Boundary Breaking
I read your e-mails, your text messages and your post. I will become enraged if you do not give me the passwords to access your various forms of social media. I listen to your telephone conversations by standing nearby. I tap your telephone conversations and plant listening devices around your home. There is a GPS tracking device attached to your exhaust pipe. I interrupt you when you speak. I burst into a room when you have told me you are studying. I play loud music when you have a headache. I turn up uninvited when you are attending a function and waltz around as if I belong. I take your money and use your credit cards. I know you have been saving that delicious cake to share with your friends when they are visiting tomorrow but I take two huge slices from it anyway. I will use things that belong to you without asking and use things up that belong to you without buying a replacement. I am the friend that uses your make-up and wrecks the lipstick or causes the nail varnish to dry out. I am the neighbour who borrows your leaf blower and breaks it and never tells you least of all replace it. I borrow your vehicle even though you need it. I stand in your space, in your face and on your toes. I have absolutely no concept of what a boundary is. Why is that? Two reasons. I am so special I am entitled to all of these things as a matter of right. Who in their right mind would deny me access and use of such things and deny my behaviours as just reward and payment for having someone as special in their lives? You are paying for having me around. Secondly, I do not regard you or anyone else as separate to me. You are an extension of me and therefore what is yours is always mine. So no, I don’t do boundaries. Actually, that is not quite accurate. I do not do boundaries but I do lay them down for you. Rigid and inflexible but more of that another time I need to change channel now even though you were watching that programme. Fetch me a beer I know you bought some, I have drunk four already.
18 thoughts on “Boundary Breaking”
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You know I’m a doormat. And on the wrong side of the big 4-0. And desperate to be married with kids. If I piss him off and he dumps me, there are plenty of other women in our town who would happily scoop him up. Not really a town but a major cosmopolitan city with a lot of very attractive, very well-educated, very successful (at least in career) women who have a lot more going for me but find themselves in the same childless and wrong side of 40 boat. You really need to ask why I back down??
I wanted you to tell me in your own words.
I bet you did.
Fuel you once, shame on you.
Fuel you twice, shame on me.
😉
Very good Cody, a mantra for the narcissistic age.
You know, I totally would, and then you would recognize him from your annual Narc Club Conference, and you and he would have a good laugh. As if he’s not already having a good laugh at my expense every time I meekly back down when he gives me yet another excuse about why he can’t change his relationship status to “in a relationship”, or why I can’t tag him in my ig photos which he’s OBVIOUSLY IN, etc. etc…
Why do you back down?
But HG- there are pictures taken just this weekend of him and me with his arm around me, and it was a place far away from our hometown, so how could anyone possibly believe that we’re NOT together, or that I’m just a friend – which might be easier to believe if the picture were taken in our hometown – or that I’m a crazy ex who can’t let go – which might be easier to believe if these pictures had been taken months ago and not just yesterday? I know you’ll say “they always believe the N and not you”, but seriously, how would YOU go about explaining me away even with this recent evidence of us together? I really am curious the kinds of things you would say.
PS yes, I know my photos give him fuel. I am a fb/ig addict and can’t help myself. These pictures are my way of validating our relationship- to the other women, to my friends, and probably most of all to myself- and proving to the world that I’m not a pathetic woman over 40 who is unworthy of love. And HG you have no idea how hard it is to be a woman of my age and desperately want a relationship and children. One of the reasons I stick around, in addition to being codependent, is because he is one of the few guys out there who would actually consider having kids with a woman my age. And he is so handsome and sophisticated and wealthy so I know our kids would be beautiful and have the best of everything. I was so depressed finding online that the only men who would give me the time of day were 60 year old guys who had missed out on being dads earlier and the best they could hope for was a desperate woman over 40 who had missed out being a mom. And then I met G… Yes, I know how pathetic this all sounds. It’s just so hard to give up the dream!
“That’s my sister/cousin/sister in law.”
” We were together but we are just friends now. She was feeling down so I took her out for the day. I am good like that.”
“It’s photoshopped. She’s a maniac and wont leave me alone.”
“We hang out together occasionally but there is nothing in it. Now, (turning to target) let’s discuss what you and I are going to do together I thought we might (insert something impressive)”
“That was taken months ago but she tries to suggest it was last week. If you ever have the misfortune to meet her, you will realise she is crazy.”
“I think it is good that I am still friendly with my ex, don’t you?”
How about those for starters ?
If it were anyone else it would never work, but I do not doubt that an elite narcissist such as yourself would totally make it work. Have to say that I am so tempted to email you my ig name so you can amuse yourself by taking a look and telling me how you would explain based on what you see. But I know the only way this would be even mildly tempting would be if the guy in the photos was not G but HG. 🙂
Be my guest Cody.
This was the very first post I came upon while reading about codependency.
The first 6 sentences were 1:1 my life at that exact point in time when I clicked to the link that brought me to this blog.
The subject so well explained and I got FASCINATED by your writing. Then one day I decided to comment and enjoyed the interaction..
Many of my boundaries were being broken and I had not seen it like this.
Its do differnet today. So much learning, healing and hopes acquiered at this blog.
Lifechanging 😘
A
HG, have you ever given someone permission to tag you on fb and then later refused it, even if you were technically still together? How do you excuse why you allow tagging permission sometimes but not others?
I haven’t but the reason for doing this would be simple; to provoke a reaction. If you think we are in a relationship and want to tag me, you are exerting control over me. If this is done during devaluation you are not entitled to do this. I have the control not you. Therefore it will be rejected and done in a manner to make you react.
But of course. You’d think I should know this by now after reading your advice. And yet I still hold out hope – crazy, I know – that maybe he’s not lying, maybe his ex IS batshit crazy, maybe she WILL follow through on her threats to take his child away from him and use our fb pictures as evidence that he’s an unfit parent, and that’s why we have to keep these pictures private, or at least limited to a carefully screened (by him, of course) list of his family and friends. I can’t tell you how much it burns me, though, to see him post a picture of him that *I* took on OUR vacation together – one of the few pictures he ever posts publically on his page – and see all these women like it as if he is single and not with someone else: ME. I have set up my ig account however so that if any of these women do try to cyberstalk him, or me, and they stumble onto my public ig account, they will see the EXACT same picture of him that they liked on his fb, along with a whole bunch of pictures of us obviously together.
PS I meant “explain” not “excuse” in my last post, but you probably figured that out! 🙂
They may stumble on such pictures but he will still have them believing him and not you. He will also derive fuel from the display of these pictures by you. You would be better served by taking them down.
No you don’t do boundaries. I grew up to you coming into my room like a prison warden tossing an inmate’s cell. I came home to “I know where you were,” and that accusatory look.
🌷🌷🌷 again you inspire me many feelings of compassion and the situation you went through 🌷🌷🌷