Housemate telling me I'm too polite...

[clarity]

Yesss...we do need to find some kind and gentle ruthlessness and relentlessness! What a paradox, or is it an oxymoron .. or both.

I use a lot of metaphor ideas to help myself. Recently I thought of my abusers as dogs that bite. Woukd I keep a dog that kept biting me every day? Would I give the dog endless benefit of the doubt after 50 years of it biting me??!!  That one helped a lot!

Just a note to anyone who is worried about becoming too mean or rejecting to others.... You Will Never Be Like Them!!!!!  Your concern itself proves that. But don't let that concern hold you back.  I have found it never feels good to SET the boundary, ( wether it be a no thanks declining an invite or a NC thing) but the peace, space and new choices that result feel fantastic.... guess it is a sort of trade off. We cannot wait for boundary setting to feel good!! It wont. But neither does working your buns off at the gym,  to reuse one of my other metaphors. 

Wounded as we are we will naturally shrink away from more pain.... but boundary setting can help us realise that some pain leads to GOOD things....   

[CranberryJuice]

The sad reality is that worst case scenario, you spend the rest of your life telling someone no and having to reinforce that. As a reiteration, people like to find the buttons to push and keep pushing them and they might just need to constantly face consequences and that's the reality of a boundary. You may read in the more recent months on how some people go low to no contact with the people who have been abusive only to see that 40-50 years later of no contact, nothing has changed regarding respect for the NC person, the role the abuser attempts to continue is exactly the same way as if the person never left.

Here's a link I wanted to share with the original poster. I'd rather you know now than ten years down the line because nobody will tell you this. The good stuff happens around 00:55:00, but your important stuff is kind of introduced around 00:59:30 - Here you go (it's a podcast)