Setting Boundaries in Relationships: What to Do the Second Time
Setting boundaries in relationships fails on the second crossing, not the first. The advice everyone repeats ends at the announcement, and an announcement is a request, which needs the other person's cooperation to survive. A boundary is a decision about what you will do, not an instruction about what someone else must stop doing, and rules aimed at another adult predict concealment rather than change. So the wording that works names one specific event, its effect on you, and your own next move, and the enforcement is an if-then plan written before the moment rather than a second conversation.
