What Do You Do When Boundaries Change? HD

Its important to respect boundaries, but what if you find out that the boundaries have changed? From Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com. Cathy: When boundaries change, what do you do? You want to respect your partner’s boundaries or your friend’s boundaries. But, what if a year and a half later, after you’ve been really carefully walking around and they say, oh, that changed long time ago, didn’t you know that? What if they don’t tell you that they changed? This is Reid Mihalko from http://reidaboutsex.com/ Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/. So, they’re reporting that they have a boundary. Can you give me an example? Create an example. Pull an example out of your butt. Cathy: Thank you. Okay, so, your friend says I never want you to touch me when we’re sitting in a movie theater. And you’re like, and you guys go to the movies all the time and you’re trying to be really careful of like, never touching them in the movie theater. It’s just a silly example but then, like a year and a half later, you bumped them and like, “O h! I’m so sorry I don’t mean to touch you.” Then they’re like, “What? I don’t understand.” You’re like, “You don’t like to be touched in the movie theater”, and they’re like, “Oh! No, no, no. That was just a thing that happened. That’s not been a case for a long time.” Reid: Okay Cathy: It’s like you put a lot of effort into respecting their boundary and you didn’t want to like, push at it. How do you handle that? Reid: Okay. I’ll be like, “Awesome” Cathy: Wow. Okay. Reid: Why…I mean, do you want to take it personally or something? You want to be, you know, do you need acknowledgement for putting a lot of effort into something? Like, what like… Cathy: Well, I think that if you’re putting… I mean, I tend to be very conscious of people’s boundaries and I can understand the frustration of having carefully walked around a boundary you thought existed. Reid: Sure. With the land mine and all of the sudden you realize that there are no land mines there. Cathy: And they never told you. Reid: Okay Cathy: So, you just say okay? Reid: Well, I mean… Cathy: What if you’ve done that. You’d very carefully walked around this person, put effort into being gentle with them around it and then found out that it was nothing for them anymore but they hadn’t told you. Reid: I’d probably just ask for acknowledgement. Cathy: So, can you give me an example? Just use the words for… Reid: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, “Oh, so. Okay. Well I wish you’d told me. You know, a year ago that that was true for you.” Cathy: “I thought you knew. I mean, couldn’t you tell?” Reid: “No, I couldn’t tell. But I’d like to be acknowledged for trying not to walk on your land mines. Would you acknowledge me?” Cathy: “I acknowledge you for not walking on my land mines.” Reid: “Thank you.” Cathy: So for me, it would make me wonder like, acknowledgment…it’s good askin