I called a friend of mine over the weekend to see if she wanted to have lunch this week. I waited until after dinner because I know weekends are their time for the kids. They usually eat dinner, watch a movie, put the kids to bed and then each of them head off to their respective computers about 8 or 8:30 to answer email and whatever before heading to bed around 10 p.m. I know this because that has been their routine for more than three years.

When she answered she was obviously upset about something so I asked her, “What’s going on? You sound upset.” She hemmed and hawed and then said, “Nothing.” I persisted. Finally she said, “I just really hate being called on the weekend. Everyone calls on the weekend. I have a new boundary about weekend calls and no one is respecting it and it makes me angry.”

I paused. “I didn’t get the memo.” She said, “What memo?” I said, “About your new boundary. You never told me about it. I didn’t know you had changed your schedule. We only see each other or talk about once or twice a month and you never mentioned it. I can’t respect your boundary if I don’t know about it.”

She was still miffed. “Well, I don’t like calls on the weekend now. The kids are older and they go to bed later and they’re starting to date and I don’t have any time to myself anymore.”

I said, “Okay. I respect that. I’d like to still call you once in awhile. Is there a good time I can call, or would you prefer I email you?” She hesitated. “I just need to take time off until school’s out next month. Let me call you.”

“Okay. Call anytime after noon. If I don’t pick up I’m on the phone, leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

It was no big deal. But I thought about it a lot because she is one of several friends this month who have done or said the same thing. They’ve gotten mad at me because I wasn’t respecting a boundary they had recently changed, but hadn’t communicated the change to me. Once I pointed this out I was met with what felt like anger or embarrassment or something. Being quite aware that chances were I was doing the same I thought about all the people I’d told about my new boundaries lately. It didn’t take long. There were none. So when a friend of mine called and stepped on one of my new boundaries I didn’t get mad. I was very matter of fact about it. He asked me to update and rewrite his resume, and write a couple of cover letters for him. I said I’d love to, and in the past I didn’t mind doing that for free, but I didn’t work for free anymore. I communicated my new boundary. He listened and then said, “Okay, I need it done and you’re good, what do you charge?” I told him, he paid in advance and said “Thanks!” He was fine with my boundary as soon as I communicated it. I did the guilty dance, feeling like I’d helped him in the past and SHOULD keep helping him for free (the people pleasing codependent I am….and why I should keep doing it I wasn’t sure, but that was the conversation I had with myself. I stuck to the boundary however.) He said later, “I feel better you’re charging now. I always felt like I was taking advantage of you. You’re worth every penny.”

As I move into learning this complex skill of setting and enforcing boundaries that’s one more thing to learn - communicate your boundaries when you set them. And don’t get mad if someone violates them unless you’ve communicated them. We teach people how to treat us - by both our omission of boundaries and our failure to communicate them.