Having trouble setting boundaries as an adult. I have no idea what's normal and my personal relationships always suffer because of it.

TW: I'm going to get into some physical abuse I went through as well as what I believe is called "covert incest."

I can't set boundaries. Not with friends or romantic partners or in professional relationships. I have no idea how to even set them, let alone what healthy boundaries even look like.

I'm scared to ask for anything, not just because I'm scared to look vunerable (which I've known I have a problem with for a while), but also because but also because I'm scared I'll ask for too much and push someone else's boundaries unintentionally and I'll be needy and toxic and it will drive them away. I've recently realized that this is a form of me taking responsibility for other people.

I was always confused and at a total loss when I heard people say stuff like "how could you let someone treat you like that" or "people will treat you how you let them." My thought was always "what do you mean 'let them? People are gonna do what they want to do to me, I have no control over anybody else."

And now I'm trying to learn how to not "let" people do things I'm not OK with.

Ex: a small victory to me was when I was in a romantic relationship back in highschool with someone who was constantly late by several hours because they were smoking weed and playing video games. I felt my time was being disrespected and told him so, but he kept doing it. For years I just kept verbally expressing what I wasn't OK with, hoping that would be enough. I had no idea how to not "let" him be chronically late for our plans.

Then I realized: I'm letting him do that to me by not having any consequences for him doing that. I would wait around for hours and he'd still get to hang out with me on his time without any consideration for my own. He could do it as often as he wanted and all that would happen is him hearing about how I didn't like it. I should have just made other plans.

I felt like it wasn't my place to give someone consequences for how they treated me. I thought it would be manipulative to do so. Like, "you treat me how I wanna be treated, or else." Like a parent setting up discipline for a child, rather than a natural consequence for behaviour.

This boyfriend later refused to let me out of the car during an argument. I jumped out at a stop light. He drove after me and pulled me back in the car. I started slapping him, which is fair considering at this point I feel like I'm being kidnapped. He puts me in a choke hold. I punch him in the nose. He pushes me out of the moving car, my purse is stuck around my arm and caught in the door so I get dragged and get road rash. Nmom still thinks that boyfriend was "a cool dude." Defended his behaviour with "he made a promise to me he'd get you home safe." I stayed with him for 2 more years. So it's really no wonder I have no idea how I'm supposed to be treated.

That relationship ended 6 years ago and I'm just now realizing what I could have done to enforce a boundary.

The "victory" to me here is just the simple realization that I can not reward people for bad behaviour and it's OK to set up artifical consequences.

Nmom would burst in on me in the bathroom whenever she wanted.

I remember one time I had an allergic reaction to a deodorant and was scared to tell her. The rash ended up spreading to my chest. I finally do tell her once it is unbearable, and get taken to the doctor and prescribed and ointment. Nmom insited she "couldn't trust me" to put the ointment on. So would make me take my shirt off and hold me down to the bed kicking and screaming and she rubbed ointment onto my prepubescent chest. So again, no wonder.

Verbally saying what a boundary is should be enough, imo. But sometimes it's not, and I have a hard enough time doing that, and I'm at a complete loss when it comes to enforcing them.

Another example is that I'm scared to ask my current boyfriend to hang out because I'm terrified I'm going to take him away from his friends and social life and be "that" girlfriend. Even when I couldn't use the bathroom in my house and wanted to come over, I first considered just renting a motel room for the night so I could have access to a bathroom because I knew boyfriend was catching a drink with a friend.

He was completely taken aback when I expressed these thoughts and assured me that I could call him if I need him, that it was HIS job to say no and enforce HIS boundaries if he wasn't up to do whatever it is I'm asking for, not my job to protect him from myself. He couldn't evek wrap his brain around me feeling like asking to stay at a place for the night while my bathroom was unavailable would be asking too much and pushing his boundaries. To him, it's like "of course you can! Nbd."

One I currently stuggle with is that I don't like how my boyfriend treats me when we go out with his friends. He tells me he wants me there, then ignores me the whole time. I have verbally told him I am socially anxious and do not want to go out with him just to watch him socialize with his friends in a place where I don't know anybody. What do you even want me there for? He has verbally told me he will work on it. But chance after chance, he forgets. He's not being intentionally rude, he's just a Mr. Peanutbutter (from BoJack Horseman. Great show about depression and abusive family, watch it if you haven't.)

I felt the thing to do was to just quit going out with him and his friends because I don't like how I feel when I am with them. I felt guilty for this, and ended up taking this to r/relationshipadvice for validation and was so so happy when everyone there told me it's totally OK to just tell my boyfriend I don't want to go out with him and his friends if he can't put more effort into including me into his group, and that boyfriend isn't trying to be rude he's just excited to be with friends. It's OK if I need him to hold my hand the whole time, it's OK if he can't do that, and it's OK if I just stay out of situations where people can't meet my needs. It's not a character flaw on their part or mine. We can both have boundaries equally enforced!

Anyway, this got a lot longer than I originally intended.

These are just small examples. I have a hard time even identifying bigger things, and I'm taking baby steps.

What is your relationship with boundaries?