Reinforcing personal boundaries in quarantine: how to respond to unsolicited advice, unplanned video-calling, and unwarranted pics from exes
It would be an understatement to say I am not a morning person: several cups of coffee, breathing exercises, and a dance routine are required to aid me to step into an extrovert attire. I work and write mostly during the evenings and nights, and while I greet a wake-up text from a lover with a virtuous smile, my morning elegance is something I keep to my private chambers.
My mornings in quarantine are not very different from the usual ones: I wake up, stretch, power up on caffeine, cook an egg or two, slice some fruit, swallow my vitamins, and read my emails, while scheduling the important calls of the day — work, friends, sometimes family. But my mornings for the past days have had something of a disturbing element, which keeps taking me by surprise: everyone suddenly wants to video call.
Video calls were not all that common until recently, which isn’t to say they weren’t an important part of virtual communication, but they were not the norm. Although I spend numerous hours in a week, sometimes in a day, with a close friend or two in a WhatsApp call, we very rarely (if ever) see each other on video. Such encounters are reserved for my psychotherapist (we live far away, thus we meet online), a lover, and, on occasion, a job recruiter — but even in these cases, with prior consent.
Video calling someone without prior notice is the virtual equivalent of breaking in their bathroom without knocking, while that person is taking a dump - I have come to think recently, as several friends and acquaintances showed up on my phone’s screen each morning, eager to chat, while I was much less prepared for such immersive interactions.
I imagine the person placing such calls without inquiring whether the timing is right feels confident and eager to see and speak to the other. But what if the recipient of that call is naked? What if she or he is crying, as they woke up from a dreadful, stress-induced nightmare painting the end of the world in a shopping-mall sized supermarket? What if they’re having sex or pleasuring themselves? Better yet, what if they’re going about their business in the bathroom? What if, simply, they’re unprepared to be seen?
My pre-quarantine introvert/extrovert personas have been balancing each other out with the switch between indoor/outdoor environments. I love socializing when I go out but immediately retreat in my hermit shell as I rejoice in the comfort and solitude of my apartment. There is something unnatural and relatively surreal about encounters that unfold on a small screen - as opposed to meetings and dialogues in the 3D. When it’s close friends, the setting is obviously more relaxed. But when it comes to more official encounters, a sense of discomfort and anxiety builds up. Faced with virtual work interviews, I study my living ecosystem to determine what type of scenery I ought to create in order to make an effortlessly reliable, yet professional first impression. Not too creative, not too bland. A neutral background, the Business Insider advises. The wall just looks wrong. The light is too dim. A plant needs to be moved. My hair looks brittle on camera. I’m already tired.
It baffles me that a video call can raise such concerns within us. Yet, we are reduced to finding acceptable, and furthermore, meaningful avenues to compensate for our loss of real-life interaction.
As I navigate these new pathways of connection, I am left wondering: do we suddenly need to reframe our boundaries?
Which brings the topic of unsolicited advice.
In the past years, I have kept my online presence to a minimum, limiting my activity to postings about work, my books, and stories I wrote. Then, as I dealt with the grief of my last serious break-up, I limited the exposure of my private life — and thoughts, to a greater degree. Separating my internal workings from my professional ones in front of an audience was not just a trial to keep my privacy unadulterated — but merely an effort to protect my emotional health from unwarranted advice from the people on social media that I didn’t personally know — or barely knew. As an immersive journalist of many years on the topics of relationships and mental health, I inadvertently exposed several layers of my private life in order to curate stories — to a degree, and more often than not I received feedback in the form of more or less blunt psychological advice that implied I could have done differently in life — or better.
But quarantine, and subsequent isolation, brought the extrovert in me back to social networking, one step at a time. As I began writing again on Medium and publishing more quarantine-related stories in my daily work as an editor too, I began to retrace my life on social media, and regain momentum there — surely as means to make up for the time and experiences I otherwise would have acquired in a real-life social setting.
Naturally, I did get acquainted with people from my past too. Some I welcomed, some — not so much. Some of the calls and messages I began receiving as I stepped back on social media revolved around my health and state of mind. Speaking openly about my stress-triggered panic to leave the house for extended periods of time was welcomed with a plethora of advice.
Have you tried yoga?
Are you breathing correctly, though?
Maybe you have, in fact, a panic disorder.
Why don’t you meditate?
Chin up, it will pass.
Why are you feeling so scared, though?
Are you afraid to die, or to get ill?
You should get out of the house more!
Don’t watch the news so much!
Are you taking Vitamin D?
Have you tried yoga, though?
The trouble with unrequested advice or presumptuous opinions is that they keep popping in the back of one’s consciousness like dull hammer knocks, and one soon finds herself or himself entertaining a conversation they didn’t even want to be a part of, to begin with. It is easy to fall prey to frustration as we want to help another out of their perceived struggles, but I cannot help wondering how much we project ourselves on another when we try so hard to tell them what is best for them?
Finally, in the spirit of it’s ok to text your ex now, messages from several former partners, or former friends have found their way into my mailbox. Some were expressing regret for our forlorn relationships or affairs. Some were duly inquiring about my health and state of mind. Some were sending me selfies, which fall — I came to think — just short of dick-pics, when uncalled for.
I pondered over what enables people to do such gestures now (why not before?) While it is our deeply human need for connection that drives us to try to rekindle or think of people in our past in a kinder light right now, how do we keep healthy boundaries when it comes to verbal or visual interaction with them? A selfie from one of my exes made me uncomfortable in a familiar way. It prompted me to revisit the reasons we broke up, and the baggage that dragged the connection further and further away from my sympathies.
The unsolicited advice I received from strangers or acquaintances prompted me to step back, thank them for being caring and thoughtful, and eventually remove myself from the conversations when it had become absolutely necessary.
The common denominator of all such interactions is that they feel as if someone is walking in your apartment without ringing the doorbell. While this was a casualty in the Seinfeld series, it’s understandable that not everyone has the same legerity with their friends and families.
In a sense, the quarantine has a regulatory function on the ways we connect and engage, and more importantly — on whom we choose to engage and entertain.
It’s not commendable that we want, more than ever, to stay in touch — and it shouldn’t be a pain to do so: it’s a dire necessity. Still, it’s sensible that we walk the fine line between genuine care and curious trespassing, and we avoid crossing boundaries that may now call to be redefined.
