Do you know what the 4 kinds of boundaries are?

In the previous Boundaries post, I talked about sausages and picket fences. Those are the metaphors Gayle and I developed to help us understand the function of our personal boundaries. Both have as their principle metaphorical function the free, but managed flow of ideas, actions, beliefs, etc. into and out of our personal space. We don’t always manage to protect that flow and sometimes find our boundaries have been breached before we even know it. We must first know how that happens before we can correct it. In this post I want to take the topic further by listing various types of boundaries and posing some questions below each one. Hopefully these will help you identify actions or beliefs that prevent you from properly protecting the integrity of your sausages and picket fences. Read the rest of this entry »

It surely feels that way.

(Posted by Ron)

I’m lost. It’s too late. I doubt that I will be able to recover from this. We were sitting at the Waffle Hut Sunday (yes, if you don’t look too closely at the kitchen it’s possible to eat there.) I looked down and found my cell phone in my hands. Yes, my cell phone. On most days I don’t even know where it is. More importantly, I was using the keyboard to make a note. OMG. I am lost! I swore to never touch the keyboard.

Do you want more proof?

We were recently in that bastion of sin and waste in the deserts of Nevada (my first trip.) While eating dinner in one of Wolfgang’s restaurants (more proof!) a gentleman and his date/girlfriend/wife sat down next to us. I knew we were kindred souls because there was obviously an age difference between them. His hair was grayer than mine but that just means I have a better hairdresser.

It was kind of long and stringy, but something about it looked really good to me. I came back and decided to let my hair get long (again). Last week Gayle discovered something called Malleable Moulding Paste (must be British.) What’s the connection? She looked upon my now longer hair as an experimental zone for the Paste. I don’t think it worked. Our friend David agreed when he saw it. I don’t think I’m ready to be seen in public with hair styled to look as I do when I wake up each day. At least I hope the experiment is over.

But what am I going to do about the cell phone?  And did I just type OMG?  OMG!!!  WTF??

Good fences make good neighbors.
From “The Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

(Posted by Gayle)

One of the first major battles a May December couple is likely to experience is disapproval from friends, family members, co-workers, and the public in general.  (Be sure to read Maya’s post on marginalization.)

In our experience, learning to understand, set, and maintain healthy boundaries is a must for anyone in an age gap relationship.  It’s a tool that will:

• come in handy
• get used a lot
• help preserve your relationship with each other
• enable you to communicate in a clear way to nay sayers
• be one of the best things you can do for yourself and your partner.

Ron recently completed a 3-part series on boundaries.  You’ll find his posts here:

1. Do you know how to nurture and set your boundaries?
2. What Everyone Needs to Know about Boundary Building
3. 5 Ways to Protect Your Boundaries

Do you sound like you are coughing up a hairball or cussing like a sailor when you say the word “NO?”

(Posted by Gayle)

Yesterday Ron posted his third blog on the topic of boundaries.  In it he talks about being able to say the word “no” when necessary.  Most of fall us into one of two categories:

• Those who say no easily or maybe even too easily. (If you’ve made f!*kno into a word of it’s own, you fall into this category.)
• Those who can’t get the word nuuuh neeeeh nnnnnO out very easily at all.  (If your no sounds like you are coughing up a hairball, you fall into this category.)

This post will help both groups.  Here are 10 ways to say the word no without using the word no.  I suggest practicing these out loud (alone) until they roll off your tongue with ease and grace!

1. That won’t work for me.
2. I am not comfortable with that right now.
3. I am not taking on new commitments right now.
4. That is not part of my plan at this time.
5. That’s just not good for me right now.
6. I wish I could help, but I am not in a place to do that.
7. I don’t have time in my schedule for that.
8. I have other more pressing priorities right now.
9. Thanks for asking,  I wish I could help, but there just isn’t room in my schedule for that.
10. I’m not good with that.

Do you know how to set and nurture your boundaries?

This the first installment of a series about boundaries. In it I hope to introduce you to our concept of boundaries. The first thing I did was to ask the internet to help me define boundaries. It’s not as simple as you might think. In fact, according to the magic of Google the list is almost endless. Here are a very few of the more interesting definitions:

Boundaries:

• According to worldnet.princeton.edu a boundary is “the line or plane indicating the limit or extent of something.” I kind of like that one since it includes limits.
• In en.wikipedia.org, as used in Topology (a made-up word for Geometry?) a boundary has something to do with “a subset S of a topological space X is the set of points which can be approa ched…” Th e remainder just gets worse but it reminded me of how confused many of us are about our boundaries so I included it.
• And this definition from dakotapathways.org says it like I think it should be said. A boundary “indicates a border or a limit.” A Limit, again! That’s what we all strive to develop in our lives from the first breath we draw until the last – Limits!

Read the rest of this entry »