What if ultimatums are simply boundaries that can’t be heard? | Lessons in Conscious Communication

I struggle to write when I’m “happy”. When my introvert and extrovert needs are being met by living and experiencing. It’s only when I lose balance - usually by looking for validation in other people - that I crawl back to my writing. To myself. To process? To survive? To satisfy my never-ending search for why?

I mention this because this thought on ultimatums as a form of boundaries is something that’s been percolating in my brain for a while. But until this last experience, this last relationship, I would have only been able to give a one-sided view. A view skewed by gender bias. Which, if I shared without a full experience, perhaps would have allowed for the perspective of “Oh she’s a [cis, het woman] girl and that couldn’t happen to me [cis, het male].” 

I write that because I had this bias, this story, that only women give ultimatums, and only angry men - ones who don’t want to be forced to change - react badly, using them as a weapon to lob back in shame. Articles like this don’t help. They also aren’t wrong. An ultimatum is usually indicative of big emotions and immature communication skills. 

But the bias (even expressed in the linked article) that a woman usually is the one to demand it allows it to not be seen as what it could be - a way to get below the fear and get to the why of the needs that are trying to be expressed. 

I say this because I’ve now had it happen on the other side. Instead of giving the “ultimatum” and being met with resistance. I was the one on the receiving end. The one in which I expressed that the question felt like an ultimatum - a dead-end choice - then later talked deeper together about the boundary it rightly was.

For we all - all genders, all orientations, all humans - deserve to have boundaries. That is the basis of consent. It has to be. 

And a boundary doesn’t have to mean that a relationship is “over”, but it is - it can be - a chance for reassessment. I think of them as the floating ley lines that mark the swimming section from the non-swimming sessions in the ocean. They are moveable in that they have to be adaptable to the tides, but also serve as clear markers of what can - and should - be kept safe. 

And, yes, sometimes it does mean incompatibility. But to find out that incompatibility from a boundary rather than lying or cheating can help it to evolve into something different - a friendship, or a conscious uncoupling. Though emotions make it transitions hard, no matter how logically they evolve. I say this as a reminder to be kind - to your partner and yourself. 

Perhaps it’s the stigma and shame I have felt around hearing the word “ultimatum” when it was me “giving” it that didn’t allow for me to hear it for what it was. When I was “issuing” it, I was trying to say: “This is something that is non-negotiable to me, and to give it up, to let it go beyond what I am comfortable with, means I will lose a part of myself in order to not lose you.” 

I didn’t see that at the time. It took a long time and introspection for me to understand that was indeed what I was trying to say. 

And perhaps, on the other side of “hearing” an ultimatum - I can see it for what it is - the same thing. A boundary that neither of us could cross, even if we care about each other. And understand that they are not given in anger or to “change” the other, but that they exist as protection of self. 

And then be able to let that person, those people go. That sometimes two people just aren’t compatible. 

Knowing that I’m never truly alone because respecting myself and respecting other people - and navigating all of the boundaries in between - is more important than keeping someone in one’s life just because the thought of not having them seems unbearable.