TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

I've talked about managing expectations before and now, after having a few 'Goofus and Gallant' moments I feel compelled to talk about setting boundaries.  I've also said it before and it bears repeating: when you aren't taught certain lessons of life, you can feel like the retarded kid who is still struggling to tie his shoelaces while the other kids are learning to drive stick-shift.  It can be enraging to see where your peers are and yet be unable to get there.  It can also be depressing on a level usually not seen outside of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.  Now that I have spent months and years putting the puzzle pieces together - part of me wants to come back and tell you what the whole picture is.  This is the reason I wrote this.

I had a bad habit before, of being too available.  I was the guy you called to move the couch for free.  I was the guy you called to sit in the hospital room or unclog the toilet.  I'm good at doing the hard jobs and I used to, with not a small amount of wounded pride, talk about how 'I was the first guy to the job and the last guy to the party.'  I think I've been saying it for years and now, I don't say it any more.  Whatever source it comes from, I had the mistaken impression that helping people with something automatically brought you into their social circle and that just isn't the case.  People are friends because they relate to each other and they have something in common; not because one person owes something to the other.

I had to break the connection between the two and then surround myself with people I could relate to - I had to build new fences (fences are both boundaries and connections - I use the metaphor interchangeably) with the people I wanted to be neighbors with.  The thing that I had to get better at was learning how to respect myself as much as I respected other people.  I think the family hammered that lesson home  a little too well - maybe they were afraid I thought too much of myself.  In any case, I never learned how to build and maintain boundaries when I was younger; now I've spent the last 10 years puzzling it out for myself.

I think  a lot of people get to that point in their late 20s and early 30s, the relationships and the answers they had 5 years ago aren't working for them anymore and now it's time to evolve.  I've been to that place before and although it's never comfortable, good things always come out of it.  I'll keep you posted as to how it all goes.