It’s spring break this week for my kids, so they’re home and any form of a schedule has gone completely out the window. Last night, my daughter asked if her friend could spend the night, and I agreed, mostly because she’s bored out of her skull and the weather has turned rainy and cold. At least with a friend over for the night, she’d have someone to play with and being stuck inside wouldn’t be quite as boring.

The one thing I knew I would wake up to this morning was her bedroom being an absolute wreck. I’ve been trying to instill in her a ‘put this away before you get that out’ way of operating so that she never really has to deal with a room that looks like a dump truck just left it’s load on the floor, but it’s been a long road, and we’re still on it.

After breakfast, I told the girls to get the air mattress deflated, folded up and put away, the blankets folded and put away, the bed made, and all the things they’d drug out to play with last night put away. In general, clean up this mess before you make another one!

A few minutes later, I noticed the friend out at my daughter’s computer in my office and my daughter sitting on her bed pouting. I asked my daughter what was wrong and she said, “She quit helping me pick up. Now I have to do it all by myself.”

I said, “No you don’t. Go out there and ask her to come back and help you.”

She said, “She doesn’t want to clean. She wants to play on the computer.”

I said, “Well, darling, she helped create this mess, and she needs to help clean it up. If she doesn’t want to help you, then maybe it’s time for her to go home.”

She said, “No! I don’t want her to go home! I’ll just do it myself.”

Wow.

How many times in the past was I willing to do all the work (literally and figuratively) to keep a relationship (or what I now know to be the illusion of a relationship) intact? Now, here is my daughter willing to do the same thing.

What my daughter doesn’t realize is she doesn’t have much of a friend if the friend isn’t willing to help clean up a mess they both made. And by cleaning the mess herself, she doesn’t realize she’s teaching her so-called friend that it’s ok to dump on her, to leave her with the work while she runs off to play.

While I’m no longer willing to downplay my own needs in favor of the needs of others, I know where my daughter learned this kind of thinking and behavior. From watching me before I learned how to set boundaries in my own life.

What I’d like to hear my daughter say is, “Come on now, you helped me make this mess - it’s time to help me clean up this mess. Let’s get it done so we can both play!”

Seems simple, right? More than reasonable, right?

Not for my daughter. For her, right now, the risk of finding out her friend isn’t such a friend by requiring her to help clean up is too much for her. She’d rather clean it up herself and skirt the issue altogether…even though some part of her already knows.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? When that ‘knowing’ part of us tries to speak up (which is the part of us that gives us that uncomfortable feeling), we ignore and rationalize. We say, “Oh, I’ll do it myself. She’s my guest, after all.”

But a part of us already knows it’s not the right thing to do. And the more we do it, the more we feel bad. And the more we feel bad, the harder we work to maintain those relationships because gosh - we feel bad already - how bad will we feel if we lose the friend, too?

That’s the hidden cost of what we want.

The price we pay in self-esteem for the illusion of what we want, when we could, with one reasonable request, nip it all in the bud and get the real thing or acknowledge the loss and move on.

Join us for Personal Boundaries: Fences That Set You Free beginning April 8th. There is strength in numbers, and in this group coaching program, you won’t be alone. Come learn how to set healthy boundaries in your own life so you can model it for those you love.