(no subject)

[elainegrey]

I want to thank everyone who commented on my post about SG. If you clicked through to the previous post, here's more.

Today's email has an even more manipulative start: "even though i 'ought' to be 'saving' lives-i am writing you 'instead'." (Don't ask me about the quotation marks; the next sentence replaces them with asterisks.) It essentially repeats message 3's content.

So, thanks to gentle advice and consultation, i will hand write her a message tonight. My goal is to give her two requests without offering anything she can dispute.

I do feel fairly strongly about offering to return her artwork to her, although not via fine art shipping. Is that because she has manipulated me into feeling she has a claim on the work even though it was a gift?

Draft:

Dear SG,

I have received your last four emails and the book via Amazon: the receipt of these is causing me distress. I continue to hold you and your work in the Light, however, i ask you to not contact me beyond what is needed to settle a home for your pelican oil pastel work.

I am not able to give it the home you indicate it deserves. I am willing to mail it via Priority mail with $1000 insurance value to whomever you indicate. If you request, i would send with "Restricted Delivery" which restricts delivery only to the addressee or addressee's authorized agent.

If returning the work to you or another in this manner is undesired, i hope you will rest easy knowing it is cared for with respect in the same manner as the many art pieces i have collected from friends.

It is my hope that you will respect this boundary. I will maintain it.

In Peace,

[me]

Comments

[sonia]

Looks like a great letter in response to a difficult situation. I thought about your last post, but looks like I didn't reply. Mostly I was thinking how hard it is to meet one's own social standards in response to someone who is playing by different rules. Somehow we consider it rude to enforce boundaries against rude behavior.

If it were me, I would restrict the allowed contact even more: "I plan to ship the artwork to [address] via [mode] on [date (a week or so away)]. Please respond by [date - 1] only if [address] is invalid."

Unless you'd rather keep the artwork, in which case I wouldn't offer. In my humble opinion, the decision is yours, not hers.

Then after [date] I would send the thing off (or not) and block all known addresses, phone numbers, etc.

Good luck with a hard situation!

[elainegrey]

Thanks! What good advice about the date. (I know the power of a deadline!)

The different rules part is the challenge. She and i have talked about some of the discomfort she causes me. She's dismissed it with some sweeping comment about Americans. I don't think it's a slippery slope to stretch to accept difference, at all, but for myself, with the particular issues i developed around boundaries in childhood, knowing when it's not simply difference but rude, manipulative, or abusive is a challenge. (I use abusive there to mean the boundary crossing abuse of friendship and goodwill. I'd like to think i'd be able to identify malicious abuse.... but maybe that would be hard, too.)

[sonia]

(Long comment, I think about this a lot. Hope that's okay.)

I agree that it's healthy to give ourselves the opportunity to stretch, but we still get to feel inside for what our boundaries are. I've gotten away from trying to decide if behaviors are abusive, and instead I look at how they work for me.

When someone starts telling me what to think or feel, or twists what I say, or argues with me when I speak my truth, I get away from them immediately, because otherwise I get lost in a swamp of confusion. I am just beginning to be able to push back a little ("Did you just argue with my decision about my next step?!" "Oh, no, I just meant...") but if someone continues past a pushback, I look for the exit. That's what works for me.

I even had to use this with a therapist who kept saying, "How do you benefit from your pain?" in the first session. I told her I can't go there, please use a different tool, no REALLY I can't GO there, it twists me up inside. Apparently she didn't have any other tools (or had bad intentions). I never went back. And of course spent a bunch of time wondering if I'm wallowing in my pain somehow, *sigh*.