00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 431, "Intrusive Love." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright. Hello there. As always, so glad to have you here, and I am so glad to have some content prepared for you so that we can have a really good chat today. Before we jump in, um, I wanna remind you, Talk with Tanya's October 13th. Just a free webinar. You just come, you sit, we listen, we chat, we talk about anything that you want to talk about. Some people get coached, some people ask questions about certain concepts. Whatever is on the table, it's all free game. You sign up for that on tanyahale.com and go to the group coaching tab. Get signed up. You will receive a link in an email. You just click on the link. It's that easy. You don't have to have Zoom downloaded or anything on your device. You just click the button and show up, and it's quick and easy and fabulous. You don't have to show your video or even speak if you don't want to. Okay. That is the first thing. 

01:18 

Second thing, always check the show notes. If you are listening to this going, "Oh, yeah, that's good. Oh, I need to understand that better. Oh, I don't quite get that concept," go down to the show notes. For about the last two years, I have put a big, long, hairy list of podcasts down in there, probably longer than any of you need, but I just... There's so much good information and so many pieces that when we start putting them together, things in our lives start making sense. 

01:46 

Third, if you have thought about one-on-one coaching, think again, my friend. This one-on-one coaching is the game changer for so many of my clients. Here are a few things a few of my clients have said when we've been coaching one-on-one. One had been going to counseling for six years, and when she met with me, it was the exact change that she needed, and she said that she made more progress in six months of coaching with me than she had in six years of working with counseling. Now, I don't think that coaching and counseling are in competition this way. We both serve very different needs, but at that time in her life, she was ready to move forward, and coaching gives more of a moving forward agenda than counseling does. 

02:36 

Another one of my clients said that her adult children tells her that she is unrecognizable, and she had some pretty struggling relationships with them before, and now she gets invited to go on trips, so that's fun. And I had another client who said, "I can't believe that six weeks ago I wanted to get divorced." In six weeks she learned to see things and understand things and show up so differently that her relationship looked and felt very, very different, okay? 

03:07 

One-on-one coaching is a game changer. We will do more in a short amount of time than you can do in two or three years, sometimes on your own, just because I see things that you're not gonna see right away, and I can help you see them, I can help you understand them, I can help you lean into a very compassionate place with yourself. So check out one-on-one coaching. You can do that at tanyahale.com. Go to the free consultation tab and click on that, and you can get on my calendar, okay? I am currently cutting my consultation times down. They used to be 90 minutes. I'm now cutting them into half of that for some reasons that I believe are going to be helpful actually. 

03:56 

That being said, let's jump into today's topic. We are talking about intrusive love. Now, intrusive's not always a good word, and love is generally. Like, we love love, and love is great and fabulous, but what about intrusive love? Intrusive makes it sound like love sometimes is not a good thing. Well, let me explain. Let's talk about intrusive first and give it a definition. It says, "Coming without an invitation or interfering in a way that causes annoyance, discomfort, or disruption." Okay, in our everyday use, it describes people, actions, or questions that barge into personal space or privacy where they are not wanted  or needed. This means that people are getting in other people's lanes, okay? 

04:47 

So when would love be intrusive? When would love fit in this category of getting in somebody else's lanes, of causing annoyance, discomfort, or disruption? Okay, getting into people's personal space or privacy when it's not needed. 

05:02 

Here's the answer to that. Love becomes intrusive when it crosses personal boundaries, when it ignores consent, or when it prioritizes your emotional needs over the receiver's wellbeing, okay? So this is tricky, because love always seems like it would be a good thing. It's coming from a place of love. We just want them to be happy. They'll thank me for this later. I know them better than they know themselves. I know this will help them. I just want what's best for them. I see their potential and I hate to see it wasted. They are capable of so much, okay? You hear those kinds of comments all the time from parents who think that they know what's best for their kids. You hear it from spouses who want their spouse to get in line and make their lives easier. Their lives, not their spouse's life , right? 

06:00 

And I wanna be honest, all of this is coming from the goodness and the best intentions of our hearts. We really do love our kids and, and our spouses, and it can be intrusive sometimes. So let's dig into how this works. Okay? When can love cross personal boundaries? Okay? What happens is we start getting into another person's lane. The question for that is, what is their responsibility and what is yours? Let me give you an example of my previous marriage of me having some intrusive love. Okay? 

06:39 

My spouse sometimes struggled to get up on time for work, and it freaked me out. Like, I'm a person...I really, really, really work to be on time for things, and I would get uptight. So when his alarm would go off, I would start getting on his case, "You gotta get up. You gotta get to work. You gotta get up. Gotta get to work." Guess what? Guess whose responsibility it was to get him to work on time? Not mine. Okay? I loved him. I wanted his work life to be good, so I wanted him to get to work on time so he wouldn't get in trouble and blah, blah, blah, and it was not my responsibility. I was stepping into taking responsibility for something that was his, which has me being a parent to my spouse. Not good. It's not my job to be a parent to my spouse. Okay? 

07:34 

So nowadays, I noticed just last week, Sione was on call, and before we went to bed, 'cause we're close enough to the hospital that he can be home while he's on call here in Hawaii. And he's like, "Okay, I have to get up early in the morning, and I have to leave by, like, 5:00 'cause I have to admit this patient, and we have to do this, and she's gonna do this." And so the alarm goes off at 5:00, and he's not getting up, and my brain starts, like, spinning. "Oh my gosh, he's not getting up. What's the matter? What's wrong?" 

08:04 

Now, Sione is always taking care of what he needs to take care of, but notice my brain's starting to freak out. I love him. I want him to have a successful experience at work, and my brain starts thinking, "Should I, should I nudge him? Should I wake him up?" And finally, I was like, "No, listen. It's not mine. He's a grown man. He gets to make his own decisions, and if he's late, then he will figure it out. He's smart. He knows how to take care of things." And about an hour later, when we were getting up, he's like, "Oh, that client actually went into labor last night, and so I didn't have to go in this morning." And I was like, "Oh." 

08:41 

Like, listen, he knows how to do his job. He doesn't need me reminding him to get up and to take care of the things. And so this is an example of where I used to get in my lane and where now I've learned how to stay in my own lane. Now, does my brain still want to get in his lane? Of course it does. Of course my brain wants to tell him stuff. But I am learning how to stand back and say, "Oh yeah, that's not mine. That's not mine to take care of, and I'll just let go of the responsibility of that one 'cause it isn't mine." Okay? 

09:12 

Let me give you another example, how we can sometimes interact with our family members. Okay? We think that a spouse's or an adult's personal or professional problems are ours to solve when they're really not ours to solve. It is theirs to solve. And, I'm not gonna get too specific on this one, but there have been times with Sione where I have moved into this place of f eeling like I need to protect him from something that I think is hurting him. 

09:47 

Guess who doesn't need to be protected from me? Sione. He does not need to be protected from me. He's a grown-ass man. He can protect himself. My job is to support him in doing the things that he wants to do and that he needs to do. My job is to support him, to assist him if necessary, but it is not my job to take responsibility for it or to protect him. He is an adult. He is responsible for his own life. Okay? I am not there to direct his life, to insist that he do things a certain way, or to take over the choices he needs to take. I get to stay in my own lane, and I get to learn to let him stay in his own lane and do what is his. 

10:35 

So with our older teens, we have to ask the question, what is developmentally appropriate? What can they be doing for themselves that will help them prepare to be a fully functioning adult? Okay? We really, so many of us need to learn to stand back and to stop fixing and doing for them what they need to be doing for themselves to develop the confidence to step into adulthood. 

11:03 

Oftentimes, it is our own discomfort that is the problem here, because we know we could do it faster. We know we could do it more efficiently. We know we could do it with better outcomes. Look at things like laundry and dishes and cooking. How often do we not allow our teen, young teenagers and older teenagers to do these things because we don't want their clothes to be wrinkled. We don't want them to ruin clothes. We don't want them to... We don't wanna deal with whining, them whining about the dishes. We don't want to, like, all of these things. And so we step into their lane, and we do for them things that developmentally is appropriate for them to be doing so that they are prepared to be a functioning adult. Okay? 

11:48 

All of this stuff also applies to emotional regulation. It is not our job to emotionally regulate anybody except ourselves. When we love someone so much, it can be difficult to see them hurting, to see them struggling. And yet, it is not our job to step in and fix things. 

12:14 

Let's go to that little youngster who is just learning to walk. If they fell down and we were like, "Oh, I don't like it when you fall down and cry, so I'm gonna start picking you up and carrying you everywhere for the rest of your life so that you don't fall down and get hurt and cry." We think about that example and we go, "Well, that's ridiculous." Like, nobody would do that. Okay? But we do that with our teenagers all the time. We don't wanna see them struggle, and so we step in and we take care of things, and we fix things. We do things for them that they have to struggle and figure out how to do on their own so that they can become a confident, capable adult. We don't need to make them feel better. We are not responsible for calming them down or managing their anger or frustration. 

13:03 

Now, with a child who's still in our home, younger child, even a teenager, we might need to help give them tools and teach them things. But with our adult children, with our spouses, it is not our job to calm them down or to manage their difficult emotions. Now, we can absolutely validate their struggle. "Wow, that sounds like such a tough thing for you to be working through." And we want to do that because validating like that creates greater connection. But we don't need to fix it. It is not ours to fix. Okay? 

13:42 

Some people may want to use their spouse for emotional regulation, and they may do that through sex. Like, "I've had a rough day, I need sex so that I feel better." Guess what? That's not how that works. That's not what sex is for. Sex is not to emotionally regulate your spouse. Because if I were to do that for my spouse, that would be, that would be inappropriate, right? It's not his job to have me emotionally regulate him, and that becomes duty sex for me, which is going to kill every sex life out there. Soon as I step into duty or obligation sex, right, it's gonna ruin it. Okay? Some people want to release their anger and work through it by yelling at their spouse. 

14:27 

Again, this is not how that works. It is not my job to manage anybody else's emotional deregulation. Okay? We have to let them figure out their own emotions and learn how to emotionally regulate themselves. When they're upset and they're pushing it on me for whatever reason, I don't hang around and try to fix it. I can express love and concern. I can validate  their struggle and their difficult emotions, and then I stop. I don't try and say, "Have you tried this? Did you try this? What about this?" Right? 

15:04 

And if they keep trying to drag you into fixing it for them, you can excuse yourself and leave the room. If you feel you need to walk on eggshells and do everything just right so that they will calm down, that's not your job to regulate their emotions. You can be loving and kind without overstepping what they are responsible for. That is intrusive when we try to manage their emotions. Okay? 

15:40 

Love can also be intrusive when we don't respect the other person's personal preferences and boundaries. For example, let's say over-texting and demanding constant contact, right? Now, if both of you want 10, 20, 30 text messages a day or more, that's great. Then it's not intrusive because you have what we call a want match. You want the same things. 

16:06 

But if one of you doesn't want that, or their job doesn't allow that, and you keep doing it even when they've said, "Hey, this just doesn't work for me. This many text messages a day is difficult for me to manage," then guess what? If they've asked you not to do it, if they don't want it, and you keep doing it, that's intrusive. 

16:28 

Now, you might argue that, "I just love them so much," but guess what? Love isn't demanding that your way is the right way. Love is honoring the other person's agency to do what they want and to know what they want, and to want their own things. They get to have boundaries, and we get to learn to respect those boundaries even if they are different than ours. Intrusive love means that our behaviors stop feeling like love to them, and our behaviors start to feel like control or manipulation. 

17:07 

So in your brain, you may be thinking, "This is love," but what about their brain? Is it being interpreted as love and kindness, or is it being interpreted as control and manipulation and overstepping into their lane? And this is gonna be really tricky for us because we will often use words like, "Oh, I'm just being so helpful and supportive. Listen, I just want them to succeed. I want them to be happy. I want things to go better for them." And guess what? All of that sounds lovely. It sounds beautiful. But in the context that we're talking about today, it's intrusive. 

17:48 

So for example, with adult children, let me give you some things that you might do. Maybe you buy them furniture. Maybe you pay their rent or their car payment. Maybe you schedule appointments for them still. You clean their home. You pay for things that they're capable of paying for. You sign them up for their college classes. You give them an allowance, even as adults. Now, all of this can sound really helpful. It can even sound loving and kind, and yet it becomes intrusive when it is in their lane, when it is something that they are capable of doing and that they need to be doing to grow and progress, even if they want you to do it. 

18:31 

I mean, what person is gonna say, "No, Mom, don't pay my rent. I want to spend that $1,500 a month on my rent," right? Nobody. Well, maybe there's a few out there. I have at least one child who would who would say, "No, you're not paying my rent." But if I'm doing those things, it's intrusive. Their lane is anything that they need to be responsible for in order to step into being an adult. So this can be especially difficult when our children are younger, okay? Remember we talked about our younger teenagers or our, our older teenagers. We might see them as helpless, and sometimes we determine our value based on how much we do for them. 

19:15 

Like, I'm more valuable, I'm a better mom when I take care of all of these things for them that they should be doing on their own. Guys, yes, I just used the should word there. I'm gonna go back and say that they need to be doing for themselves, okay? But we do it all to their detriment, and we are being intrusive. We often do too much, and so we create learned helplessness, and we encourage the idea that they are not capable when we offer too much help. We take away opportunities for them to gain confidence when we send the message that they're not capable. 

19:52 

Now, do we love our kids? Absolutely we do. Sometimes we love them so much we just can't even see straight. So this is not  about love. It's about intrusive love. When do we let our ideas of what they need trump their ideas of what they need? Now, with teenagers, we do wanna look at developmentally appropriate decisions, but we also want to let them make developmentally appropriate decisions and fall flat on their face sometimes. They need that to learn. That's how they grow. So we get to ask the question: when does our helping overtake the courage that we need to let them grow and develop their own confidence? They will not become functioning adults when we keep doing things for them that adults are meant to do for themselves. 

20:48 

So much of this comes back to the question: who is responsible for this? So I want to talk about, just really quickly, the three kinds of boundary crossings that I like to work with with my clients. One, I cross into other people's lanes, right? And I'm saying, "This would, this would be better for you. This will make you happy. Just do it my way," right? I'm crossing into their lane, taking responsibility for something they need to do. The other kind of boundary crossing is that they cross into our lane, and they try and do things for us that we would benefit by doing it for ourselves. 

21:28 

But here's the third one that can be tricky sometimes. Sometimes they pull us into their lane and they say, "Oh, come do this for me." And even when I'm being asked, even when they've got me by the arm and they are tugging me into their lane, we need to learn to not be intrusive and to say no. So this is to not do things that they are capable of learning and doing for themselves. 

21:55 

Like, for example, let's say you have an adult child who's living on their own. They're spending money on traveling, on concerts, on eating out, and then they ask you to pay their rent because they don't have enough money. It is intrusive if we pay their rent because this is something they get to be learning at this point in their life, how to manage their money, how to spend it on the things they really want to spend it on or need to spend it on, which is their rent, and not to spend it so much on traveling and concerts and eating out. 

22:34 

Okay? Here's another thing. Love is also intrusive when it ignores consent, when it ignores your adult child's wishes. For example, your children get to raise their kids, who are your grandkids, however they want to. They might be super tight and have lots of schedules and lots of time things going on, or they might be totally loosey-goosey, and they might be anything in between. And even if it's the exact opposite of what you feel comfortable with, they get to raise their kids however they want. It may seem unreasonable or ridiculous to you. That doesn't matter. 

23:21 

Like, what if they said, "My child just never eats sugar, ever," right? That may seem unreasonable to you, may seem ridiculous to you, but guess what? You're not the parent, okay? Grandparents don't get to just spoil the grandkids when it goes against the parents' wishes. That is intrusive love. Yes, you love your grandkids, and we don't get to be intrusive. We don't get to override the parents' rules because you don't agree. "But every child should know what sugar tastes like." Well, maybe not. Maybe that's not true, right? You love your grandkids, but that doesn't mean that you get to be intrusive into how the parents are choosing to raise their kids, okay? 

24:15 

Barring abuse, it is not yours to agree or disagree with their parenting. So sneaking them candy, changing routines, openly disagreeing, ridiculing their parenting, that's not loving. You may say, "I love my grandkids. I'm standing up for my grandkids." But guess what? That is intrusive on your child's parenting. So you may justify that, "Listen, I just love my grandkids. I'm trying to protect them, give them a normal childhood." Guess what? Again, my friend, none of your business. Just because you love your grandchild doesn't give you permission to get in their parents' lane. 

24:58 

Another way that we are sometimes intrusive is that we, to our adult kids, to our spouses, to friends, to parents, whoever, guilt trips. That's what we're so good at. "Oh, you don't call me enough. You don't visit enough. You don't have time for me. You just don't bring me flowers enough." Right? We're trying to create guilt trips. Guess what? These other people in our lives, they get to spend their time however they want. They get to spend their money however they want. Now, you can make requests for sure. You can say, "You know what? I would love if you bought me flowers once a month, twice a month," whatever. You can make requests, but passive-aggressive guilt trips are a no-no. 

25:46 

I like to think about passive-aggressive as like I'm going in through the back door. I'm not gonna ask you to your face. I'm gonna sneak in the back door and, and say something back there that's difficult for you to hear. If you want a great relationship with your adult children, you have to treat them as equal adults. I have a podcast called Parenting, or it's called Friend Zoning Your Adult Kids, right? We have to start treating them more as friends. Now, you will always be a noun parent to them. You will be a parent. But at some point, we stop being a verb parent. We stop parenting them. We stop telling them how to do things, okay? 

26:31 

So what about your own parents? I have worked with clients who just cannot believe how their parents choose to live or how they choose to spend their money. But here's the deal. Again, if your parents are cognitively capable, it is their life to live. It is their money to spend. Now, you might worry that they're gonna run out of money and that they're gonna have to live with you. Guess what? They might run out of money. That's up to them, and they will get to deal with the consequences. They still get to spend the money however they want, and you can let them live with the consequences of their decisions later on. Guess who doesn't have to live with you if they run out of money? They don't. There are other things that can happen. You may not love that, but that would then be your choice, right? 

27:23 

Do your parents want to live in a hoarding house? Guess what? They get to do that. It is their choice what to keep and what to get rid of. We think it would be better for them to have a clean, organized home. But guess what? That's none of our business. We love them, and we want their life to be easier and their home and their finances in order. You can want that for them, absolutely, and you can have an opinion, but ultimately, you don't get a say. You don't get to decide how they live. 

27:56 

When you become intrusive, when you begin to push your ideas, your opinions, your desires on them, you break down the relationship, and you start crossing those boundaries. What so much of this comes down to, interestingly enough, is our own discomfort. We are uncomfortable with the state of their house. We don't look forward to cleaning out their house after they've passed on. We don't like the impact that their spending may have on us in the future, okay? 

28:32 

We oftentimes have discomfort around our adult child not wanting, not having what they want. We're uncomfortable with the possibility of them getting kicked out of their apartment. We don't want them to have to work three jobs and not have free and fun time. And so we become intrusive as a way to control our own discomfort because if they did it the way that we wanted them to, we would not be uncomfortable. 

29:02 

With our spouses, we might be uncomfortable around their eating and their exercise choices. What if they're not doing it the right way, and we end up having to take care of them because their health is so bad? Well, guess what? They get to live however they want. We get to figure out how to respond in alignment with our values and also live the way that we want. Okay, if your spouse in five years ends up bed, bed-bound, and you don't like that, guess what? You don't have to stay. 

29:39 

And most of you are like, "But that's horrible." Okay, then your value is, "I will stay and support my spouse even if their health is bad," even if they knew their decisions were going to lead them to this kind of a health ending, right? They still get to make the choices that they want. Love becomes intrusive, I mean, I said this at the beginning, right, when it crosses personal boundaries, when it ignores consent, or when it prioritizes the, your emotional needs over the receiver's well-being. 

30:16 

Even with the best intentions, actions motivated by, by intrusive love can feel suffocating, stressful, or violating. If they disrupt a person's autonomy. If you catch yourself thinking or saying things like this, "They're doing it wrong. I know how to do it better. If they would just let me... Why don't they listen to me? I don't want to see them struggle or get hurt. I just want them to be happy. It would be better if they did it this way." That is a not an all-inclusive list, but that gives you an idea, right? If you catch yourself thinking something like that, those are all indications that you are playing around with being intrusive. 

31:06 

Is it coming from a good heart, from an honest heart, from a loving heart? Absolutely it is. We love these people in our lives, and you have to learn to stay in your own lane for everybody's sake. Because when you try to control people and things that  are not yours to control, you are exhausted, and miserable, and become resentful and intrusive. You are creating resentment that they don't listen to you. You might even become passive-aggressive. "Come on, don't you trust me?" Right? Throwing guilt trips on them. 

31:47 

And other people become helpless, or they become resentful, or both. They will begin to separate and emotionally distance themselves from you. They'll say yes, and then turn around and not do it, because it's the only way they can get you off their back. It can sometimes feel like the only way for them to be in control of their own life. 

32:09 

Now, listen, we all fall into bad behavior with intrusive love. Just watch for it. Notice it. Resist being intrusive. Learn to love with a clean love rather than an intrusive love. Stay in your own freaking lane. If it is not yours, leave it alone. Honor and respect other people's agency to live however they want, to choose what they want, and even to struggle how they want. Your only job is to love cleanly with zero expectations and only focusing on what behaviors are in alignment with your values, and then you figure out how to show up that way. 

32:56 

If you struggle with being intrusive, we got some work to do, my friend. Let's get you... Let's clean this up. One-on-one coaching would be a brilliant option for you to see your particular patterns of behavior that are wreaking havoc in your life, that are keeping you from showing up really loving and blessing other people the way that you want to. It stems from goodness, but it's ultimately destructive. So let's get it cleaned up. If you wanna do some one-on-one coaching, go to my website, tanyahale.com, click on the free consultation tab, get on my calendar, okay? 

33:42 

This is amazing stuff. The more that we learn this, the more we are growing up. We're becoming more emotionally mature, and this is the brilliant part of middle age. We learn, and see, and understand things that we just didn't have the capacity to before. Alright, my friends, that's gonna do it for me. Okay? 

34:01 

If you have not left me a review and you are liking what you're hearing, I would love for you to take two minutes and leave a review on this. If you don't know how to do that, go to your app. I know on the Apple app, you just open up my podcast and scroll down to the bottom, and it will say, "Leave a review." And you can just leave some stars, and you can just write a quick paragraph about how this is blessing your life, and that will help other people to find this content. Okay. Love you. Thank you for being here. Let's live the most amazing middle-aged lives that we possibly can by cleaning up all the crap that is muddying the waters. Let's step into some clean love, shall we? Have an awesome, awesome week. See you next time. Bye. 

34:50 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "Weekend Win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.