Setting Boundaries With Your Parents as an Adult
"I know I should say something. I just can't do it to them."
You probably don't have a terrible parent. That's most of the problem. There's nothing to point at, nobody to be straightforwardly angry with, and no version of this where you come out of it in the right.
So this isn't a guide to confrontation. It's the six things people say when they're stuck with the feeling that the relationship they have with their parents doesn’t quite meet their needs, and what tends to sit underneath each one.
In this article:
"I don't want to hurt them"
"It's easier to just go along with it"
"They're getting older"
"I tried and it made things worse"
"I wouldn't know what to say"
"I don’t want to seem ungrateful"
How therapy can be helpful
"I don't want to hurt them"
It’s worth separating two things that feel identical from the inside: hurting someone, and disappointing them.
Disappointing a parent means they wanted something and didn't get it. That's uncomfortable for everyone and it isn't necessarily damage (to them, to you, or to your relationship). Hurting them would be something else. Truth be told: when having better boundaries (like shorter phone calls or a hotel at Christmas), however anxiety-provoking or challenging it feels at the time, is actually going to help support your relationship with them in the long run.
The reason that it’s hard to distinguish disappointing a parent versus intentionally hurting them is that you learned to read the mood in the house before you could read your first chapter book. A shift in someone's voice landed as a problem you needed to fix, you got good at heading it off, and that skill is still running in your 20s and 30s with nobody supervising it.
But the truth of the matter is: most parents adapt to these small, micro boundaries considerably better than their adult children expect, and plenty barely notice a change their kid spent four months dreading. That gap between the dread and the actual event is worth knowing about in advance, because the dread — or the fear, worry, or panic that you’ll hurt them — is doing most of the damage.
"It's easier to just go along with it"
For the length of the call, absolutely. It's the cheapest option available in the moment, which is why most people take it for years.
The cost turns up somewhere else. As dread when the phone lights up. As the tone you can hear in your own voice by minute forty. As the thing that leaks out sideways at your partner afterwards. Going along with it isn't free, it's billed later and to a different account.
There's also what it does over time. When you've been agreeing to things you didn't want for a decade, the person turning up to these calls isn't quite you, which means the closeness you're protecting is happening to somebody else.
Plenty of people find they resent a parent they have never once disagreed with, and that resentment is confusing precisely because there's nothing to point at. No one thing happened. That's what makes this so tricky.
"They're getting older"
Time is finite. It also gets used to postpone every version of these unhealthy dynamics indefinitely, because there's no year in which a parent gets younger, and “not while they're this age” quietly turns into never.
What helps is remembering what you're actually protecting. When the relationship in its current shape leaves you avoiding calls, postponing your trip home, or hiding parts of yourself and your life, the thing being preserved is already thinning out on its own. What you fear: less closeness, hurting them, or shielding them from your problems becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Illness and caregiving change the picture, and so does living nearby or supporting a parent financially. The principle holds, the practical version looks very different, and it's worth working through with somebody rather than alone at midnight.
"I tried and it made things worse"
It probably did, for a while, and that's normal enough to plan for rather than a sign you picked the wrong approach.
When your thermostat is set to 74 degrees, but you turn it down to 72, it takes a while for the AC to kick on. You can hear the system working hard and striving to cool the place down. The same goes with setting boundaries in a family system, with your parents. When they are accustomed to you acting in a certain way, it actually takes a lot of work (and can be really hard to keep at it!) to show up differently. They may be disappointed that you don’t call every Sunday, but here’s the secret: their feelings are not your responsibility.
The other common version of “I already tried it and it didn’t work,” is that you set the boundary once, during a difficult conversation, with a lot of explanation attached. That's rarely enough. What actually works is duller: the same small choice, made calmly, over months, until it stops being an event and becomes how things are — the new norm.
There's also the question of what you asked for. A boundary that needs their agreement was never going to hold. In fact, a boundary isn’t what you’re asking them to do, it’s what you will do. "You need to stop asking about my weight" hands them the deciding vote. "I'm going to change the subject when my weight comes up" doesn't need anyone to sign anything, and you can keep it whatever they do.
"I wouldn't know what to say"
Fair, and most advice on this is written in a voice nobody has ever used with their own family, which doesn't help.
None of these are lines to memorize. They're closer to a sense of the pitch, which is warm, brief, and not up for discussion.
"I've got about ten minutes and then I have to go."
At the start of the call, not the end. Otherwise the goodbye becomes its own twenty-minute conversation and you end up resenting a call you chose to make.
"I'm not going to get into that right now. How's the garden doing?"
The redirect does more work than the refusal. Closing one door while opening another reads as far less hostile, and it gives them somewhere to put the next thirty seconds.
"We're going to stay at a hotel this time, but we'll be around all day Saturday."
The offer alongside the limit. Most of the sting in these is the sense of being shut out, and naming when you will be there takes a surprising amount of that away.
"I know you're worried. I've got it handled, and I'll tell you if that changes."
Most unsolicited advice from a parent is anxiety in a costume, and anxiety settles faster once it's been acknowledged than it does after being argued with.
"It's just what works for us right now."
For when you're asked to justify it. A reason invites a rebuttal, and then you're negotiating something you had already decided.
Expect the first few to come out stiffly, followed by a pause that feels much longer than it is. That's what new sounds like, and it isn't a sign you've made a mess of it.
"I don’t want to seem ungrateful"
In some families, yes, and that's a fair objection rather than resistance to be talked out of.
You can hold two things at the same time. What we call the “both/and.” It’s both, hard when you feel like you cannot express your needs or have your feelings validated and can acknowledge that your parent(s) show you love in the best way they know how.
It’s confusing to realize that your parent is trying their best, and also, that you need some more — or different — from what they’re best can offer you. Here’s the deal: you can feel grateful that they want to visit and annoyed when they leave all of the logistics to you. You have a right to say “that weekend is not good for me,” and “I appreciate you wanting to visit.”
How therapy can be helpful
Therapy is not for settling who was right about the thing in 2019, and not for building a case against anybody.
Therapy can help you understand why the same low-key passive aggressive remark from a parent still lands the way it does, and identify what you're actually afraid would happen if you disappointed them. That fear tends to be much older than any of the current arguments, and it's often been running unexamined since primary school, which is a long time for something to go unquestioned.
Therapy can be a safe place for you to be honest with how you feel and express what you need without managing the listener, too. Most people can't say the true version of this to a partner, or a sibling, or a friend who knows the family well. There's often nowhere at all for the resentment and the love to sit in the same sentence.
And saying the thing out loud a few times to a trusted therapist, makes a real difference to how it comes out when saying it directly to your parents. Most people need a space and dedicated time to sift through the confusing feelings, to address the potential grief that can come along with realizing your parents are human themselves, and to practice setting new boundaries. All of these pieces are usually better discovered — and worked through — when nothing is at stake.
Attachment patterns run through a lot of this, and many of our team members work specifically in that area. A good deal of our young adult therapy in Denver work involves individual therapy which is available at our office or online anywhere in Colorado.
Wanting more room in a relationship, or having your parents understand and try to meet your needs, isn't the same as wanting less of them. Nearly everyone doing this work is actually trying to keep the relationship in tact. What therapy can do is support you in showing up in these relationships in more empowered ways.
Does this resonate with you?
If you’re wanting better relationships with your parents and don’t know how to get there, it's worth working with a therapist who can help you get there.
A free 20-minute consultation is a low-pressure way to do that and find out whether therapy feels like a fit, no obligation either way. Our therapists work with people in their 20s and 30s on family relationships, guilt, and working out what they want these conversations to look like. You can read more about young adult therapy in Denver, or reach us through our contact page if you'd rather start with a question.
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