this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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[serious] What are your most important boundaries you've learned to enforce? (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Nobody tells me what I'm going to do or where I will be going and when that happens

I am open to invitations or requests or suggestions where my involvement is desired or ostensibly necesary for somone else. But I will never respond to this as a statement of fact or in the form of a threat

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[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Family is the relationship, relatives are who you're related to.

You can pick your family but you can't pick your relatives.

You don't have to associate with your relatives if you don't want to. Family is a group of people who you'll want to associate with.

I grew up being told constantly, "I'm family, you have to love me," which definitely wasn't good for my mental health until I realized the above statements. My relatives are typically terrible people, and the last time I saw most of them they openly wished for my death at Thanksgiving (because a different relative outed me as bi to the whole gathering) and I haven't gone back to their gatherings since.

They'll often (years after the event above) send me invitations weeks in advance to the gatherings and then either the day before or morning of send me a message saying, "Sorry, we didn't mean to invite you. You aren't welcome here."

So I guess in a way the statement, "You have to love family," is somewhat true but in the, "a prerequisite for someone being family is love," not a being forced to love someone you're related to.

And the barrier that you mentioned OP, is definitely a good one and one I didn't even realize I whole heartedly was using for a long time.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The fundamental error in my opinion (we are all implicated in this to an extent cuz we don't come out of the box necessarily "knowing" it) is this notion of anyone being entitled and unreservedly owed anyone else's

  • time
  • attention
  • resources

Like obviously if you make a committment to someone or there is an implied non-opt-outtable one that still has the color of your consent or legal liabillity for etc, thats different.

Simplest rule I do is

If I generally come away feeling worse and not respected after we interface, there won't be another encounter to the greatest extent I am able to openly prevent (not just avoid or evade) that