Are you feeling nervous about awkward family interactions that might occur over the holiday season? How can you place boundaries around yourself and your loved ones from family members who are insensitive or brash? Can you and your partner work together as a team?

In this podcast episode, I have Willie on the podcast with me again. In this episode, we talk all about setting boundaries with family and gaining your Husband’s support. Grab your Husband and take a listen.

Summary

• A boundary recap
• Go back to your roots when trying to resolve issues
• “Stop lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm”

A boundary recap

Boundaries are personal guidelines, rules, or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe, and permissible ways for others to behave towards them. (Veronica Cisneros)

Essentially, a boundary is what you communicate to someone is okay or is not okay. Which behaviors exactly are you okay or not okay with?

Boundaries are essential because they protect your mental health. And most importantly, a relationship without boundaries is doomed to fail because it often leads to resentment.

One of the main reasons why a family doesn’t put boundaries in place is because they minimize bad behavior, and say that it’s “not that big of a deal”, which is a toxic habit that can spiral out of control because there is no scope of when enough is enough.

Go back to your roots when trying to resolve issues

Sometimes partners clash over the holiday season because one person’s family members pick on the other, and they expect backup or support from their partner and none is given.

So overcome this struggle which can turn into nasty arguments, Veronica suggests that you and your partner imagine one another as kids.

I’m gonna welcome you to my house, and the minute I welcome you to my house as a kid. When you come over to my house, there are a set of rules you have to abide by, and I’m going to give you these rules and this is my way of protecting you, but you don’t know I am protecting you. (Veronica Cisneros)

Kids learn how to “manage” a toxic family member by adjusting their behavior so that they don’t have to engage with the difficult family member when they’re upset.

However, these habits can grow with the child into adulthood, and the dynamic between them and their troublesome family member continues.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to protect you. It was because of the rules that were put in place in my house that I didn’t know how. (Veronica Cisneros)

If that adult gets married with the childhood habits still in fact, they may try to inadvertently “teach” their partner the same habits when interacting in gathered family spaces. However, what feels normal to one person feels painful or absurd to another, and the new partner can see right through to the ugliness that is masked by skirting around the issue.

Both partners need to communicate openly and honestly with one another and work as a team to set the boundaries around both their families that they feel comfortable with.

“Stop lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm”

So yeah, in some ways I was asking you to compromise yourself to protect their emotions, just like in some ways you were asking me to compromise myself to protect the non-existent relationship. There’s this quote, “stop lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm” and I believed that that’s something you and I really learned. (Veronica Cisneros)

Even though the old ways feel so ingrained, you do not have to keep choosing those ways of responding to a situation. You can forge a new way forward.

You and your partner can decide on the life that you want and then take steps to make it happen instead of always shifting around your life to keep other people happy because they don’t know how to handle their own emotions.

You are not responsible for the emotional reaction of another adult when you assert your boundaries.

Useful links:

• Join our FaceBook Page – Empowered and Unapologetic
• Take the Marriage Predictor quiz!
• Follow me on Instagram
• Check out the new website! https://veronicacisneros.org/
• Outside The Norm Counseling – 951 395 3288 call to schedule an appointment today!
• 5 Things that are Killing your Marriage Free Guide available at www.veronicacisneros.org

Meet Veronica Cisneros

Hello, my name is Veronica Cisneros, I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Marriage Coach, Course Creator, Retreat Host, Mother of 3, married for 23 years, host of the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast, and owner of a group private practice called Outside The Norm Counseling.

A lot of couples struggle with setting aside intentional time to connect and communicate. They yearn for meaningful conversations that don’t lead to arguments.

1 month away from divorce, I realized I had to do something different. For years I had compromised myself to meet the needs of my husband and my child, I lost myself and was about to lose my marriage. After years of personal growth and self-reflection, I not only reclaimed my identity, and celebrated 23 years of marriage but also helped hundreds of couples transform their marriage from feeling like roommates to experiencing a deeper love.

I am on a mission to help couples reignite the fire by providing them with the skills to have the relationship they deserve.

Whether you listen to the podcast, join the free Facebook community, or do the Workshop,  you’re in the right place. Let’s do this together!

Thanks for listening!

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