Do you have difficulty understanding personal "Boundaries" in terms of possessions.

[micho313]

I am a rather high functioning Aspie. Many things day in and day out I can get through with little to no issue. However, one recurring obstacle for me is understanding what "Boundaries" are and the exact definition of what Personal Boundaries can be when referring to possessions. My main conflict within personal boundaries is when someone places something, such as an object in a communal area is how to not relocate this object to a more appropriate placement. For Instance, my partner puts a book down on a table in living room. She may in fact tell me not to touch this object, not to move this object. What do I do regardless of knowing her wishes to not interact with this object... I will move the object to a zone that makes sense to me, causing a conflict of course. Then despite this conflict, the next day I will do the exact same thing... I honestly want to change this behavior, however it seems to be greater than me. Even though it seems logical despite the wishes of my partner, I keep making the same mistake over and over and over... Curious if anyone else on this forum could share insight or perhaps their own perspectives.

 

[Mia]

In my opinion, communal areas should be kept free of clutter. Personal areas used by each person can be the way they like. With my spouse, their are instances where many things are placed and left, forgotten. Several areas such as the kitchen table, entrance table, become a repository for objects, mail and collected pieces of paper for him. Then they pile up, and are forgotten and or misplaced.

Often move things from the kitchen table, which my spouse wants to use to pile things up on, as his own repository. When it's a communal area, that needs to be cleaned and used for meals.

Clutter makes me anxious, and if you can't be relaxed in your home then where can you be? Like to know where things are, so that I can find them, and this kind of random placement of items makes for a certain amount of frustration on my part.

 

[tree]

@micho313

So, it seems as if you are telling yourself there is an ideal location
and it would be very wrong of you to neglect to place the object
in that ideal location, regardless of the feelings of the person to whom
that object belongs.

You are valuing your sense of order/"rightness" over the intention
of another person. The other person hasn't appointed you guardian
of their belongings. You have taken that position, possibly from a
feeling that there may be a slide into no order at all, unless you take
it upon yourself to provide that order.

 

[Judge]

Sounds like that area of "no man's land" where cohabitation meets one's OCD. Where OCD could be the source of injuring or ruining a relationship.

In my world in the most physical sense, everything has its place. But it's always been grounded on a single premise- possession. If it was MY property I had dominion over it. If it wasn't, I didn't. Otherwise I have a strong sense of the physical order of objects relative to other objects. (gross understatement tbh)

Though somehow in this instance (cohabitation) I've always been able to tell myself where those boundaries were to avoid such conflicts. Odd to look back on all my relationships and realize that somehow in most cases I was able to keep my OCD effectively masked from others. But in this case it reflected the little control I actually had over it, enough to rationalize the situation and contain my obsessions and compulsions to make things orderly in my immediate environment.

Does this make any sense, or am I just rambling?

 

[MrSpock]

In the example you've given (book on table in living room) I would tend to leave it unless the table was about to be used for something that took up a lot of space, for instance you're about to play monopoly with a few people - I'd clear everything from the table and feel justified in doing so. If you're not about to do something which requires the use of that much of the table I'd leave it alone and would consider that your partner is using the table to keep the book on.

That seems pretty straightforward to me, but this topic in general seems very much not straightforward to me and I would guess to many. Different people have very different ideas about how space should be shared and it's not easy to determine which viewpoint (if any) is truly justified. This might be a topic in which nobody is really right or wrong in many instances and it's merely a question of whether or not the people involved are compatible.

Justification may exist in some examples... IMHO it would be pretty much wrong to insist that it's okay for you to keep your roller-skates on the stairs.

 

[micho313]

These are some good replies so far! I truly have to add it's unfortunately not just s book. I minimized the situation. My partner is kind of a hoarder and has many items. It's not just one item. Technically, I'm not sure I would move a solo book. I think it's most likely the staggering quantity of items that creates a desire to move things. However siting the possibility that I somehow made myself the one deciding where someone else's personal property should be located actually put things into perspective here. It might just be the best cue I could think if to deflect that desire.

 

[MrSpock]

If a great deal of communal space is being used to store one person's belongings which are not then available for communal use and the other person is unable to access things because of it or is otherwise impacted then I guess there may be an issue, this is where Sheldon's room mate agreement makes things so much easier. Sharing limited living space can be vexing for sure.

 

[Questella]

If he's piling stuff up in your shared space I'd go dump it on his bed and just say, "sorry I needed the table," regardless of whether or not you did for real seeing as you most likely would of already cleaned up what you were doing regardless. Can't take over the living room, what if you wanted to organize your cards?

((take the whole table stick it in his room and get another table, "what?")) j/k. Would be comical if you lived in a sitcom though. Lol

 

[Questella]

If a great deal of communal space is being used to store one person's belongings which are not then available for communal use and the other person is unable to access things because of it or is otherwise impacted then I guess there may be an issue, this is where Sheldon's room mate agreement makes things so much easier. Sharing limited living space can be vexing for sure.

The roommate agreement, pure genius, I should of thought about that when I was trying the roommate game, maybe I would of never gotten a roommate but I would of saved me a lot of hurt and saved a lot of stolen stuff. >: