The Fence Has a Gate

Learning to Say No Without Losing Your Heart

Not metaphorically. Literally. A man came out to my house in Berwyn with a measuring tape and a clipboard, and we stood in my yard talking about gates. Cedar or vinyl. How wide the opening should be. Whether the latch works the way it is supposed to. I picked the cedar, five feet, the kind that smells good when it rains.

Somewhere in the middle of all that measuring, it hit me. I have spent years learning how to do with people what I was doing in that yard. Not building walls. Building a fence.

Let me start where this actually starts, which is not in the yard. I mean in the break room at work, or your kitchen, anywhere with your phone in your hand and just as you’re saying the words you didn’t mean, or want to say. (Face plant)

We’ve ALL done it. Said yes to the extra shift, yes to the date, yes to the favor that ate your whole Saturday, followed by immediate regret. I’m a recovering professional at it.

The Yard

Here’s what most of think of when we hear the word, boundary. Confrontation. If you’re a warm person, a show-up-for-everybody person, confrontation can be a betrayal of who you are. So we skip creating the boundary and say yes again & then lie awake at 2 in the morning replaying it. A special kind of torture when your alarm goes off at 4!

Brené Brown, who has researched this stuff more than just about anybody, has a line that rearranged something in me: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Read that slowly, twice.

Now think about the last “maybe” you said when you immediately wish you had said, no. You weren’t being sweet, you were handing somebody a guessing game because you wanted to skip discomfort. That is not kindness.

Brown also breaks trust down into seven pieces, a framework she calls BRAVING. The very first piece, the B, before reliability, before accountability, before any of it, is BOUNDARIES.

So here’s mine. Even though I still fear confrontation a boundary doesn’t have to be a wall it can be a picket fence with a gate.

A wall says nobody gets in. A fence says: this is my yard. Here is where it starts. Here is where it ends. There is a gate, and the gate works, and you’re welcome to come through it when you respect the fence. That’s not confrontation or shutting people out. That’s telling them how to treat you and in some cases, love you well.

Something that creates a little freedom for me: A boundary isn’t something you set for the other person. You cannot set a boundary that says, “You have to stop doing that,” because what they do is out of your power. You can only set a boundary about what you will do. It’s about your behavior, not theirs. You’re the only person you get to control. Find relief in that because it means you don’t need anybody’s permission to have a boundary.

The cost of Keeping the Gate Wide Open

Now let’s talk about the bill, because there is a bill. A people-pleasing tax.

People-pleasing isn’t kindness, it’s actually Lying. Kindness is a choice that comes naturally to nearly every human. People-pleasing is fear with good manners. Fear of rejection. Fear of conflict. Fear of being the one they call selfish. It looks like generosity from the outside, but inside, it is anxiety wearing a nice outfit, smiling at the party while it quietly empties your pockets.

Live like that long enough and you can feel the account nearly being over drawn. You’re drained after perfectly normal conversations. Little things irritate you. You cancel your own plans and then feel strangely furious about plans nobody forced you to cancel. Psychologists who study this pattern describe it the same way: wearing down your own self-esteem and energy until anxiety, exhaustion, and burnout move in. It’s not a character flaw but an old strategy that worked once, Now it’s just expensive.

The Mayo Clinic says it plainly: stress and anxiety grow when we take responsibility for other people’s emotions, behaviors, and thoughts. Sit with that. So much of the weight people carry around isn’t even theirs and it started with a boundary problem.

Every yes you didn’t mean is a withdrawal from an account you never agreed to open. Sooner or later you find the account IS overdrawn.

Three Places I Practice

This is easy in a yard and hard in real life. So here is where I actually practice, in the wild and it can be so hard to do sometimes.

Dating, first. Picture it, coffee across from somebody new, and the old me is already performing and saying yes to things I don’t want because I just wanna be liked! What I know now is this, saying what you want early is kinder than performing and resenting it by week three. Not interested? Say so kindly, and early. Need things to move slowly? Say that. The person across the table can handle the truth. What nobody handles well is three weeks of mixed signals and then a disappearing act. And the right people are relieved by clarity. If someone gets angry at a simple, honest preference, they just showed you who they are.

Then parenting. I’m a single dad to a teenager, which means I live with a person whose whole job right now is testing me. What I’ve learned to appreciate is that boundaries with a teenager aren’t me being a strict, hard ass parent, they’re safety. Kids settle when the lines are clear, when the rules are the same on Tuesday as they were on Monday, when the adult means what he says. It create trust on BOTH sides. And sometimes the boundary isn’t for your kid, sometimes it’s for you, sitting in a school meeting, saying plainly what your child needs because you’re the only person in the room who can to say it. That’s a fence too, It goes around him.

And work. My alarm goes off in the dark. I’m at Trader Joe’s at 4:45 in the morning, in the cold first hour, on my feet, lifting, stocking, talking to the whole world before most people have had coffee. I love my job, and it takes what it takes but then I come home and I’m a dad. There’s dinner, laundry a snotty little dog who has opinions. Rest is load-bearing here..so when my work pushes my buttons and starts to become more of a burden than a great and fun place to work, I ask a different question than I used to. Not “can I technically survive this,” but “what does this cost me emotionally and is it worth it?” It’s actually protecting the job, because the rested version of me is the one who is good at it. The boundary is the work.

And if you’re sober (or really trying to be) friend, you’ve been doing this longer than you think. Saying no to a drink is a boundary. Leaving the room that doesn’t feel safe is a boundary. Guarding your sleep, your routine, your meetings, your people, that is all boundary work! You’ve had the tools the whole time, we’re just defining it now.

Kind. Clear. Short.

So how do you say it without your voice shaking and a paragraph falling out of your mouth? Three words. Kind. Clear. Short.

Kind means the tone stays warm, remember this isn’t confrontation. Clear means nobody has to decode you. Short means you stop talking when the sentence ends. Period.

Instead of the apology tour, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I would love to, I really would, it’s just this week is so crazy and maybe next time, if that’s okay, please do not be mad,” you say this:

“I appreciate the invitation, but I need to rest this week.” Here’s my favorite, the whole episode in one breath: “I love you, and the answer is no.” Both things are true. At the same time. That’s the gate, opening and closing exactly the way it should.

Now the honest part. You can do all of this perfectly and still feel guilty in the parking lot afterward. So hear me. Guilt after a boundary is not evidence you did something wrong. It is evidence you did something unfamiliar. If you have said yes for years, your nervous system treats a no like a smoke alarm. The alarm is not the truth. It’s just loud. The second time is easier than the first. By the tenth time, you’ll say it and go right back to your coffee, and wonder what you were so afraid of.

And the people on the other side? The relationships that survive a clear no usually get stronger, because honesty builds trust and silent resentment eats it. If somebody only liked you because you never said no, turns out they didn’t.

The Ask

On this show we talk about compassion in action, and we picture the big stuff. The interventions. The hard conversations. Those count. But clarity counts too. Telling somebody the truth, kindly, counts. Protecting your rest counts. Saying no to the thing that would drain you dry, so you can say a wholehearted yes to the thing that matters, counts.

So here’s my ask, and it’s a small one. Say one clear no this week. Just one. Kind, clear, short. Then come tell me how it felt.

This post is the story version of Episode 4 of The Sober Gay Guy, out Wednesday, November 4 wherever you listen.