Transcription
Good fences make good neighbors. This is something my grandfather told me when I was a kid, when we were not ironically fixing a fence.
Now, as a child, I took that quite literally. I assumed that meant that if you had a good fence, you had a good neighbor, or something along those lines. Little did I understand the value of that little piece of wisdom and how it could have saved me so much pain and anguish over the course of my lifetime if I had just had a better understanding of what he was telling me in that moment of, uh, grandfather-grandson bonding.
Today I want to share with you some of my experiences with boundaries and just how critically important they are to men in relationship with women, and how the lack of boundaries is probably more responsible than any single topic for the failure of relationships between men and women. And it's men not realizing that having a boundary really makes a big difference and can save your relationship and, um, allow you to have an experience that will be mutually beneficial. So let's talk about it.
When I was growing up, men worshiped at the church of female genitalia, which means that we had to be as accommodating and as agreeable to women, the high priestess of that church, if we stood any chance at all of getting inside that church. I think our whole society was basically founded around the idea of female genitalia. We should probably have a statue somewhere down in Washington D.C., because that's really what our whole social structures are based on, but that's another video. Anyway, because of that mentality and that singular focus that most men have, we think that the best path forward in order to achieve a good relationship with that high priestess, we need to, uh, accommodate her in every way possible. We need to tell her how beautiful she is and how wonderful she is and how everything she does is right and how how smart she is and, um, how we just couldn't imagine the world without her and how we're just all blessed to be in her presence, and oh my god, we just blow so much smoke up their ass, and the whole time they think that we are being sincere, but really we're just trying to get inside the church. You know, we're just trying to get in.
Anyway, in this process of seducing the high priestess, we lose sight of the long-term goal because we're so focused on the short-term goal. So, if you have a long-term goal with a woman, well, that's a whole different animal. You know, it's like it's one thing to catch the tiger, it's another one to bring him home, or bring her home in this case. And when you bring that tiger home, oh my gosh, she sets up trap and she sets up shop real, real quickly. And, um, and unless you have your boundaries clearly defined well beforehand, you won't have any more boundaries. They will not exist. Once you get to a certain level of that relationship, once you get to a certain point, and it it can happen at any time. But once you get to a certain point in a relationship, if you have not clearly laid out what's important to you, what your values are, and what you're willing to put up with, and what you're not willing to put up with, you're going to find that she will assume carte blanche. And you will be challenged over and over and over again with these, um, behaviors that you find reprehensible. And now you're going to be stuck between the church and a hard place. Literally, you're going to be focused on how do I get back into the church, but I don't want to upset the high priestess, even though she is acting like an idiot and I can't put up with this behavior. And you find yourself in this really hard spot where you're like, "Oh my god, I love the church, but I hate the high priestess. What am I going to do?" Yeah, you're going to have to figure this out. You need boundaries. So, let's talk about how you set them and what kind of boundaries make sense.
So before you can really even have boundaries, is you need the raw materials of which boundaries are made, and that is your values. You need to have a, uh, an inventory of your values clearly identified in your mind, because if you just start throwing out of your mouth like, "I don't want you doing this, I don't want you doing that," whatever, it just sounds arbitrary and you sound like some kind of authoritarian, and that's not going to be beneficial to the long term of your relationship. So you need to think in terms of what hills am I willing to die on here in this relationship, cuz it can't be the petty, you know? It's going to have to be stuff that's meaningful to you. So, you've got to take a look at your value system. And hopefully, you've picked a woman that has a value system that is, you know, on the same line, you know, the same basic, you know, zip code as your own value structure. If you find someone whose values are completely different than yours, and it doesn't matter what kind of, uh, you know, boundaries you lay down, um, it's not going to work. So, just bail now. Get yourself out of there before things get really crazy. But what are your values?
So, when it comes to, um, behavior in public, this is a real simple one. So, you know, you go to a restaurant and the the meal comes back and it's cold, it's wrong, whatever. How is that situation going to get handled? You know, this is really, really critical because this is an example of a situation where as a paying customer, you can take on an air of righteousness and you can get angry and you can pass judgment. So, there's all these things that are happening in this situation. How did she handle it? Does she become judgmental? Does she become righteous? Does she start belittling the person who took the order? Does she start making a scene? You need to decide for yourself if that's acceptable behavior or not. You know, this is something that you would do. This is the way you would handle it. Then fine, maybe you want that woman in your life. But for me personally, that's something I will not put up with. There are certain things just going to happen in life that suck. It happens. And our ability to manage that is a reflection on our character. And when you see a woman behaving in a way, or anybody for that matter, behaving in a way that is, um, lacking character, well, that kind of falls into that whole values area and you need to decide if that's a boundary for you. You know, are you willing to put up with that or not? Because if she's going to behave that way, then you need to decide early on whether you can have a relationship with her.
Boundaries create an environment of mutual respect. If you do not have boundaries, do not be shocked if she does not respect you. I hear a lot of men in the comments talk about the importance of respect over even love in a relationship. And I agree that that's that's absolutely the case. This is where the foundation of respect is built is in the boundaries. Um, and you've got to actually start off by creating an environment where conversations about boundaries can occur so that you guys are both clear about what the expectations are, what the limits of the relationship are, and, um, you know, how you can foster a healthy relationship within this area inside these boundaries.
So, when it comes to, you know, relationships with men, that sort of thing, and how do you feel about that? And you're going to have to be straight up and honest, and you're going to have to have a a real frank conversation with her about relationships with other men. That is a very common boundary that a man would have with a woman in a long-term relationship because, you know, it's very frequent that in-depth or very close relationships between men and women that are friends often times are much more than that, or they can lead to something more than that. And you guys know as well as I do that for the most part, now it's not always, but if you've got a relationship with a woman that is a friend, a platonic relationship, it's only platonic because the opportunity to make it something else hasn't happened yet. You know, under the right circumstances, there is an opportunity. It may just turn into something different. So, you need to have that relationship, or you need to have that conversation with this woman so that she understands where she stands when it comes to your expectations about her relationships with other men. And lots of women like to say, "Oh, I have lots of guy friends." Well, that's a red flag. That may not be something you can deal with in your life. That might be something that you just have to say, "sorry." You need to make a choice and you need to give her that ultimatum and say, "Look, it's either me or them." Period. Like I'm not going to have a relationship where you've got a lot of close guy friends hanging around that I just don't feel comfortable with that. And if that's the way you feel, then you need to make that clear early on.
Respect also comes from how you communicate. What kinds of language do you use? What kinds of language does she use? What kind of language do you want to have in your relationship? Um, because belittling, nagging, um, you know, insulting behavior or conversations are just you've got to have clarity in your head like, are you going to allow that kind of conversation in your your relationship? How are you going to manage arguments when things get heated? What is going to be the tenor of that argument? How is that conversation going to happen? Um, what's critical about this is that once this boundary is set, if there are violations of the boundary, you guys need to make some decisions about whether the relationship is is tenable anymore, whether you can continue to have this relationship. Because if these boundaries that you're setting ahead of time are being crossed on a regular basis, then they're meaningless. And, um, if these things were important to you based on your values, then obviously this is the wrong person to be with.
One of the most important things that values does that I completely missed and I wish I had understood the value of this early on is they help you maintain your identity; your original identity, not the identity that you have in the relationship, but the identity that you had from the beginning, who you authentically are. And you've got to, um, protect that identity because if you don't, it will merge into something different, something new, something that maybe you don't even recognize anymore. And we all grow, we all become different people, we all, you know, evolve, you know, in a relationship. But there's a core to who we are that has to remain true. And that's what you're trying to protect here. You're trying to maintain that inner truth of who you are as a man in this relationship. Because when you protect your identity and you set that set part of you aside and make it unavailable for evolution or change, you know, unless it's something that you choose to do consciously, it's almost like you are, um, you're holding something back from her all the time. There's some piece of you that is always only for you and you protect that part of you. This is critically important because it lets you know that you still are you no matter what. Number two, it keeps her much more interested in who you are because she's always feeling like she's not getting everything from you and she never will. And so long as you keep her trying to probe and trying to, you know, own you. She's always trying to get more power, um, and and control, and you're withholding that control from her, she is always going to be interested; she's always going to be striving to, um, to to get her hooks in just a little bit deeper. And you've got to decide just how deep those hooks are going to go. Um, but maintaining your personal identity is a big part of why you need to have strong boundaries.
When your relationship is built on a foundation of strong boundaries, it creates an environment where open communication can happen. There's greater trust and understanding between people. Um, you have a better sense of what this relationship means to both of you and what the expectations are from each of you. And these are critically important aspects of a relationship. And if you don't have them, well, it's really easy to see that relationship fail. Um, I in the past, like I said, worshiping at the church of the female genitalia and trying to seduce the priestess the whole time, found it really in my my head, I thought that it was in my best interest to, um, give in, you know, to just simp to a certain degree, to just be whatever she needed me to be in order to achieve the stated goal, you know, of getting into the church. And, um, that was a huge mistake. It works early on in a relationship, like if you're just in it for a couple of months. Yeah, it's a great way to do it. But oh my gosh, it is a big mistake. I'm going to show you Debb here who's also making a big mistake. I don't know what the hell he thinks he's going to get out of that. I don't think it's a good idea, though, but he certainly is having fun with it.
When you don't have boundaries, the opportunity for a relationship to become toxic becomes real. Codependent behaviors can start to evolve, or one person can start to dominate the relationship and start setting the agenda for the other person. And when that happens, even though in the short term it may be an expedient way to get things done, like living in an authoritarian government, when one person's dominating the relationship and setting the agenda all the time, in the long run it doesn't work out so well because resentment will build; anger and resentment will build. Even in someone who is, um, you know, in that, uh, subversive, that submissive state, you know, someone who is a submissive, um, behavior personality kind of person. Well, they just, you know, push it down. You know, they just, um, take that anger and that resentment and it becomes, um, part of who they are. And eventually it's just going to cause them to snap. And if that person is you, if you're the person that is in that submissive position and she's dominating you and she is, um, setting the agenda all the time, I guarantee you you're gonna you're going to hate that; you're going to resent it, and, um, it's going to set your relationship up for failure. The only way to prevent that from happening, especially with a woman who has a strong personality, is to set down the boundaries.
You know, in many videos, I've heard people talk about how women can oftentimes be like children. And you know, quite fairly, there's a lot of guys that can be like children, too. But I understand where they're coming from. It's a little bit, and I gotta be really careful here. It's a little bit like training the dogs. You know, they need to know what their limitations are. When they are working within their limitations, they are good dogs and they are happy and they're well behaved and I'm happy with them and they're happy with me. But if they don't behave correctly and they are, you know, attacking people on the trails or they're starting fights with other dogs, well, then we're not going to have a good relationship. You know what I mean? Like we're going to have a problem. If they start attacking me or my family members, then we're going to have a real problem. Someone's going to die, you know, and it's not going to be me. So when it comes to your relationship with your woman, you got to have that same mindset. Now, obviously, women are not dogs, but by laying down the boundaries so that the behaviors can occur naturally. It's the same way with children. When you lay down boundaries with children and you show them what they can and cannot do, so they know clearly ahead of time what their limitations are, well, they thrive in that environment. They thrive. Women are the same way. When you tell them what you expect and what you can't put up with, they will adapt and they will thrive in that environment. They want to make you happy. And that's another key factor to boundaries.
So rather than you worshiping at the church of female genitalia, spending all your time and energy trying to get in, now you're changing the dynamic because what you really, really want is for her to be worshiping at the at the, um, church of, uh, male leadership. That's what you really want. You want her coming to you for male leadership. And the only way to get that leadership is to fall within these boundaries and to have a, um, a mutually respectful relationship that allows each of you to achieve and to thrive and to have a healthy, uh, life and relationship. Without boundaries, I would suggest that that's probably not going to be likely. That's not going to happen. And you know, I hear so many men talking about really just giving excuses as to why they're unable to take this kind of approach with women. And the most common excuse is, "well, it's so hard for me to get a woman that I just give in to whatever she wants." And quite frankly, guys, that's that's an excuse because women are everywhere. I mean, there's 4.2 to 4.3 billion of them on the planet. I guarantee you there's one there for you somewhere. You might have to work for it though. And that's the thing that I think most guys really don't want to hear. It's like, yeah, you can be a millionaire. It's like when I was a kid saying the pledge of allegiance and the teacher and my mom and my dad would all tell me, "Yeah, here in the United States, you can do anything. You can be anyone. You can be the president. You can be an astronaut. You can do anything you want, but you might have to work for it. You might have to put some energy into that. You may have to actually, you know, um, put some effort into getting it if that's what you want." And the same true is true for healthy relationships with women if that's what you want. That's a big if. You got to decide that's what you want. Like I said, they're like power tools. You got to you got to get your training in. You don't want to just jump in there, you know, with no experience. You might lose a finger or something. Um, yeah. But you got to get clarity. If that's what you want, then you may have to work for it. And you may have to actually think of it like a like a hobby. You know, you gotta actually put some energy into getting what you choose, what you really, really want for yourself.
All right, you guys. That's all I got for you. I hope this video has been interesting, entertaining, enjoyable. Um, I hope that you can see how critically important boundaries are and how they're associated with your values. That's sort of the the message I want you to take away from this because if you're worshiping at that church and all you're trying to do is make friends with the priestess so you can get in, man, I'm telling you, she's going to own you. She will own you. Yeah, she will own you. And you do not want to be owned. Anyway, please like and subscribe. If you know someone who might benefit from this video, please share it with them. In the meantime, stay healthy and if you can, be the better man.