#boundaries

#boundaries

It's been a theme in letters I've seen this year-adults complaining that children aren't processing the difficult things they go through in the way the adults want them to. 15 is a really hard age for a lot of kids, let alone for those who've seen two fathers exit their lives (to varying degrees). He's processing a ton of changes in his own life, possibly entering high school, and he shouldn't feel responsible for the feelings of his ex-step-grandparents.

I used to think being busy meant being successful. My days were a blur of meetings, notifications, and commitments. My calendar looked impressive, but at night I lay awake wondering why I felt so exhausted and strangely unfulfilled. One rainy Tuesday, stuck in traffic between two appointments I didn't really want to attend, it hit me: I wasn't living my life. I was managing it. I'd filled my days with activity, but not necessarily with value.

I have no clue how to help her because every time I say that she is beautiful, she says I'm only saying that because I'm her mother. She is surrounded by social media images, unrealistic beauty standards and constant comparisons, and I fear that these influences have shaped how she sees herself way more than I ever could. I feel helpless watching her struggle with such intense self-criticism at such a young age.

The first thing you should do may be the hardest: Talk to your son and ask him his honest opinion about the last 14 years. This blow-up didn't come out of nowhere. You write that he was sort of OK, for instance. This raises big questions. How much hurt has he been sitting on all this time? Has he tried talking about this before? What is sort of OK?

You don't ease your wife's hang-ups. You respect her current boundaries. Where you're saying your son is nearly a year old, I'm seeing a woman who is not even a year out from giving birth for the first time. Your wife's position might change again if you can exercise patience. If you push the subject, though, you're likely to create distance, resentment, and a rigid and eternal "no" on this practice.

I care about her deeply, but taking on someone else's debt even someone I love feels like a huge risk. I've worked hard to protect my own credit, and the idea of being on the hook for a car that isn't mine stresses me out. When I tried to express my hesitation, she acted hurt and suggested it meant I didn't trust her. That's not true at all. I'm more than willing

Here are some other tips: It's OK to be selfish: When Kristi Coulter reached her breaking point as an Amazon executive, she made a new rule: only accept opportunities at work that offered a clear benefit to her, or were important to her boss. Did the world come crashing down as she turned stuff down? No. In fact, Coulter found she was more engaged and effective at the things she said yes to.

Overgiving can be defined as a relationship that has become so unhealthily enmeshed that people lose their individual strength and autonomy. Typically, a person with these types of traits feels overly responsible for others and picks up the slack in relationships and at work. They want everyone to be happy, so they go overboard and become people pleasers and peacemakers in their relationships. They have difficulty asserting their own needs for fear of rejection or disapproval.

My husband of 20-plus years received a Facebook message from an old high school girlfriend. The message was wildly inappropriate (extremely risque) and ended with her offering to fly out and meet up if he ever wanted to. When my husband saw the message, he read it to me and to his best friend, who happened to be in town visiting. Those two guys were laughing so hard they were crying.

Well, yes mom. I did. Why? I didn't know how to say no. Hell, "no" wasn't even in my repertoire. I did whatever I needed to keep the peace. Keep a good GPA. Keep money in my bank account. But now my inability to set a boundary when it came to honoring my own happiness was officially catching up. After six years of marriage, the truth of never wanting an "I do" in the first place had crept up in a myriad of ways,

This entire year has been a struggle for me. I'm a freelancer, and business is down dramatically. I can hardly pay my bills. I rarely talk about it, but the holidays are approaching, and I cannot show up the way I usually do with gifts for everyone. I barely have the cash to get to my hometown to be with the family. The thing is, everyone thinks of me as the successful one, the one who moved to the big city and made it.