115abandoning my daughter—she needs me and I’m not there for
her. Actually, he was a wonderful father, who read stories at
night, prayed, and sang songs with his little girl. But he read his
own pain in her tears. Robert’s injuries kept him from setting
the correct limits on Abby’s wish to keep him singing songs and
playing—until sunrise.
Third, an inability to receive someone’s boundary may mean
there is an idolatrous relationship. Kathy felt wounded and iso-
lated when her husband wouldn’t want to talk at night. His
silence resulted in severe feelings of alienation. She began won-
dering if she were being injured by her husband’s boundaries.
The real problem, however, lay in Kathy’s dependence on
her husband. Her emotional well-being rested on his being
there for her at all times. He was to have provided everything
that her own alcoholic parents hadn’t. When he had a bad day
and withdrew, her own day was a disaster.
Though we certainly need each other, no one but God is indis-
pensable. When a conflict with one significant person can bring us
to despair, it is possible that we are putting that person on a throne
that should only be occupied by God. We should never see one
other person as the only source of good in the world. It hurts our
spiritual and emotional freedom, and our development.
Ask yourself: “If the person I can’t hear no from were to die
tonight, to whom would I go?” It’s crucial to develop several
deep, significant relationships. This allows those in our lives to
feel free to say no to us without guilt because we have some-
where else to go.
When we have a person we can’t take no from, we have, in
effect, handed over the control of our lives to them. All they
have to do is threaten withdrawal, and we will comply. This
occurs quite often in marriages, where one spouse is kept in
emotional blackmail by the other’s threat to leave. Not only is
this no way to live—it doesn’t work, either. The controller con-
tinues withdrawing whenever he or she is displeased. And the
boundaryless person continues frantically scrambling to keep
him or her happy. Dr. James Dobson’s Love Must Be Tough is
a classic work on this kind of boundary problem.^2
Common Boundary Myths