Boundaries and whom to set them with.

One of my guilty reading pleasures is advice columns. I’ve been drawn to them since I was a kid hunkered over the hometown newspaper, which featured Ann Landers and Miss Manners directly opposite the weekday comic strips. I think I found them so fascinating because to me, the world of social interactions was challenging enough at the elementary school and familial level. I loved that there were people out there who seemed to know exactly how one should behave, and were happy to tell anyone who asked.

I’ve never lost my love for advice columns, although the older I get, the more discriminating: I no longer have illusions that all of them know what they’re talking about, and some of them are much better writers than others. But they still frequently open my mind to new ways to think about navigating the difficult situations of the world, even if wholly hypothetically (one of my very favorites is workplace columnist Alison Green of Ask A Manager, even though I hardly spend any time in anything remotely resembling a workplace anymore).

Anyway, that’s just a preface to segue into commenting on this entry in Carolyn Hax’s column at WaPo.

The person who wrote in described how her son was engaged to a “wonderful young woman” from a “fun, warm, and welcoming” but also “quite wealthy” family—much wealthier than the writer:

Her parents recently had a sit-down with the kids and told them they’d like to spend $75,000 on the wedding. They also said they’d like to invite my husband and me for a visit so we can all work out the details about who’s paying for what.
I don’t know what to say or do. They are such genuinely nice people, and we really do want to contribute as much as possible, but there’s no way that we can come up with anything near that. Honestly, we’ll be lucky to scrape together even a few thousand dollars, and that fills me with bone-deep shame.

He’s our only son. We love him so much but feel like bumpkins with bupkes to give them. What can we do?

This was one of the questions that Hax opened up to readers’ comments. As I settled in to read them, I expected comments that addressed the hypothetical uncomfortable conversation during the visit with their future daughter-in-law’s parents: how to broach the subject of their financial disparity, for instance, or how to agree on a more affordable event, or how to decide what they can afford to spend, or perhaps how to overcome their misplaced feelings of shame.

But the first response got right to the correct point: Whom the groom’s mom and dad should be having this conversation with. The reader advised:

This is something you should be discussing with the couple, not your son’s future in-laws.

Oh—that’s right.

…My parents weren’t able to contribute nearly as much to our wedding as my in-laws. We asked each parent what they were able to contribute, figured out the amount we were willing to contribute, and then we came up with the wedding budget from there.

I would call your son and explain to him how much you can give. Your financial situation is likely something your son already knows, right? If not, it is an opportunity to explain it.
Then leave it to the couple to determine what the budget should be. Maybe her parents will choose to pay for everything; that’s a very traditional take on weddings. Or maybe the couple will decide that a big wedding isn’t worth it and will choose something small.

This is so exactly right, obvious as soon as it was pointed out, and a great example of why I keep reading advice columns. Because I am the sort of person who is easily sniped by a Problem to be Solved, and sometimes I see the side issue first.

Like so many others, this questioner needs advice about how to set and enforce a boundary. But the first boundary that needs to be decided upon here isn’t a cap on contributions that they are going to have to explain to twice-removed wealthy in-laws. It’s whom they are willing to explain their cap to.

This is exactly the kind of thing I often forget about boundaries: Whom you explain things to, including your other boundaries, is itself a boundary. Sometimes this kind of discretion protects you: you don’t have to have uncomfortable conversations if the necessary information can be handled another way. Other times it protects others: from your nervous oversharing, from violating privacy, things like that.

If contributions to a wedding are to be a real gift, then they go to the couple who can decide what to do with them. The letter-writer cannot control how much the fiancée’s parents offer and she cannot control how much of that gift the young people accept. (She also can’t control whether the other family’s contribution implies an expectation of a degree of control over the details, like choosing the venue.)

It’s better to be honest with the engaged couple and let them take responsibility for what to do with what is being offered.

+ + +

Anyway, the broader boundary-setting lesson will stick with me. Before plunging ahead to decide what boundary to set with someone, or what words to set it with, consider whether the boundary should be set with the first person who came to mind, or if someone else in the affected circle is a more appropriate channel for the information.

Careful—discretion in channel-choosing mustn’t be confused with triangulation (involving a third person in a conflict in order to manipulate someone by bringing pressure on them from a different direction). In this case the groom-to-be’s parents would be gently extracting themselves from a perceived pressure situation that was probably unintended, even if it could have been prevented had the other family been a little more self-aware.