Reply to How to not be such a pushover?

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[quote=Anonymous]You have to reframe your boundaries as what you need in order to maintain a long term relationship where you are not resentful.  The other person is allowed not to accept those boundaries and leave.  That doesn’t change what you need.

Right now, you are thinking of quitting your job, quitting the PTA, pulling your daughter out of Girl Scouts, and firing your nanny.  You have to decide for yourself what exactly you would need in order to stay in these things and relatively happy (what you might need from the PTA might be different from what you need from your boss), and then you have to inform other people when they push against your needs.

I heard Marsh Linehan (famed for her treatment of borderline personality disorder) say at a talk that she once told one of her patients that if they called her on her free time, they had to at least pretend that she had helped them.  If they ended the call saying that she wasn’t helpful, then she would be resentful about the call and would start to have thoughts that she didn’t want to answer when they called again.

We’ve all been there, OP, and we’ve all been burned.  You have to remember that it’s on you to figure out what you need and then inform other people.  It’s not on them to guess.

*you probably have some childhood stuff where you think it’s totally reasonable to guess what people want based on tiny facial expressions and inflection in tone.  And you are probably really good at it.  But most people aren’t raised that way.  [/quote]

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