, used with permission