Boundaries

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When I met my now-husband, he studied away from his home. Later I met his parents and it was kind of a cultural shock.
His mother seems to have no idea of personal boundaries. She doesn't seem to have them herself, blending to other people, and she doesn't get the idea that she should respect other people's boundaries. I need to shout at her to leave me alone, then she is offended but otherwise she can't get off you. Like, seeing nothing wrong in comming to your place to paint your walls without asking your opinion on it.

I have very strong boundaries myself, I'm a fairly radical individualist, so conflicts are inevitable.

My husband also sometimes gets annoyingly emotionally dependent on me. I need to remind him that he is entitled to his own feelings and opinions (even conflicting with mine) and he shouldn't ask me to direct every small thing for him. He also mimicks other people's manners and attitudes.

We have two daughters. One of them is an introvert who prefers to be left alone and decide on her own what to do. She sometimes gets into a conflict with her grandmother who doesn't see any need to leave anyone (especially a child) alone, even to the extent of emotional blackmail ("You don't like me!" and cry).
The other is 5yo and she still doesn't get that what I feel or what I want is not the same as what she feels or what she wants.

I wonder. Is there some genetic factor determining one's boundaries' strength and need for them? Or is it mostly environmental, the younger child being raised in time of my emotional breakdown and often misunderstood by her father? Or is she just slower to get it but eventually she would learn not to cling on other people? Or are just some people better off if emotionally dependent?

my only kid, 5 years old (nearly), allistic, clingy like... hell. i keep suffering personal space deprivation with her. and the worse is my emotional state, the more she;d glue to me. i think its a stress responce from her. allistic reads me, intuitively, before her cognition would kick in (not that she is old enough to understand herself in the first place), so she does what she can think of - glue to me to get a responce and remind me i have her. right now she got to sit and paint something, several minutes of peace yea. mostly she'd be either glued to me, or mischievous. i understand it as just what her neuro buildup tells her to do. i do my best to let her xD
and ya, my family is all allistic, and mostly very extroversive. im all out (AUT) yea. genetic/not genetic. dunno. gotta live with it. i dont think it gonna change xD

Oh, yeah, it's exactly like my younger one! And I suspect her to be allistic, indeed. She remembers every person in her preschool, with parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles... she is likely going to become a person I call "social hub", someone keeping in touch with incredibly many people.

My older daughter is likely an Aspie but I don't want a diagnosis to label her if I can have her needs met. I'm glad she is not raised by her grandparents. They would squeeze her soul out. Only yesterday I had to defend her right not to be hungry after eating soup when visiting them. And her right not to want to be touched or talked to when she was tired. I suppose they hate me already.
But at least they have learned that their 35yo son is capable of deciding on his own what hairstyle he wants to wear and if he wants some sandwiches or not. That's a big step forward for them, really.

I sympathise with you, we are exactly on the same page with a clingy allistic 5yo. You may be right, she may be all about sensing I'm uncomfortable and intuitively trying to comfort me her allistic way. The fact that her cheerful chatter is like hammering white-hot nails into my brain...

If only her father could get it the right way... but he has his own issues. He sees I feel bad and he sees she makes it worse, so his reaction is to defend me – and attack the child. And then me, barely capable of holding myself together, but I am a mother and have the instincts and hormones about it – then I raise to defend my child with the little mental power left inside me. So it all becomes so entangled and confused, I guess the child is incapable of learning how boundaries work in such a setting.

Dammit.

na thankfully the dad here is defending the kid xD WHEN he is around (which is very seldom). then again, it means he is messing with me that way more often than not. and then its the daddy fun, mom all business issue. also high five about cheerful chatter xd

Is your mother-in-law also very controlling? Does she have strong opinions on how you and your husband should live your lives? I think there's a correlation in my experience between a controlling parent and that same parent pushing boundaries like you describe.

I can understand your frustration.

I replied in the members-only part.

ED: No I don't think she is controlling, rather the opposite: she hands out control on her life to other people, especially her husband.
My husband sometimes seems to try to hand out control over him to me, which gets me mad. I hate this controlling-controlled kind of relationship my inlaws live in, I love to be friendly but independent, interacting with other friendly but independent people. I just don't fit in there.

But what puzzles me is that one of our children (likely Aspie, btw) is very much into my idea of loose relationships with people based on strong sense of self both sides, while the other (likely NT) seems to want to blend into other people, especially into me.
I don't think strong boundaries are ASD sign. I think they are something independent. But maybe, just like ASD, they are somehow hardwired into one's brain?

Last edited by magz on 30 Oct 2018, 3:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think it can be both personality and environment/culture. I hear you, half of what you describe would drive me up the wall.

In my marriage, we each deal with their own family/personal relationships that might cause trouble and in time we reached a very good balance. It's astounding what amount of drama and fights are caused by in-laws in otherwise harmonious couples, so it's crucial for spouses to talk things over and make sure they're always on the same side. Any chance of explaining your husband that redefining boundaries successfully must come or at least start from him? It's a lot of work and it takes time, especially with already established habits, but I don't think you can do it by yourself - you barely scratch the surface of the problem and end up as the bad guy on top of it.

well my former inlaw is absolutely awfully intrusive. she finds it normal to well, for example, rearrange my underwear the way she finds neat. i mean, what even allistic woman would have an idea of touching her inlaw's underwear! and then present that as a present. yea. i did this for u, happy holiday. frag my life. and ya i quite rudely told her to never touch any of my belonings again.
wasnt the only thing, just a "shining" example of her behaviour acourse my marriage.

talk about no borders yea. my mother, and especially my grandmother, are both awfully intrusive as well. tho at least they wouldnt touch my things (but would yell at me till i myself did what they wanted. some silver lining, yea). tho my emotions were allways policed. u should be sad at this grave of a person u never knew. u should be grateful for (something i didnt ask for). etc. u must remember and congratulate people on their b-days and other dates, and u should accept congratulations with gratitude, who cares what u feel and how u want to be left alone. sorry, i stop there. this thread isnt about my triggers.

my kid LOVES to barge in the sanzone when im using it, too. the thing of, she needs it the same second i went there, ya. but well she is still a toddler, so gotta give her some slack (not without explaining time and again, sometimes not really tenderly, why she shouldnt). i guess i cant expect borders while i still, emm, deal with her own hygienic needs because she cant yet. i gather, for an allistic child, some thick emotional chord with mother is a norm. like an umbilical that gets removed as they pass some maturation loops. and 5 years old is very early to be separated. we just dont get it, because we never formed anything like that in the first place. but we have to. they need it.

Yeah, my mother still gets offended when I forget about her nameday. Despite the fact that she knows I am rarely aware of what day it is and never remember about my own birthday or nameday... but she is still offended.

In my family it wasn't "you should feel like that", it was "you do feel like that". I still remember when a vacuum flask full of hot tomato sauce exploded in my aunt's hands. I was a toddler, had hot tomato sauce all over me and I started screaming HOT! HOT!
The aunt's reaction was: "It is not hot at all!" I remember being so defenseless, nowadays I would say: gaslighted. I had no right to have my own internal state, even with such a simple, physical thing.
It wasn't an isolated incident, just, as you put it, a shiny example.
After years of living within this scheme I was totally unable to say what I feel... because almost all the time what my family stated that I felt didn't match what I actually did feel.
But funny thing, only women did it. Men respected my boundaries, even when I was a small child.


Yeah, likely. Maybe the Aspie one feels we are on the same page when I respect her individuality but the allistic one needs this kind of closeness that violates my boundaries? I hope she will grow out of it without much harm to any of us.

well by "u should" i mean, they would repeat it and scorn me if i objected. till i "fell in line" and learn to give out reactions they wanted. ya, gaslighting. nobody cares what i feel. [b]hurt only counts when i bleed. [/b]and when i try to isolate they pull the kid card. aka, ur kid needs me, her grammie, how can u deny her? that sort of s**t. and again my feelings are either denied or devalued. its just autumn, u are depressed, get some pills and snap out of it. anything i cant give a date for never happened, and if it did, i misremember (with eidetic memory SURE!). they press my hurt buttons with reckless abandon and then pretend i am overreacting. they do it whatever i say. then they say they love me and want to help me. and then the cycle repeats. sorry, im spilling.

back to kid question, yep kid is intrusive, and its a tricky thing to learn to well, create some safe passage within ur own self to let her in without feeling emm, torn apart by her. sometimes i manage. sometimes i dont. im trying. i am afraid i cant explain how - its all so deep below ability to verbalize. im sorry. its the empiric thing, to find how to connect with the little allistic. and when success occurs, its very pleasurable for me too. one rule i've got here that i can verbalize is, if in doubt what to do - hug the kid. helps most of the time^^

Yeah, I know it. Hurt counts only if you bleed, an illness counts only if you have a fever. And this emotional blackmail that you ought to feel this or that towards your family members, you are denied even a chance to feel anything different. And when I rebelled, I got a label of "hysterical" which was used to explain anything not in line with expectations. There's nothing wrong, she's just hysterical, that's what I always heard about myself.

Do you still live with your family? My life improved a lot after I got out of my parents' home.

i dont. but they still get to me. the kid card.
and ya, i am just depressive.