Boundaries: Consistency over Levels?

I have to preface this by saying I have an instinctive cynicism about the word 'boundaries' even if it doesn't mean I dislike them. I guess, if we haven't seen a need for words like that and 'vulnerability' two decades ago despite the similarity of human emotions back then, it might suggest we've been given new terms for old things again, the way a certain field I'm in might've gone :P. I'm also going to tell a real story now, not the kind of data storytelling story (again, one of those neologisms), to tell how I came to view boundaries. This is in story format also 'coz I don't think I've ever dedicated a full post to one and it might be fun.

Common sense might dictate that extremely strict or extremely loose boundaries will lose you the popularity contest, and insofar as your professional and social needs require a degree of popularity, having either of those is bad news. However, after my encounter with a recovering pick-up artist on LinkedIn who was *really* not trying to pick me up, a flash of insight arrived that consistency in boundaries is definitely more important than your mean level of boundaries (though boundary extremity and topics especially aren't always both on two correlated linear streams. Add cultural differences to the mix too and you get a real maelstrom sometimes).

Anyway, as luck would have it, I found a YouTube commenter on a social topic I was heavily interested in and realized he was coincidentally a LinkedIn connection too so I introduced myself and it wasn't long before he volunteered that he an ex-pickup artist. Ever practical, my resolve to continue talking grew as I wanted to get into the head of (now benignly) manipulative people to discover how to detect manipulation and manipulators in my life. No doubt, many of you secretly hold cliquey discussions to run through which manager(s) might be a sociopath. I was also feeling quite lucky as I'd found a pickup artiste who wasn't picking me up; along with his proclamation that he liked only White women, there were certain other signals that he had no sinister intentions with me. Some of the signals were a respectful warning that he was about to send some details of his, uhm, 'extra-professional life' if you catch my drift, but I'm usually pretty clear about where my boundaries lie and convey them accordingly, so while I couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn about the general details of his dating life as a woman who wanted to learn how to protect herself against manipulation, I declined the extra details.

We probably started chatting around Aug 2020 on a very regular basis and after the stress of moving to Ireland in Nov 2020 with almost no housing options as I didn't realize hotels had suddenly closed themselves to non-essential workers, he rightly guessed that my silence on LinkedIn for two weeks meant I was in a considerable amount of distress. His verbal artistry was so good he even said "I can read in and between the lines." (His English often wasn't perfect by the way, to those thinking technical imperfection in a language is a death sentence) My secret reaction was simultaneous mild eye-rolling and admiration for a certain brand of sincere yet possibly manipulative 'emoting.' As a former Literature student and enthusiast myself, I was quite fascinated by not just a few instances of verbal cleverness, however cheesy, but also how his language artlessly displayed a general tone of soothing compassion, something that I found rare and a little more common among non-native English speakers, as though the need to reach for the right words compels people to drop any pretensions to split-second efficiency in communication. Of course, not only was his language appreciated for its rarity, it was also appreciated by someone who'd been undergoing at least half a year of upheaval and, to some extent, tumult, in her life. His display of compassion reached a peak when he said "If I don't respond for a while, it'll be 'coz I'm busy, but know I'll always be there for you." Beyond the admiration of his verbal and emotional skill at detecting the inner conflicts, I was also - dare I confess 'coz I'm living up to expectation here - saying a little cynically to myself, "I've known you for only a few months and have never seen you in person. I'll live (if you disappear)." Besides that, I was also thinking, which person gets fussed about someone not replying in a few days or even a week if you've been chatting regularly? At some point, he also revealed to me that he had codependence issues with his mother and I can only suspect those contributed to his expectations of pace and how others might perceive the risk of abandonment or even the toll of abandonment itself.

In January 2021, I was noticing a trend calling for 'vulnerability' as a prerequisite in friendships. I did, despite the cynicism, view him as a friend by the way. I told him about my grandmother's passing in Aug 2020, partly as a way to humanize an often coldly intellectual friendship despite the few moments of humanity you've read above. He moved to the US from Vietnam when he was a teen and seemingly never ceased to feel excluded in the US, so his default conversational topics were on socioeconomic movements in Northern America. After my revelation, he said he was sorry for my loss but then almost immediately said he hoped I had friends back home to talk to about this and that he viewed me just as a 'work friend.' I was not entirely surprised he assumed that my revelation to him must've meant I had no one else to talk to about this as people often project their own traits onto others: if he was an introvert, he would've told only a very rare few and must've assumed he was one of the rare few I chose to confide in, and if he had a very low self-esteem, which he claimed explained the pick-up artistry, he must not have seen any reason for me to tell him about anything other than the fact that he was actually available, not that he had some special qualities like some very unique insights and an ability to translate them into tone-perfect language in many instances. (If someone doesn't react the way you expect too, there's no need to take everything upon yourself and someone else's projections might often be a good lens through which to reflect on their behavior.) Now, I see nothing wrong with having 'work friends' - in fact, I have many of them and they form the overwhelming majority of my LinkedIn network and corporate life. However, I think you can guess from the title and his early interactions with me where this is going - this was the exact opposite from the consistency I've always valued in boundaries. I can take a large range from an estimated bottom 20th (below is a bit eerie, don't you think?) to 85th percentile, but inconsistency in people's boundaries makes it hard for you to aim at: tone, topic and pace. There is no pace to speak of too with regard to a progression in friendship if it's really loose boundaries (remember again the volunteering of extreme 'extra-curricular' details) one day or one week and then a whole cluster of extreme withdrawing symptoms the next.

Does the above, along with the assumption (arguably, one also possibly stemming from consideration) that the other party would feel anxious about not receiving a reply within a week or at all, have a slight resonance with borderline personality? I have no interest in diagnosing him specifically by the way. Much as we champion mental health awareness these days, I've also noticed that borderline personality disorder often gets the most flack for being suggested even as an illness unto itself (though it's in DSM-V still), with critics saying "We don't label" though you don't really hear that about anxiety, depression, etc though it's arguable more people suffer from anxiety and depression along a spectrum on a regular basis, making them even less discrete as categories of mental illness. Whatever your views on BPD are, I hope you can regard my mentioning of it in a constructive light to see if tips to manage it in others (or perhaps even yourself) might be helpful in dealing with any 'boundary issues' you might have faced in your life. There's no need to look at things in black-and-white diagnoses too and whatever diagnosis doesn't suit you or the person in question can still be helpful - I've always taken a little out of every mental health category and tried to make a strength of each too and muster them even if against all odds for a few: anxiety as motivator to do things, depression to dampen racing thoughts as it depletes your energy, sociopathy to steel myself against fear and unconstructive insults, narcissism to overcome imposter syndrome, and even BPD to add a little spontaneity to my sometimes self-imposedly regimented life. (Also, I'm not sure if I've adapted just the right parts of sociopathy for convenience but I miss almost nothing about our friendship besides his unusual insight, silly games like 'guess if [insert semi-famous person's name] is really a manipulative sociopath' and yes, the goddamn writing skill.)

So, consistent boundaries? Yes, but not too consistent maybe, as you could then seem like a robot with absolutely no greater comfort with one person over another and no emotions/reactions based on any instinct whatsoever. So it's not enough to have rules, but one must have rules about rules, yeah? Wow, who said life was easy.

Also, just as an addendum regarding what sparked this topic today in the first place, I had already foreseen right from the moment of writing about my grandmother's passing half a day ago that I'd feel uncomfortable with publicizing it soon after but I wanted to test my own boundaries in this relatively harmless laboratory of LinkedIn. I'm pretty lucky I found out so quickly and safely that I'm certainly not OK with such revelations - not that of death itself, but the death of a loved one, as if you're inviting prying eyes of any sort into the funeral of someone you cherish, and that's the way I personally feel about it even if you might feel differently about the topic. (I'm already planning to delete this article after a while or edit out the bereavement, citing an unspecified life event - I'm thinking it'll be OK for a first read but shouldn't linger for sure. Again, testing my own comfort levels here.) I think it's important to build consistency too by building self-awareness about your comfort level with different topics, styles of talking, etc. as you cannot impose boundaries on others (or yourself) without knowing first where exactly they lie!

Just in case anyone's worried about his hurt feelings from reading this, I already gave him a heads up that I'd block him and did that a while ago as I wasn't getting the best vibes from the last of these interactions. I told him there were no hard feelings but it was to protect my career since it was unpredictable how he perceived me, though I've learned at the end of writing this that I could've told him exactly what I said here, that I didn't know how best to deal with inconsistent boundaries. I guess we often grow with every experience, even the simple process of writing one essay, and I should've helped him grow perhaps by delivering to him a simple, respectful message about the confusion from dealing with inconsistent boundaries.