Are Boundaries Making Us Selfish?
This week on one of my favorite podcasts, The Absolutely Not Podcast with Heather McMahan, the comedian posed an interesting idea: boundaries are making us selfish. Jigga what? Jigga who? Admittedly, I laughed when she said it. She’s a comedian, that’s the job. As she went on to describe why she felt this way, I started to understand where she was coming from and thought maybe she was right! Maybe boundaries are making us selfish.
To be clear, boundaries are an essential and important part of any healthy relationship. I’m not advocating for not having any boundaries. YAY, BOUNDARIES!
The selfish part comes in when and how you decide to flex those boundaries. Someone starts talking about something you’re not comfortable with and you scream “BOUNDARIES!” and then walk away and never talk to them again. You get in a fight with your mom, sister, friend, or whomever and then say, “You crossed my boundary!” and then you cross them off for the rest of your life.
You have to let people know, “Hey, I’m not cool with X.” and then if they continue to violate that line, you can walk away. But you do have to tell them where the boundary lies first. We aren’t mindreaders here. Well, that was presumptuous. I’m not a mind reader. Good for you, if you are. Also, people make mistakes, they don’t mean to mess up (hell, I mess up every day, I think it’s my specialty), but that doesn’t mean you get to write them off in the name of boundaries.
That’s selfish as hell and I won’t have it.
If that’s the way you wanna play, you can take your boundaries and go. Maybe they’ll tell you the next time you’ve got broccoli in your teeth or your panties are showing through your white pants, Helen.
About Heather
(So, my web designer says I needed to include a bio, though I find this task silly because, if you’re here, you know me.)
I’m a writer. It’s what I do. It’s a cathartic mechanism when I need release from my anxiety. I’ve had blogs in the past; I’ve taken them down, but I never stopped writing. I simply can’t. My notes app is forever long as it’s filled with pages and pages of different topics. Sometimes I just write a few sentences. Sometimes I write paragraphs.
Recently, I've been writing long essays. My friends and others I hold dear have coaxed me into sharing my work again.
So that's what I'm doing, you wicked, pushy people. LOL
I have no desire to see my writing be anything more than an opportunity to share what I love doing most. I have no interest in this blog reaching the masses.
I thought it would be fun to call it My Spicy Disaster because that's often how I feel. A complete mess of epic proportion. So join me, if you'd like, and let's pretend we're not sitting amongst the chaos crying, but laughing instead.
Or maybe we do cry sometimes, but then wipe our tears and remember one person’s disaster is another person’s … well, who the hell knows …