Gary Direnfeld

Estrangement, if you will, can be on a continuum.

It can be, I'm not going to answer every phone call, text message, and comment on social media, up until I have blocked you from everything and ceased all communication.

Well, the reason we do that is because the other, the parent, isn't respecting the boundaries.

I got to tell you, one of the funniest stories I heard of lack of boundaries, a couple comes home from a vacation, the wife is in the bathroom on the toilet, and she reaches to the cupboard where her feminine products are always there, and they're not there.

Her mother-in-law moved them.

She didn't think that's where they belonged.

She put them where she preferred for them to be.

And the in-laws had a key to the house.

So talk about how firmly do we set that boundary?

I suggested maybe it's time to ask for that key back so that they can't just walk in.

Of course, I've had couples where the in-laws or the parents would come in anytime, anywhere,

Without forewarning that they're coming for that visit.

Sometimes we use humor.

Answer the door in the nude.

Use nudity as aggression?

Use nudity.

But the issue is one of boundaries, David.

And so the degree to which we have to assert them really is dependent on the personalities and the people involved.

When our son and daughter-in-law were engaged and now getting married, we had what I called the summit.

And that's the meeting of the four parents and the kids.