You know those old kitchen faucets — the ones where the handle only turns two ways? Scalding or ice cold. No warm. No in-between.
That's how most people think about boundaries with the people they love. Take everything or cut them off. Absorb it all or blow the whole thing up. So you keep your hand under the hot water. Because at least that means you're still at the sink.
Every Sunday at six
A woman I worked with called her mother every Sunday. Not because Sunday was convenient. Because Sunday was the day her mother expected her to call, and not calling felt like a kind of cruelty she couldn't afford.
Every week, same arc. An hour on the phone. Talked over. Gently corrected. Managed into a smaller version of herself, syllable by syllable. She'd hang up. Sit on the couch. Stare at the wall for twenty minutes before she could do anything else.
I asked her: "If your best friend told you she did this every Sunday — same call, same feeling, same twenty minutes on the couch afterward — what would you tell her?"
Long pause. "I'd tell her to stop calling."
"And what would she say?"
"That she can't. Because she loves her mom."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Do you think those two things are connected? That loving someone means letting them hollow you out once a week?"
She didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was different. Quieter. Like she was hearing something she'd known for years but never said out loud.
"I think I've been confusing love with endurance."
The sentence that doesn't need an ending
There's a sentence I hear in almost every session. It always stops in the middle.
I could set a boundary, but—
But she'd be hurt. But he'd think I don't care. But things would change. But they need me. But the guilt.
All of it might be true. Every word.
But here's the question that never gets asked: is any of that worse than what's already happening? The version where you answer every call and attend every dinner and absorb every comment and spend the drive home wondering why you feel so hollow?
You can love someone and find their calls exhausting. You can love someone and leave the dinner early. You can love someone and not pick up the phone on the day they decided was yours to give.
You can love them and still.
The sentence doesn't need a second half. Still is the whole thing. Still love them. Still need something different. Still be a person with edges of your own.
She moved the call to Tuesday
Not forever. Not as punishment. She just picked a different day.
Tuesday was after her long walk. After the slow morning. After she felt like herself enough to talk to someone who sometimes made her feel like someone else.
Her mother noticed. Asked why.
She said: "Because I want to actually enjoy talking to you. And Sundays weren't letting me do that."
Quiet on the other end. Then: "I didn't know Sundays were hard for you."
That was it. No explosion. No guilt trip. No three-day silence. Just a woman who moved a phone call and a mother who hadn't realized the old day was costing her daughter something she never mentioned.
The faucet didn't need to be scalding or ice cold. It just needed a handle that turned both ways.
What relief looks like here
It's smaller than you'd expect. That's the part that surprises people.
Calling on Tuesday instead of Sunday. Leaving at eight instead of staying until they're ready. Saying I can't do this right now, can we pick it up Thursday? And then actually picking it up Thursday.
Not loving them less. Loving them in a way that also includes you.
What if the relationship you're protecting could get better the moment you stop disappearing into it?