Boundaries and Expectations

Communication is a Small Price to Pay for Love

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Three Honeymoons

George and I haven’t ever discussed expectations or boundaries in our relationship(s). I don’t know if either of us ever thought much about it during the honeymoon phase of our relationship(s). We’ve had three honeymoon phases because we have been in three relationships together. They occurred in 1989, 2010, and 2018, when we were 17, 38, and 46. The honeymoon was basically all we had the first two times we tried. Those partnerships lasted roughly nine months each. 

First Honeymoon

When we were 17, we didn’t know anything about anything other than having fun, hanging out with friends, and whatever our hormones whispered in our ears. We certainly didn’t know anything about boundaries or expectations. We “expected” that all the details would fall into place if we loved each other. That’s not how it works when the details include adult responsibilities no one had ever taught me to manage. I ended up moving to Alaska. He was going to save up and meet me there, but the plan unraveled at both ends and fell apart.

Second Honeymoon

The second time, we were both fully adults, fully responsible for managing our daily responsibilities, and fully entangled in completely different primary relationship situations. I was involved with and supporting Frank, the one true narcissist who had been and would remain in jail for months. George was at the stage of divorce after learning how much temporary spousal and child support was going to cost him, but before learning how far his wife was willing to go to weaponize their children against him.

We saw each other for two weeks every month (unless George was able to see his daughters) and worked hundreds of miles apart the other two weeks. Our time together was anything we wanted it to be, and we wanted it to be like it was in 1989. But, after less than a year of acting like teenagers half of the time, reality started creeping into our make-believe world. Frank was released from jail and proceeded to make my life a living hell I couldn’t escape when I tried to leave him. George’s wife had resorted to telling their young daughters inappropriate and untrue details about their divorce, specifically that he didn’t want to be with them (while keeping them from him). With deep regret, we called it quits. 

Third Honeymoon

When we were 46 years old, it seemed the timing was finally right. Frank was out of the picture. George had a peaceful relationship with his ex-wife, who no longer tried to keep their kids from him or alienate their affection. We had each cleaned up and gotten off of drugs the year before, two months apart. 

On the one-year anniversary of my clean date, just as I considered getting high, his 17-year-old daughter messaged me–as him–on his Facebook account. The texts were halting at first; then, she told me who she was. She wanted to know if I loved her dad and wanted to see him because they would be coming through town in a few days. I answered yes and yes. George and I talked on the phone a few times in the following days; then, we met at an IHOP for breakfast. I missed my bus stop and ran down the sidewalk in sandals because I was late and afraid they’d leave.

All of the old chemistry was there, and his daughter kept grinning and saying she’d never seen her dad that happy or happy at all in a long time. He made a nine-hour round trip to take her home and return to me. 

Within a few months, I was living with him in his brother's home–the brother who had taken us in when we were 17. On the second anniversary of my clean date, we got married… without ever expressing boundaries or expectations. We “expected” that all the details would fall into place if we loved each other. That’s still not how it works. 

How It Works

Communication, boundaries, and self-awareness are required for a healthy relationship. It turns out that George and I suck at communicating. Neither of us is skilled at setting boundaries, either. (If you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you already know this about me.) Our shortcomings in these areas have led to years of hurt, disappointment, resentment, and anger that blew up like a powder keg last October.

Having been apart for the better part of eight months, we’ve both definitely proven to ourselves that we are capable of living without the other. We’ve also had plenty of time to realize expectations that weren’t being met by or for the other the other. So we got together and talked about it.

Round One: Getting A Lot Off My Chest

The first time we met, we went to a motel because we needed somewhere private, but we weren’t ready to meet at my place. To be honest, I expected some “no-tell motel” action—and, after seven long months, I was ready for it—but George was there to listen and learn. He didn’t understand how I could have been so frightened of him that I couldn’t just ask him to leave without a protective order from the court. Why did I have him arrested? Why did I use his location against him? Why didn’t I just let him leave on Monday when he caused the huge fight after finding my trauma therapy notes? Why did I pretend that everything was fine for the two weeks he was at work? Why didn’t I tell him about the concerning mass they found during my colonoscopy? All reasonable questions.

During a conflict, I’m not able to explain my feelings, thoughts, or actions. It looked like this when I was little, being scolded by Byron:

“What were you thinking?

(“I don’t know")

What do you mean you don’t know? Does your little tiny brain not work? How do you not know?

(trying not to stumble when he pokes me in the chest or forehead with each question)

Are you stupid?

(sniveling)

Why the fuck did you do that? Answer me when I’m talking to you

(I mumble, staring at a spot between his feet: “I thought—”)

—shut up! You said you didn’t know what you were thinking... which is it?

(“I don’t know")

Look at me when I’m talking to you

(I look up, terrified, trying not to cry)

—wipe that look off your face, or I’ll wipe it off for you! Who do you think you are?

(“I don’t know")

You’re never going to amount to anything.

(eyes squeezed shut, holding tears)

Do you think you can get away with stupid shit because you’re special? You’re not special. You’re a stupid, lazy, no-good loser, and that’s all you’re ever going to be.

(openly sobbing, tears pouring)

Dry that shit up. Nobody cares about your fake fucking tears. And quit that crying before I give you something to cry about. I’ve had enough. Go to your room.

(running down the hall as he follows, belt in hand)

As an adult, it’s mostly just staring off, mute, mumbling, apologizing, avoiding, withdrawing. That’s what George is used to from me during a conflict… unless he pulls the right/wrong trigger, and I lose my mind.

That’s not what he got this time. He was calm and patient with me, and after months of dwelling on all of those things and what I could have done differently, I was ready to explain myself.

Clearing my conscience

I spent the most time explaining why I had been increasingly afraid of him for so long

1. Frequency and intensity of his rage.

2. Refusal to be interactive at all.

3. Quantity of whiskey he drank, even when I asked him to at least cut back. The time of day he drank whiskey. Where he would drink whiskey. How long could he stay drunk on whiskey… The morning of my first round of lab results, George was still drunk from the night before, made a drink to prevent a hangover, insisted on going to my 8:30 appointment with his drink, and almost fell through the closet in the exam room. The good news was there was no cancer in my results, but there were several other extremely serious issues to deal with that would be tedious, time-consuming, and require consistent treatment and a lot of willpower. He heard only “no cancer” and stopped listening. He danced in the parking lot with his drink and was so happy. I was hungry and thinking about the changes I had to make (adopting a clean diet and all the long drives to a decent produce department, kicking alcohol while living with an alcoholic, treatments that haven’t changed since the Middle Ages, asking for time off of work and knowing that all of my time off would be for medical instead of R&R, and so on). At the restaurant, George drank—wait for it—whiskey: two doubles of top shelf (as if quality mattered at that point). He was obnoxious and embarrassing. Before he started the second drink, he was getting mad at me for not thinking the cancer screen was the only thing I had to worry about. How dare I not be happy enough about the results!?! I totally skipped all the other errands I needed to run in town. Then he raged at me in the pickup for the 45 minutes it took to get back home.

4. The restrictions against talking to him about anything important (feelings, relationships, his kids, his ex-wife, money, health, drama, etc.) when he’s at work, when he first gets home, or right before he goes back to work. I feel like I’m keeping secrets from him or making decisions I shouldn’t be making. Things I know he would be mad about if he discovered them, but the passage of time alone makes it hard to bring them up, especially during the so-called “good days.”

and what had led me to involve law enforcement and the courts.

1. After he’d threatened to leave me (“I’ll be gone tomorrow. You’ll never have to see me again.”) dozens of times in the months prior, and immediately recanting (“I’m not leaving. I’m not even going to work. I’m staying right here. You can pay for everything. Go suck some dick and make me some money.”), I had no reason to believe he would take me seriously if I said it.

2. After having endured hours-long episodes of insults, name-calling, and weaponizing my insecurities and my past against me for simply misunderstanding and asking him to repeat a single word, I had no reason to believe he would leave or stay peacefully. Asking him to leave would be asking to be terrorized whether he left or not.

3. I had hoped that the judge would order some form of mental health treatment in the protective order. I suggested addiction counseling, anger management, or general therapy. I even pleaded for that while I was crying my eyes out during my court testimony. (Any of those—or others—would have been more beneficial than criminal charges, jail time, actual time, and all the associated fines and fees. It goes to show that there’s just no money in the cure.)

4. I would never muster the nerve to do it. I’m too insecure to speak up for myself, especially that boldly. It took me months to find the courage to express a reasonable boundary (“If you continue to get drunk around me when my health doesn’t allow me to numb out with you and/or you continue to treat me badly, insult me, or threaten and intimidate me, I am not going to be around you.”). That boundary triggered a fit of drunken rage hours later that exceeded my tolerance and led to the protective order. I guess I proved that I can enforce a boundary one way or another, but I would have rather not.

I mostly skipped over why I convinced him to stay when he was trying to pack up and leave during the fight on the day before my colonoscopy (but this is why):

1. I didn’t want him to get into an accident or take his rage out on someone on the road or at a store or whatever and end up in jail for assault, DWI, or worse.

2. Leaving while actively fighting with your partner is stupid.

3. I didn’t want him to be destructive trying to move stuff out of the house.

4. I didn’t want him to be able to say that I kicked him out because he was fighting with my friend, who was living in the garage apartment and helping me around the house. He was fighting with her because she stood up to him for yelling at me about nothing and told me to choose between them. He demanded that I choose while he was screaming at me, not letting me speak, not listening for answers he asked for, poking his finger around, throwing things, and making threats because he read some of my therapy notes (that weren’t about him), and got offended. Meanwhile, my friend was trying to make him stop.

5. I started prepping for a colonoscopy at the exact time George went into his fit, and I didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of him raging all over the county while cleansing my colon.

Why I acted like everything was normal and fine after he went to work:

1. I actually didn’t act normally. If I had gotten the text messages from me that he got from me, I would have been very suspicious. As he was leaving for work, he said we needed to work on being better, and then he sent me a message on his way to work saying that he wanted to make me happy but didn’t anymore. That sounded like hope to me, and I made it easy for him. I responded with multiple messages about how my actions had recently been affected by emotions that were caused by various stimuli. (When X happens, I feel Y, so I protect myself by doing Z.) He shut that down. It falls into the restricted category.

2. He turned off his location, and I repeatedly asked him about it.

3. Then I asked him what he expected from me when he came home (trying to find out if he was coming home in peace or if he was coming home for more of the same… or even coming home at all.) He completely ignored that line of questioning. It falls into the restricted category.

4. When we talked on the phone, I only wanted to tell him about the warrant, so I didn’t say much anything. He only called a few times that hitch. I was constantly (partially out of guilt, partially his attitude) afraid he’d left the rig and was trying to sneak up on me.

5. I did make sure his bills were paid on time, though. That was normal.

The easiest answer was to the question about my colonoscopy results. He wanted to know why it wasn’t until the cells came back as definitely pre-cancer and required a major surgery that I mentioned the mass:

1. The colonoscopy results included a “concerning” tissue mass that they took a sample of to test for cancer cells. The results would take a few weeks. I didn’t tell him because it was on a restricted communication day right before he returned to work. I couldn’t tell him because it would distract him from work.

2. If he had asked about the results, I would have told him. He didn’t ask because he had just found out that his friend had just passed away and died in his addiction.

3. I was pissed off because he was already whiskey-drunk when I got home from the hospital after promising he wouldn’t do that around me. And he was already showing whiskey rage. I went to bed mid-afternoon, thinking he would be done soon because his bottle was almost empty (some might have spilled down the drain when he wasn’t looking… Oops!). Then I saw the second bottle, over half full. I knew he would finish them both.

A Level Playing Field

Once I had finished, I felt so much relief that I thought we might have sex before I had to leave, but I started thinking about the fact that George was going back to his girlfriend’s house the next day, so we ordered some food instead. I asked George the questions about his girlfriend and their relationship that I thought he would answer. He doesn’t want to talk about her at all other than to let me know she’s really a swell gal who doesn’t deserve to be hurt, needs to be let down easy, blah, blah, blah, don’t go after her about this, wah, wah, wah. Which I think is chicken-shit and rude, but whatever.

Surprisingly, George was able to express some emotions other than anger. He had done some introspection and could identify himself in an attachment cycle as the pursuer to my withholder. He told me that when I come home and do my own thing without saying anything to him, then sit down and start looking at my phone, “he feels like I care more about the phone than him,” so he just watches TV. (What he thinks about my relationship with my phone isn’t an emotion, but we’ll work on that.) He confessed that he gets mad after being ignored (grey rocked) by me and starts bullying me to get a reaction out of me, but I sit there and listen to him say the meanest things he can think of. He didn’t consider that I withdraw because he makes himself unapproachable with loud music, TV, screaming at the football game, being drunk when I come in from work, or keeping me occupied with drunk messes he leaves for me. It’s not until I sit down and open my phone that he sees the cycle start.

By the time I had to go home, as undefiled as a vestal virgin, I felt like we had both been seen and heard. I felt like we had a clean slate, at least up to the point when he was served the protective order. We’ve had seven months to get to know ourselves and what our boundaries are, both permanent and temporary, and we can express our expectations and disappointments openly. A couple of days later, George went back to work, giving us time away from each other (and super-neato girlfriends and busy-body daughters). About a week into his hitch, I had the protective order vacated, and he let his girlfriend down easily, assuring me that she’s much too high quality to ever stoop to side-piece status. Barf.

Moving Right Along

George came directly to me when he left the drilling rig on his last days off. He stayed three nights and went home to East Texas for the weekend. He rode his mid-life crisis new Harley Davidson through the rain to spend most of his second week off with me, then took his bike and went home for the weekend. And he stayed two more days with me before returning to the rig. We probably talked more about important relationship issues than we have in all of the past two years. We are talking about him moving back here, but not anytime soon. We’ve still got boundaries and expectations to define and attachment patterns to identify and work out.

Round Two: And Another Thing…

As proud as I am of us for being able to clear the air without one of us freezing up or the other one blowing up, not to mention everyone’s pants staying pulled up (even though I wore super-cute panties, just in case), there’s far less vulnerability in answering questions about something that happened in a relationship that no longer exists, than in offering up your wants, needs, and limits for a relationship in the future. The only possibility of being rejected exists in the future, but it appears that we are both here to do our best. One way our best has been showing up in communication has been the way we have been kicking off uncomfortable or challenging topics from silly to sensitive:

• (Walks into the room and starts an entirely new conversation) “And another thing…”

• (Suddenly breaks comfortable silence to further respond to something said hours or days earlier) “So, what I’m understanding you’re telling me is that…”

• (Snuggles up close to spoon in bed) “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings about this, but I need to tell you how I feel about…”

• (Squeezes the other’s hand and takes a deep breath) “It might seem like I’m upset with you about something, but I’m just out of sorts… It’s just a me thing.”

• (Holds hands up in mock surrender) “Okay… Now, don’t be mad or anything…”

I might even go as far as saying that the vast majority of our conversations about anything have started with an intentional check-in maneuver to be sure we’re starting on the same page and both tuned in for it. We’ve both been good about drawing the other one in and focusing on each other. We have kept the mood light and not taken ourselves too seriously, which has made it easier to update some of our old understandings, not that we have much to go on from our past relationship.

Expectations

Of course, we’re not going to write a rule book, but we can establish certain behavior patterns that will help us stay in connection by literally connecting. Greeting one another without distraction is an incredible way to lean into each other.

• My First

  • I expect that when I come home from work or anywhere, George will silence whatever makes noise, get out of his chair to meet me, unload my hands/arms, give me a hug and kiss, listen to whatever I have to say about my day, answer any questions (or offer information) about his day. It won’t take more than 3-5 minutes. Then he can make sure I got everything carried in and help me put it away.

    • We’ll eliminate a handful of negative patterns and make an intimate connection in under 10 minutes. I won’t have to feel rejected, abandoned, insignificant, and unimportant just for coming home. This also benefits George because it means he gets a greeting with a hug and kiss. He’ll stop fixating on the fact that I look at my phone silently when I get home, especially when the TV is blaring. Win/win. Plus, I’ll do the same for him.

Instead of coming in, George’s first stated expectation is about going out and boils down to:

• His First

  • George expects that when he’s home from the rig and has taken care of his responsibilities, he’ll have the “freedom” to get on his bike and go for a ride, even if he’s gone for a few days. Likewise, when I have time off from work and want to go somewhere, I’ll have the freedom to hit the road—just not on the Harley.

    • I’ve tried to get George to do this exact thing for years—I haven’t said leave for days—because he gets bored waiting for me to get home from work. When he gets bored, he feels cooped up, starts drinking, is still bored, and gets mad. I get to come home from work to a drunk, angry George who probably ate half the groceries and made a drunk mess. George and I both need this for George.

Boundaries

Previous Boundaries

I’m pretty sure that George is now fully aware of my boundary regarding being whiskey-drunk around me. It hasn’t changed, and he knows that.

• Mine:

  • If he wants whiskey or other hard liquor, he’s welcome to go do what he’s gotta do, but not here and not around me.

  • I will also not put up with being intimidated, yelled at, belittled, disrespected, interrupted, called insulting names, abused, or threatened. I won’t allow what I’ve shared in confidence or my past to be used against me or thrown in my face, including any mention of my grandparents, my mother, my daddy, or any prior relationship I’ve been in. Anyone crossing this boundary will not be crossing it at my house.

  • Don’t threaten any harm against my dogs.

  • Clean up your own messes.

New Boundaries

• Mutual:

  • As of now, we do not share locations, know each other’s passwords or pins, look at each other’s phones or devices, access bank or other accounts, pay bills, or engage in any similar activity.

    • This is a special win for me because I don’t have to worry about making the bill payments anymore. The only reason I have always been a volunteer for paying bills, grocery shopping, banking, calling customer service, etc., is because I’m codependent, and doing those things makes me feel needed and important to someone, especially George. Not being his assistant is a step toward being healthier.

Round Three: TBA

George will be back at the rig for the next twelve days. When he returns, we should both have plenty to talk about and decide which direction to take. I feel really good about this. I believe George is willing to do work to make us work. I see lots of changes in both of us already.

Maybe the third time really is a charm… Or is this the fourth?