Friends: Season 3--Expanding and thriving

[Meredith]

A new season? My but time flies when you’re having fun!

The type of boundaries that are not directives or trying to control someone else, but the type that are things we have considered and decided are too important to pretend they aren't bothering us.

OKKAY then…boundaries. This is perhaps the first time in my entire life that I can participate in this topic from a positive standpoint. My former contribution would have been me asking and begging for ways to set boundaries for a PA/ADD guy who walked over each and every one I’ve ever laid down for him!

Now, I can share what works for me. I don’t set them in manipulation. I sit down, you CONSIDER (remember that?) what I can and cannot handle. Then, I take what I cannot handle and stop. For instance…my husband is as late as they come. I consider ‘on time’ to be ten minutes early and I hate when people are made to wait for me. If he says he will arrive at 5pm, I give him until 5:10pm and then leave. He can then drive the children all the way home. It works! He’s only had to do it once. He’s now on time, if not early.

Our lawyer who helped draw up the separation agreement had little to no patience with my H. She was a family friend and was disgusted by the circumstances surrounding the need for the SA. When H showed to our meeting a half hour late, apologizing as he always does by blaming traffic, she asked him if he’s ever flown on an airplane. Looking confused, he admitted that he had. She asked how many times the airplane has waited for him to arrive. He said that he was always on time for the airplane, so it never HAD to wait. She expected that response, nodded, and said, “treat every obligation you have as though it is that airplane. Why? Because you have PROVEN with that statement that you CAN be on time”. I have just recently figured out that I can encourage that by treating my time like the pilot of the airplane would treat his. Like I said, so far, only ONE time has he had to drive the children the rest of the way home.

I can give more boundary examples if you’d like, but that will do for now.

I know that this was on the old season, but I want to make reference to the website that was linked up to our thread, the funny things that WASs have done. Let me state that I found almost none of them funny. I suppose whether you do or don’t would completely depend on your sense of humor and mood. Much like the fact that Jerry Springer can be humorous if you are in the mood for that type of crazy humor!! But I want to make sure that people realize this really isn’t DBing. DBing is finding the humor in your situation, yes…but calling the OW interesting names, referring to your former husband as those people were, putting stories about incest in what was supposedly a humorous thread…that stuff is just plain trash. And I am not saying that anyone here needs to take any blame or apologize if they found the thread to be humorous. I just want to say that humorous or not, it wasn’t DBing. It was bitter, angry people venting.