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Need Advice or SupportAny of you learned how to gently enforce boundaries with other women?
I’ve had this problem many times, but there’s this one boundary with this one person I love dearly and she just hates it. The boundary is very important to me. I’ve made sure to understand some of the causes behind her hatred of it (she does not introspect, just reacts, so I’ve had to piece it together independently), and have tried to find ways to make the boundary easier.
For example: say I always go to knitting club on Monday afternoon. This person keeps trying to make plans with me on Monday afternoon. I state that I am going to the knitting club. She is clearly angry and tries to insinuate (without being direct) that I care about knitting more than her. So I make sure to make plans with her on Tuesday and proactively make plans with her for the following Thursday so she knows I value our time together. I make sure to have plans with her at least weekly if not more often. Yet again she tries to make plans during knitting club. I remind her of the club and she gets angry, and I kind of get the sense she thinks I’m some fancy pants full of myself for being a knitter and having made some scarves. So I make sure to play up her amazing quilts at her house on Tuesday. But still she makes passive aggressive comments about the knitting club, tries to make plans on Monday afternoons, and it never stops.
Sometimes months will go by and I’ll think the boundary has finally sunk in, just for a sudden invitation on a Monday afternoon.
In the past I’ve occasionally hung out with her and missed the knitting club when it had been a LONG time since the last argument and I thought maybe she’d forgotten about it. But then immediately she’ll start to try to make plans every Monday afternoon again and it’s back to square 1.
This is not a real example but it is illustrative of the type of behavior
I’m not throwing away the relationship, and I want to be close with this person. But the anger about the knitting club is bizarre and wearing me out.
How have you all handled these types of situations?