Ask a Queer Therapist: Setting Boundaries with Parents
“My mom doesn’t like my partner and it’s hard to keep fighting with her about it. How do I establish boundaries when she’s reacted badly to any I’ve tried to set in the past?”
Dear Boundary-Challenged,
Ah…one of my favorite subjects: boundaries! If you ask any of my clients what word I use most often in sessions, boundaries would definitely be in the top three. They’re just so damn hard to navigate, right? We all need them, most of us want them, and yet navigating them in any type of relationship can be one of the hardest things. And, unfortunately, navigating them with a parent can be especially tough.
This leads me to what I think is at the heart of your question, you ask how to establish boundaries when she’s reacted badly to any you’ve tried to set in the past.
You’re actually asking two different questions here: 1. How do I establish boundaries with my mom? and 2. What do I do when she reacts badly to them? It sounds like you’ve actually been doing the first part, which is great! The first part is the only thing here that you have any control over. You set the boundaries, and your mother reacts how she reacts. That’s the shitty part.
For most of us who struggle with setting boundaries, one of the biggest obstacles is our fear about how the other person will react.
Our fantasy is that we set a boundary and the person respects it, end of story. No conflict, no negotiation or discussion, no need to talk about it further. Wouldn’t that be great?! It really would, except that it almost never happens that way, at least not with a parent with whom you’ve had an ongoing conflict about the same topic over many years.
Leaving aside that you don’t say anything about how long you’ve been with your partner, what your mother doesn’t like about him/her/them, or what types of boundaries you’ve already tried to establish with her on this subject, I would say that your biggest challenge is accepting that you can’t force your mother to honor your boundaries. This leaves you with the exhausting headache of having to re-state and reinforce them over, and over, and over again. This can be a maddening cycle, and what often leads people to just give up on setting the boundaries at all.
But please, don’t give up! If you give yourself permission to set the boundary and then stop engaging, it will eventually get easier to accept that you can’t change her or force her to honor your boundaries.
You will likely continue to be frustrated by this dynamic (understandably so!), but with time and practice, you will learn to say your piece and then walk away from the conversation. And, hopefully, your mother will learn that if she wants to continue to have a relationship with you, she will have to accept and respect the boundaries you set.
Good luck!
A Queer Therapist