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If you want greater peace of mind and more connection in your relationships, drop your manuals, lovingly choose your boundaries, and allow others the right to do the same. We don’t get to choose how everyone else lives, but we do get to choose how we respond. Trying to get people to live according to our manuals leads to efforts to control, unmet expectations, and eventually frustration and disappointment. When I dropped my rules for her, while also enforcing my own boundary, our relationship entirely changed for the better. I stopped trying to change her and chose to accept her as she is. She was upset initially, but in the end she respected my autonomy and now when she’s in my house, we both know it’s because I want her there.

I chose to live according to my manual while also respecting her manual. She was allowed to be hurt or angry or misunderstand me. Then I let go of any expectation I had as to how she should respond. I let her know that I changed my garage code and had made the decision that I wouldn’t give her the new one. I realized we were never going to agree on this issue. She felt unwelcome in my life, I felt disrespected and undervalued. It created a great deal of conflict and resentment. We went back and forth, disappointed in each other for not playing by each other’s rules. Mine stated that one doesn’t let themselves in unannounced.

Hers stated that a good daughter would open her home to her mother at all times.

I would immediately tense up and respond by giving her the cold shoulder, trying to let her know through my passive-aggressive behavior that she had crossed a line again.

I found myself resentful when time after time I would ask that she not let herself in without asking first, only to hear my garage door opening and her friendly, ‘yoohoo!’ as she made her way into my home. Her manual read: I am family, therefore, I have the right to come in whenever I want. My mother had my garage code and felt that it was her right to let herself in whenever she chose. I live in a townhome and our garage is used as the main entry.