Responding to those who disrespect boundaries

It’s a classic irony.  Those who need boundaries will be the ones who will disrespect them, and those who don’t need boundaries apply what isn’t in place for them.

When we talk about boundaries it’s maddening to think that those in our lives that need them won’t respect them.  They’re only needed for those who won’t keep them.  And by evidence of the need of them we will find further evidence of the need of them.

It’s the same dynamic as those who abuse and instead of apologising and repent go on to further abuses of entitlement or cover-up.  One abuse begets another and then another and then another.  In this, the abuser demonstrates their failure to learn.  They are neither capable nor motivated.  They will refuse to honour your requests.  They will show their disdain for what you think, for what you need, and for what you enforce.  Their arrogant rebuttal is a slur on your will.  Their temerity is an insult to the fact you bear them in your life.

There are some people who will always insist on you being in their life on their terms.  Boundaries were created for such people.  In a life that’s so often reciprocal in nature, the only way these relationships work is when you develop terms for them to abide by in return.  Your own terms.

When people refuse to pick up on the subtle cues that any intuitive person would respect, the cues need to become louder and more visible so they cannot continue being ignored.  I understand that it’s nice to start out being respectful and giving people a chance to pick up on body language and gestures, but not everybody notices, and not everybody cares.

Those who disrespect boundaries reveal who they are by their behaviour and by their attitudes.  If we are to love them with the truth, we will need to execute tough love.

Jesus talked about the kind of people who flout common respect in open and divisive ways.  Like, throwing your pearls to pigs and bad trees not bearing good fruit (Matthew 7:6,18).  People are not good Christians when they ignore the abuse of others, whether that abuse is aimed at themselves or others.  Jesus never stood idly by ignoring the abuse of the Pharisees.

For us in our own lives, we have not only the opportunity, but also the role to respond to the treatment of ourselves and others by people who have no respect.  This takes courage, to gently push back on the overt disdain and covert resistance we experience as some take umbrage of the institutes we’ve set up through the designs of love.

These designs of love are the ways in which we’ve constructed our lives in accordance with the choices we’ve made to provide space for ourselves and others to love people and to receive love.

When people willingly flout these designs of love, and go out of their way to interrupt these designs, there is the opportunity of response.  If we don’t respond we fail those we care about and love.  If we don’t respond those who flout our designs receive affirmation to continue to do as they will.  Remember that we are talking about repeated behaviour here.

To turn the other cheek, in Jesus’ parlance, is a grace we live out in everybody else’s life that come to encounter us, but not the one who’s in our lives on a daily or routine basis.  Jesus never intended any of us to be a doormat to be willingly and serially abused.  We can suffer for the odd injustice, but where there is a pattern, this same Jesus gives us the license to speak the truth in love.

Boundaries are a language of truth spoken in the love of a second chance.  And those who would flout these boundaries reveal to us and anybody who would take the time to notice a spurious heart bent on entitlement.  But when boundaries are respected, a deeper trust is forged, because in being respected we respect these people in return.