Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I think I would like to make another thread. Just writing that post made me very angry and spawned a Livejournal entry plus an E-mail asking my dad to please examine his unequal treatment of his children.

I applaud your assertiveness!

Edit: That sounded gross and condescending to me when I looked at it in context. For the record, I'm looking up to you when I say that; I'm not sure I would necessarily have the courage to write such an email.

Thank you! I didn't find it condescending at all, it actually made me smile. It didn't occur to me that E-mailing my dad was assertive, it just seemed to be another product of being emotional and expressive.

I think I will go make the thread you suggested now.

To be honest, I think the whole board is going to be fairly intercategorial, and I don't think that's a bad thing. This is a thread for talking about Harriet's Fugitivus posts, and I don't think it goes against the spirit of Fugitivus (at all!) to use a conversation to sort through your own issues with the topic.

When it comes to finding a way to build and maintain healthy boundaries, you're not just dealing with your internal context, you will at some stage need to be able to interrelate your personal boundaries with a wider social and cultural context. This also ties in with understanding your core personal values & beliefs, and also (for instance) where they may depart from wider sociocultural 'norms', as well as the norms of your more immediate relationships.

...wow. That was a very longwinded way of saying, Eirwyn, that if you want to talk here about the stuff you've mentioned because the conversation about boundaries got you thinking about it in a specific way, then I don't think you're off-topic. Argh, much verbosity. If the possibility of wandering off-topic bothers you, it may help to consider using the topic of the conversation as a structure with which to investigate the personal events or issues you're concerned with.

I tend to find it helpful to ask myself why I want to talk about a particular personal event in reference to a topic, as this usually uncovers a relationship between the topic (i.e. boundaries) and what it calls up in my mind (i.e. the point I made about the identity confusion I've experienced when my boundaries need a paradigm shift).

Well, thank you. I think I only got uncomfortable because I was straying into emotional territory (getting angry about the boundaries people impose on me) and I didn't want to kidnap the thread talking about things that piss me off.

When you put it that way, it is related- we're talking about boundaries, and I'm noticing in my life that some people don't allow me to let down my own boundaries because their boundaries make them uncomfortable and irritated when I speak out and am carefree. I suppose the only thing to do is... ignore them, I guess, as long as I'm sure I'm not being 'over the top' and being hurtful or abrasive.

The line that rang true for me the most was "Boundaries have been everything". My boundaries are absolute, and I really can't imagine living without them.

The simplest one is probably about touch. I don't like to be touched, ever, by anyone (or anything - I don't even like air touching me, but, well, nothing I can do about that I guess.) If someone touches me, I immediately tell them not to. If they do it a second time, they immediately go in my category of Very Bad People To Avoid As Much As Possible, and they do not pass Go and they do not collect $200. Touchy-feely people who forget occasionally get an exception, but if I don't think they're trying hard enough, there's no hope for them - and deliberate or unapologetic touching has no exceptions. Even if it was a close friend who did this, they would immediately cease to be a close friend and go to the bad-people roll.

Of course, you never get to be a close friend if there's a non-zero probability that you'd do that! I'm in the enviable position of never having been without my boundaries - I never had the issue Harriet discussed of figuring out what to do with friends I could no longer trust, because I never made those friends in the first place. You see how I mention the "close friend" category in the last paragraph - that's a new category this year, since I never made any close friends until this past year (my first year at college). And thank goodness I'm asexual/aromantic, I guess, because I have even stricter rules about who I would engage in emotional or sexual relationships with. Here are a few ways to not ever be my friend (and bear in mind that you only have to do any of these once):
- Make a stereotype-about-a-category-of-humans joke.
- Not immediately stop doing something near me (or someone else), no matter how mundane, when I (they) tell you to stop.
- Try to get me to do a group activity after I've told you that I won't do it (and it is very common for me to refuse to participate in group activities, including classroom activities, for a wide variety of reasons.)
- Play a trick on someone, or worse, participate in a group playing a trick on someone.
- Complain when I (or someone else) hold you to an agreement you made.

So... my boundaries, are they preventing me from friendships? HECK YES. THAT IS PRACTICALLY THE POINT OF THEM.

It sounds like you're on good terms with your boundaries- am I correct about this? I think in a way I admire the absoluteness of them, because if I could, I would have taken back my tolerance over the years, which allowed me to get exposed to people's annoying, hateful, sexist, etc. behavior. And I realize that my worrying about being intolerant has been irrelevant- people will just call you intolerant because they can't handle rejection, but ultimately it's not about them, it's about you and what you can handle.

I envy your position Eli. I have never been in a position where I was able to enforce such rigid boundaries. Not in my parents home, not in any school and not at any event where several people were congregated.

My boundaries have never been respected by people in that way. Even when I don't make friends, I'll just become the person they take out their frustrations on or play their jokes on when they are bored. When I make friends I do have people that will back off when I tell them too.

I am not a very sexual person and the whole concept of romance just has me suspicious, but being completely isolated from other people and having no social connections with people whom I can share problems with drives me slightly insane. So am constantly navigating the water between compromising my boundaries and enforcing them.

It is so interesting for me to read about all of your boundaries, because I am an extrovert and am just learning to establish boundaries. I feel so much better not trying to get everyone to love me and communicate well with me! I am also a serial monogamist who has not gone more than 6 weeks without being in some sort of a romantic relationship with somebody. But, I have been checked out, for the most part, of the toxic relationship with my husband for a significant amount of time now. I am really looking forward to enjoying myself within these boundaries I have now. My last divorce was horrid, with years of my trying to hold on to toxic friendships and a toxic marriage. Since then, I have learned that ending a relationship is not a failure. It was an epiphany when I even heard of the concept of cutting off a toxic relationship. Unfortunately, being immersed in a toxic family of in laws (and partner) with my second marriage has shown me how good an idea it is to cut out these toxic relationships. So, here we go again, but this time I don't think I am going to be devastated by my failure to repair every relationship I cut off.

I am fucking relieved. Ecstatic at times.

I am aiming to be aromantic / asexual for at least a year, if not longer.

There are enough asexuals here that I think making sure we're all on the same page with vocabulary is a good idea:



The quoted article is here.