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Is it true that the rule of engagement say NO swearing?

and what constitutes a swear word?

Boy, I hope not, ((Smilin')), 'cuz I have turned the cyber-air on here waaay blue a time or two. :shock :halo

I think the ROE's speak more toward not using abusive language toward others, etc..

So is asking someone to leave me the 'hell' alone breaking the rules of engagement?

I don't think it breaks the rules of engagement. Sounds appropriate to me.

This isn't really about the ROE, is it.

Yes, mobilne it is

I had a member that has more tenure here than I tell me saying the above was breaking the ROES .. that was their response to the above.

So, I'm sorry but I am really asking if I broke the ROE's.

I think you can answer this question yourself by reading the Rules of Engagement.

Look at them.

Is swearing mentioned?

Is the nature of the Rules of Engagement such that it's possible to break one?

I did read them , ty MR, but I dont feel it answered my question.

It talks, in other words, about treating others with respect- so I guess that still leaves a huge black box to be dealt with.

Myself I felt if anything this is what comes into play in this issue I am dealing with:



My choice was to end a thread and to ask to be left alone. The second request to be left alone had little more than the above statement in it.

Candle kindly responded with



So, I turned around and asked is telling someone to leave me the hell alone abusive toward them.

I'm not asking to be a smart ass, I am asking in sincerity. Is this abusive and inappropriate ? Yes, of course I was frustrated. I have stated this 3 times to the person.. and they keep contacting me.

I think anyone would be upset at this point.

So, then, as I understand it, your real question is not about the Rules of Engagement and what they say, but whether a specific behavior of yours was appropriate.

My own thought... "leave me the hell alone" is not abusive, but it's also generally not effective communication (especially online where there's no non-verbals to go with it). Not something I would expect anyone to get in trouble with by the management or moderators or leaders or whatever at any message board. But most of the time not the best choice in how to deal with wanting someone to leave me alone.

One more thought. My thinking is, if you want someone not to contact you, it should be mutual. Not an "I can contact you, but you can't contact me". What I learned was that every time I kept engaging with someone that I wanted to leave me alone, even to tell them to leave me alone, I was breaking my own boundary. If I want someone to leave me alone, I should leave them alone. Tell them once that I don't want to interact with them and won't be replying, then do it.

ok, I am being defensive here but here goes it:

the leave me the hell alone was because they ignored the first two requests.

I told them in black and white this time.

And even now they responded.

And now I have not ! (slow, but yes even this old dog does learn)

Yes the question was is saying leave me the hell alone breaking the rules of engagement. I was told it was by a member more senior than myself and I came here asking for clarification.

you are right "I" wanted to know if "I" did, since I was told I was- I wanted to know.

I think you are taking boundaries too far when you say I broke my own boundary because by the nature of this boundary - as soon as I let the person know what it is- I break it.. so my interpretation of what you are saying is that this is a boundary that can never be voiced... it gets broken as soon as it is spoken...

But, that isn't what I said. There was no "you". I'm saying what was true for me. You can take it or leave it.

I think it's a natural human instinct to want to have the last word in an argument. A while ago, I was being attacked by PM by someone on a different board. And every unfair accusation they made, I would respond to defend myself. They didn't listen to what I said, but would just respond with more accusations.

This board did have a block feature, so do you know what I did? I had the last word and then I blocked them. I don't mean I just said, "I don't want to continue this conversation." I defended myself once more and didn't give them the chance to respond. And later I regretted it. Why? Because it wasn't very mature of me, and it meant that if the person ever did want to make amends, they couldn't (or would believe they couldn't).

In the end, I lifted the block and emailed this person to apologise for having behaved immaturely. We came to an agreement that we would not respond to each other's posts. Within 24 hours of this, they posted a rant about the very subject we'd been arguing about - not mentioning my name, of course. I was so angry and I knew that if I responded, they would deny they'd been referring to me, and accuse me of being a horrible person for not keeping our agreement. Then I realised. If they really hadn't meant me (which I doubted, but it was possible) then the best thing to do was ignore it. But if they had meant me, and were trying to get a rise out of me, the best thing to do was show it had no effect on me by not responding! (Of course, it did have an effect on me. But I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of seeing that - it would only encourage them.)

It was really hard to ignore that temptation to respond and defend myself. But I'm glad I did it. It sent out a clear message that, basically, I wanted nothing more to do with them. And when their post didn't get any replies, they deleted it. (At least, I assumed they did. It just occurred to me now it could have been one of the other mods. Did I mention this person was a mod?) They've left me alone ever since.

I don't know if any of this applies to your situation, Smilin. I know you've contacted a mod about it now, and hopefully they can deal with it from here. But if not, you might find ignoring them completely is more effective than repeatedly asking them to leave you alone. I do know how hard that is to do, and how hard to resist the temptation to read the PMs in the first place! I must confess, I have the other board set to ignore this person's posts, which means instead of seeing the body of each post, there's a link I can click on if I want to read it. Sometimes I do succumb to temptation and click the link. :/

As far as "leave me the hell alone" is concerned, I would agree with MR that it's not the best way of phrasing things (though understandable if you were angry!) but it's not something I'd expect you to get into trouble over.

I hope everything gets sorted out for you.

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks in this scenario.

What matters is that you felt violated and that in reality you were, and that as a result of that, you set a clear and defined boundary.

If you told them, "Don't send me another message", that is setting a boundary they can disturb.

They Can't disturb the boundary of, "If you send me another message, I won't read it, or answer it." And you have to find it within yourself to mean that, and to hold yourself to that. Otherwise, you aren't in control of yourself.

I recently disabled my ezboard inbox because someone continued to disrespect my boundaries. What MR said is exactly what happened to me. It was hard for me not to respond to repeated contact because I was angry and trying to make the other person "get it". The problem was solved when I disabled my inbox. Although you can't do that here, you can ignore and delete. One thing I have learned, you can't control another person's behavior, just your own.

Emjay -

Thanks for describing your own situation. I too had something similiar happen to me earlier this year, and again a lot of it comes down to communicaton- can the 2 parties communicate or can they not. And in this earlier situation it was obivous we could not. But in this situation from earlier this year there was no request to be left alone- just the opposite, as a matter of fact.

April - Aqua -

Thank you.

Aqua -

I think you recap the situation much more succintly and clearly than anyone yet has other than IBF.

smiling, by replying to the pms, you broke your own boundary. now you are paying for it. and you dont get it....we must enforce our boundaries and consequences or they are meaningless. since you broke your own rule, you dont understand why another did also.

cant have it both ways. we cant set up boundaries and break them ourselves. it wont work, as you found out. i dont mean to sound harsh, but you seem to feel helpless with this and you dont get why.

you have to enforce your boundary. telling another what to do wont do that.

no one will understand why to leave you alone if you dont leave them alone. see?

Jody -

I appreciate your help, You've made some great points but on this one re breaking my own rule, I just dont agree. I dont agree that it is wrong to express my need. I dont agree it was wrong to repeat it. I do agree that after the 2nd time, it was up to me to end it.. it took me 4 times. as I said I am a slow learner. I guess I had a hard time believing someone was that disrespectful.

I hope that you explore exactly how you felt and reacted here, smilin. I will talk more about this with you when I get more time this coming week, because I have this idea that you possibly might've just done what I did a while back with someone else (BFG), and I worked through it and understood later exactly what I was doing to cause it myself, and some other things I want to share with you.

Heh, well, on a board full of people with bpd, isn't that something you can expect? I don't expect anything of others, as in, I don't expect them to understand what I do. But I do expect things from myself. And if they don't for some reason understand how to conduct themselves (which I don't either sometimes, I'm sure), then I make a determination on what to do from there. But once they've shown me they don't get it, I don't give them a chance to find out again that they don't.

Everywhere you go, there will be someone there who will test you on this, I can guarantee that.

You were both wrong. Both of you could have handled the situation better. It's time to walk away from it. Even if you don't fully understand the why's and wherefore's just yet, I strongly encourage you to walk away for a bit. Come back to it in three days if it's still an urgent, pressing issue but leave it alone for a while. Picking and picking and picking at a scab does not allow the body to heal.

I totally relate to this problem but in reverse,for it was I for whom boundaries were being set and broken.It was very confusing and fraught with mixed message.First,the person told me not to contact them.I sent some emails which I later found out were read but not replied to.Then,after a while of this,the person finally relented and said that they would read and reply to my e-mail to supposedly,"help out" with my problems and to advise me on therapists.It was all by invitation only.I never asked for this type of assistance,but I was certainly glad to have it seeing as I had relied very heavily on this person's advice for many years.This person had boundary issues with some of the things that I would write,and when I occasionally digressed,I immediately said that I was sorry when it was pointed out to me.Then,all of a sudden,out of nowhere,they said that I was using the online relationship as a crutch and they wanted to wean me off of it.I may be wrong here and obviously noone is privy to the full text of the e-mails,but in general terms,I would appreciate some objective third party analysis on the subject as I am having trouble accepting the abrupt termination of the relationship YI found very theraputic