Boundaries Blog

Question: What kinds of consequences are appropriate for a 39-year-old daughter who refuses to take responsibility for paying a college loan that her father and I co-signed in good faith?

Answer: First, let me say that I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I know that it can feel uncomfortable to be at odds with your adult child.

In this situation, your first decision is to approach your daughter in a vulnerable way and describe how her behavior is impacting you. You could say something like ...

You are enough.

You are more than enough. To speak up. To sit at the table. To stand up for yourself. To be a man of free will, character, service, faith, and influence who can contribute to and lead his family and his community.

Standing up for yourself is a learned skill set that every man must cultivate and hone because it’s vital for genuine strength. Strong men are not born but forged, and now is the time to work on your craft.

Standing up for yourself means advocating for yourself and expressing your wants, needs, opinions, and boundaries with confidence while respecting the wants, needs, opinions, and boundaries of others. You have a strong voice. Use it.

The more you stand up for yourself, the stronger you become. Why? Because self-advocacy delivers three powerful benefits:

Burnout sneaks up slowly over time, hitting you when you least expect it. It’s also on a continuum. At one end is a mild form of burnout where you can still function externally but are suffering inwardly. At the other end, you’re so exhausted you can’t get out of bed, much less function. Most who struggle with burnout find themselves sliding back and forth on the continuum. Bear in mind, the more severe and chronic your burnout, the greater your risk for physical and mental health problems.

If you are struggling, I suggest you avoid the temptation to view life as a continuous sprint with the goal of doing more and more, faster and faster. While periodic sprints are sometimes necessary, sprints should be the exception, not the rule. It may be more helpful to view life as a marathon....

To some extent, our society is afflicted by a Hollywood distortion about relationships. Don't get me wrong—I (Dr. Townsend) am not anti-Hollywood. I am a movie person, and my sons are in school studying film. But we need to free ourselves of a distortion embedded in the DNA of the movie culture: passion trumps everything. That is, if you deeply connect on a romantically passionate level, you have entered relational Nirvana, and your love conquers all. This is the stuff of lots of great entertainment, but it is not how real relationships actually go to the next level.

For example, Sharon was dating Alex, a man to whom she was extremely attracted. He had many of the qualities she looked for: the same spiritual values, warmth, lots of friends, and ambition, and it didn't hurt that he looked like a fashion model. Plus, he was an incurable romantic, and she loved that aspect of the relationship....

Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Considering the spiritually, mentally, and physically destructive potential of anger, why doesn’t the scripture say, “Do not be angry so you won’t sin”?

Is anger ever a good thing? The answer is yes, sometimes it is. Anger is not a sin. No emotion is a sin. So why this warning about anger and not sadness or fear? I believe it’s a question of valence. Let me explain. One way to study emotions through an academic lens is to categorize them in ways that clarify similarities and differences. Two common categories are called valence and motivational direction....