Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

5 Reasons Why Your Husband Doesn't Respect Your Boundaries and How to Get Him to

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 3 • Episode 23

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On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

On today's episode, Coach Jack points out five very fixable problems some people have making their boundaries effective.

After listening to today's episode, you may want to:

5 Reasons Why Your Husband Doesn't Respect Your Boundaries and How to Get Him to 

(Podcast Transcript)

(0:00)

[Introduction to the podcast]

Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

(0:29)

Coach Jack: If your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries, don’t give up. Boundaries are the key to stopping many damaging things that your husband may be doing. These 5 boundary tips will make your boundaries effective.

Boundaries build respect and stop damaging behavior. They are so effective, the psychological community doesn’t want to teach you about them. It would put a lot of them out of work.

Never expect therapists or medical doctors to teach you how to be healthy. Their training is to treat problems–not teaching how to keep relationships or people healthy.

(1:04)

It is up to you to learn what is healthy and to do it. No one is going to go out of their way to teach you.

I stopped doing psychotherapy many years ago because I was more interested in teaching people to have good relationships than I was in providing ongoing treatment. My coaching packages are only one month long because I want people to quickly learn what they need to do and to have rapid improvement in their relationships.

The only people who do not improve their relationships are the ones who do not take the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace. 

If you are in therapy and not learning steps to take then you are only receiving ongoing support and it will not result in your relationship improving. Of course people who cannot change their situation need help living with their situation. Don’t stop supportive therapy if that is what you need to cope.

(1:58)

Boundaries are one of the essential tools (essential means necessary) to good relationships, whether they are with children, friends, relatives, or your spouse.

While we are on the subject, here are the essential elements for creating and maintaining good relationships:

  1. Being desirable (by attraction skills).
  2. Being similar (by connection skills).
  3. Being secure (by boundaries and faith rather than fear).

If you can create desirability and connection, while not allowing the other person to mistreat you, then you can have a good relationship. That is all there is to it. Good relationships come down to these three skill areas and all relationship problems stem from problems in these three skill areas.

The coaching packagesI have focus on each of these three areas. No amount of talking about problems will ever compensate for what these skills can do (in fact, talking about relationship problems just creates bigger problems).

(3:05)

(Hopefully you’re not still trying to talk to your husband about problems rather than using good boundaries). 

Let’s get into some specifics about boundaries…

If you want to be good at boundaries, first understand what they are.

Boundaries are what we do or don’t do in order to stop damaging behavior.

Boundaries are NOT discussions and they are NOT rules that we give to other people about how we want them to behave. 

We might inform someone of our boundary, but we don’t discuss them.

Discussing behavior your husband does that you don’t like will only make him defensive and create conflict or distance. And, giving rules to people is only helpful if they voluntarily follow them. 

People can violate our rules at will. It is not so with boundaries.

People cannot violate our boundaries because they are totally under our control:

(4:00)

  • For example, saying, you can’t shout at me is a rule or controlling statement that may or may not be followed by the other person.
  • Saying, please don’t shout at me, is a request and may or may not be granted by the other person.
  • Walking away whenever you are shouted at is a boundary, which is under your control.

We can also have boundaries for ourselves such as not eating junk food, not saying bad things about our spouse to others, exercising daily, attending worship every week, and so forth. When our actions or refusals require a certain amount of will power, we can think of them as boundaries. (Doing bad things does not require will power).

Boundaries are what we do, or don’t do, to stop damaging behavior. 

(4:52)

If I limit myself to eating only one dessert per week, that is a boundary. It stops the damaging behavior of getting too many empty calories. If I walk away whenever someone uses bad language with me, that is a boundary. It stops the damaging behavior of being disrespected.

Telling someone how I feel about their damaging behavior, arguing, or shouting back at them are not boundaries because these actions maintain rather than stop damaging behaviors.

I think it would be great if sharing our feelings actually stopped our spouse’s damaging behavior. But it is not actually the way that relationships work. You can know that simply by looking at your own experience. 

Successful people do what works–not what they wish worked.

Maybe you have realized that a long time ago and so started using boundaries, but without much success. Let’s take a look at what may be going wrong…

Five reasons why your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries

There is a learning curve with using boundaries. No one gets it right the first time, so don’t feel bad if you need to improve. 

(6:02)

Because good relationships require good skills, we need to:

  • Learn skills correctly, 
  • practice them repeatedly, 
  • until we can use them consistently. 

When you can use good skills consistently, then you can have relationship success.

So, why aren’t your boundaries working? Maybe it’s…

Reason 1: Your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries because you are not actually using boundaries.

This is the number one reason people have a lack of success with boundaries. They are attempting to control their spouse instead of taking control of their own actions in response to what their spouse does.

Boundaries are always actions that are under your control. Telling your husband to do or not do something is not a boundary. For example, if you say:

“I want you to stop yelling at me and being mean.”

That is not a boundary because it is completely under his control. You have clearly stated what you want, however he can freely defy you and be mean as it suits him. This is true of anything you tell your husband to do. Commands, threats, and pleading cannot make him do something. His behavior remains optional. 

(7:18)

A real boundary, if stated, would be something like this:

“Whenever you yell at me or are mean, I’m going to walk away.”

This is an explanation of a boundary. The actual boundary would be your walking away. That is under your control. Although he may still choose to yell or be mean, your walking away is not optional for him. 

Your walking away whenever he does that would build his respect toward you. Arguing, complaining, or other reactive behavior would not earn his respect or stop his behavior. 

It is important that you know how to get your husbands’ respect since it limits how much your husband can feel love for you. Men, just like women, find it hard to love someone they don’t respect.

(8:08)

Maybe you are making real boundaries, but your problem is…

Reason 2: Your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries because of the way you implement your boundaries.

In the boundary example I just gave, the boundary is to walk away whenever he yells or is mean. 

To be effective with this particular boundary, it is important to:

  1. Walk away for at least one hour,
  2. have no contact with him until you return, 
  3. be friendly after returning, 
  4. have no further discussion about what he did, and
  5. do this every time he yells or is mean. 

Many women fail with this boundary because they:

  1. Fear making their husband upset,
  2. fail to walk away due to their husband’s apologies or challenges,
  3. walk away for too short of a time, 
  4. respond to texts or calls from their husband after they walk away,
  5. are not friendly after returning, 
  6. discuss their husband’s behavior after returning, and/or
  7. only walk away sometimes.

(9:16)

Your boundaries will always make your husband upset. Mothers and wives who fear making people upset will have unruly children and husbands.

Part of love is doing what is necessary to have a good relationship whether your husband likes it or not. Seeking to always please your husband, and failing to use boundaries when needed, is NOT loving.

Jesus Christ is an excellent role model for having good boundaries. Listen to what the Bible has to say about God’s boundaries:

My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son (Hebrews 12:6).

(10:05)

God loves us too much to unconditionally accept everything we do.

By the way, each type of boundary has requirements in order for it to be effective. For help improving your marriage with boundaries, see my book, What to Do When He Won’t Change.

It could be that you make real boundaries, and use them consistently, but still are having problems. It might be because of…

Reason 3: Your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries because you are also doing damaging things.

Do you remember I told you that to have good relationships you need to take the right steps in the right order? Boundaries are not the first step. The first step is stopping our own damage. As Jesus said, we must take the log out of our own eye before taking the splinter out of our neighbor’s eye (see Matthew 7:5).

(10:59)

You might think that you only have a splinter while he has a log. Even if you are right, to be effective and not seen as a hypocrite, you need to remove that splinter from your eye first. Many people are unaware of the damaging things they are doing. 

(My book, Overcome Neediness and Get the Love You Want was written to help people identify and stop damaging behaviors they are doing in their relationships).

Alright, so you make real boundaries, keep them consistently, and have stopped all of your damaging behaviors, but your boundaries still don’t seem to be working. That might be because of…

Reason 4: Your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries because he doesn’t value your relationship.

When people stop enjoying their relationships, conflict increases, love ends, and then the relationship dies. You may be in the conflict phase because your husband stopped enjoying your relationship some time ago. Your boundaries may not matter to him anymore.

(12:04)

People stop enjoying their relationship when:

  • They stop dating regularly,
  • They stop having enjoyable daily one on one time together,
  • They no longer have an enjoyable sexual relationship.

Having reasons for stopping those things will not alter the negative impact of stopping those things. Relationships will not last if put on hold to raise children or to develop careers. They will instead end before the children are raised and before the career is developed.

I have articles and podcasts on how to improve dating in your marriage and how to fix a sexless marriage. Don’t expect your boundaries to be helpful before you help your spouse to value your relationship again. Boundaries won’t do that. Being desirable and using good connection skills is what does that. Those steps will help your spouse to enjoy your relationship enough to care about your boundaries.

(13:00)

Some people want to stop their husband’s bad behaviors without doing what it takes to help him enjoy the relationship. If what it takes to help your spouse enjoy your relationship violates your morality and values, you have an incompatibility. You won’t be able to resolve that incompatibility by changing your husband’s morality and values. 

Instead…

You will either have to: 

  • Change your beliefs and values to match your husband,
  • have continual conflict, 
  • live with continual distance and disconnection, or
  • end your marriage. 

These are results that happen when we violate God’s directive not to be unequally yoked (see 2 Corinthians 6:14). God loves us and wants the best for us. This is why the Bible is not a set of rules, but rather God’s desire for us to have a good relationship with Him and with each other. Like when you tell your kids not to play in the street. It’s not from your desire to control–it’s because you love your kids and don’t want them to be hurt.

(14:04)

It’s just possible that your husband does value your relationship, and that you have made real boundaries, kept them consistently, and have stopped all of your own damaging behaviors. If, despite doing all that well, your boundaries still don’t seem to be working, it might be …

Reason 5: Your husband doesn’t respect your boundaries because he doesn’t know how else to behave.

Intellectual intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) are two entirely different things. I have worked with many men who are widely sought out experts in their field. Yet, when it came to relationships, they had no skills for making their wives feel loved or desired. When their logical methods did not work, they became frustrated. Some had high conflict while some shut down and avoided. All damaged their relationships. Although their wives used boundaries with them, they didn’t know how to behave otherwise.

(15:04)

Even good men may not have learned basic social skills, and won’t without help.

You can help your husband to learn by including a choice with your boundary. For example:

You can yell at me and I can walk away, or you can tell me calmly what you want instead of what you don’t want.

or

You can sit down with me and work on a budget together or I can open a separate account and manage my finances without you.

People can’t learn when they only know one behavior. Giving a positive choice will help them to learn the alternatives. They may not make the best choice until they get the bad results several times, but that is still great progress.

To help your husband this way, you need to ask yourself what you want instead of his current behavior. What do you want him to do when he is angry with you, rather than shouting at you? Not wanting him to get angry is unreasonable because everyone gets angry sometimes.

(16:02)

What do you wanthim to do instead of demanding, drinking, using porn, overspending, gambling, flirting with other women, and so on?

Once you are sure he knows a better choice, you don’t need to keep educating him–that would get you disrespect. Your boundary will then help him to have the willpower to do what you want. 

If you don’t know what you would like him to do instead, then there is a good chance he doesn’t know either.

Don’t assume that because you have a very smart man, he knows these things already. He may be very smart for rewiring your house or writing a software program, but be very stupid for knowing how to make you feel loved or important. Help him learn.

When he behaves the way you want, make him feel good about it. Even if you think you shouldn’t have to, you have to if you want him to keep behaving well.

(16:55)

Reward your husband, in the context of his love language, when he behaves the way you like him to.

Use boundaries out of love and not anger.

Avoid seeing your husband as a bad person trying to make your life miserable. If that is who he actually is, then he is an enemy and you should divorce him before he further sabotages your life.

More likely, he is no more a bad person than you are. He is probably doing the best he knows how to do given his particular life experiences, his abilities to cope with stress, his ability to bond with people, his ability to deal with temptation, his fear of losing you, or his fear of growing old and missing out or failing.

Being angry, spiteful, or vindictive is not helpful for having good boundaries. Neither is being too lenient, too forgiving, or too supportive.

Keep in mind that boundaries are for his sake as much as yours since you use them to promote your relationship.

(17:58)

If you become a valuable spouse who uses boundaries well, you will end up with a really good relationship.

If you find you are still not making progress with your boundaries, work with me and I will be glad to help you get your relationship moving forward again.

(18:15)

 [Podcast wrap-up]

Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.