I believe this is something only each of us can answer, because where each person draws the line is always going to be different, or am I wrong?
I don’t know if I’m being reasonable with my red lines:
My parents are conservative Mexican. I was raised with Christian dogmas and clear social roles (men don’t cook or do the laundry, only women do). To my parents and people like them, family, or what they think of as family, comes always first: It is imperative we all meet several times a year, even if you don’t want to, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. I’m expected to attend, to pretend I like my extended family (people I have nothing in common with), to “do it for them” (for my parents, in the past this form of emotional manipulation worked, since 4 months it doesn’t anymore). I hated that as a child and if I ever have children I won’t put them to such BS.
My grandfather was mentally ill and insulted me, my siblings and my mother for most of my childhood until he died, while my father enabled that pos. In Mexico it is expected that families take care of such issues within the family, because asking for help elsewhere means the family loses face. I’ve already told my parents that if they ever become psychologically unstable and start insulting and ranting no stop, I’m not going to take care of them, I’m calling APS. I don’t know if they registered it when I said it.
Maybe because I was raised in such a strict, self censoring and conformist family I now want to defend my independence at any cost. Cue meeting people halfway or being a doormat.
If a woman I’m dating asks me to do “something for her”, my first instinct will be to run no looking back and ghost. If I stay trying to convince her that’s not a good idea explaining why, that means in my book she already manipulated me into listening to her and that she can keep manipulating me. I don’t know if this is self sabotage, but I see it as self defense.
If a woman I’m dating asks me about my parents and the issue of providing for elderly parents is discussed, it wouldn’t make any sense to sugarcoat it, I’d say what I just wrote here. If she accuses me of being a psychopath and starts with “they’re your parents”, as if that was a reason good enough to forgive everything in the past, I’d run and ghost. I don’t know if you see this as self sabotage, but I see it as self defense.
There are other examples I’ve heard at the workplace over couple problems that to me are simply ludicrous and would make me want to run away:
he wanted Chinese, she wanted Mexican and couldn’t agree what restaurant to call. My solution would be to order what I want, telling my partner to order what she wants. Why must we order from the same restaurant? Why so much drama over something so insignificant? Or she can order what she wants and I can cook.
She made weekend plans without telling him beforehand, he wanted to rest, grab a beer, go fishing and do nothing else. She wanted to have lunch with another couple (double date), he said no, because he wanted a quiet weekend and suggested she goes alone with the couple. She started yelling about not doing things together.
But why must couples do everything together? Why is doing things separately not a good idea? He gets his peace and she gets to socialize.
If meeting somebody halfway means doing something I don’t want to do, I don’t want a relationship with this person.
If a person I’m dating feels entitled to try to change me, I don’t see how a relationship would work. Am I a narcissist?
There’s a line running through the middle of this; on one side you’re strongly independent and on the other side you’re an asshole. I’ve veered back and forward across this line for most of my life (in my late 40s now). There’s no hard and fast rules around which side of the line you’re on in any given situation, every circumstance is different and needs to be assessed on its own merits.
Having this as a hard rule that you always stick to, will frequently put you on the asshole side of the line. Sometimes its nice to do something for someone, even if you don’t particularly enjoy it, just because it’ll make them happy. If you care a lot about them, making them happy is enjoyable (well, it should be!) even if the specific activity isn’t. As I said, you assess each situation on its own merits. Figuring out how much you’re willing to compromise on stuff like this, and for whom, is just something you’ll need to work on over time. If it’s something that you don’t particularly want to do but it’ll make your partner really happy, why wouldn’t you want to give them that?
Communication is key. You need to be able to explain to the person why you make these decisions, but also be able to listen to them about how they feel about it, and find some understanding on both sides.
They shouldn’t, people who think like that are awful. But they should do some things together. Probably quite a lot of things.
Going from being by yourself to being in a relationship will always require changes. If the way you think in a relationship doesn’t change to include the other person, then you’re not really in a relationship you’re just hanging out. People shouldn’t try to force changes on people against their will, but you should be accepting that you will need to make some changes, just because it is a fundamentally changed situation from being on your own.
It does sound to me like you have some reflexive responses that are a reaction to your upbringing, that I suspect will make it difficult for you to communicate and negotiate through a relationship in these ways. Some kind of therapy can potentially help you work through some of this, but also being self aware (which you seem to have some amount of) and learning through experience should be able to mature these aspects of your personality over time, as long as you make the effort to self-assess and try and be as objective as possible in those assessments.