Boundaries
What is a boundary?
Boundaries fix the limits in the relationship between two people. Relationship boundaries include physical and emotional guidelines and limits. These limits may be stated or unstated.
Boundaries define appropriate behavior in any specific relationship. You can be friendly, develop a warm and trusting relationship, have fun, and be comfortable with each other, without taking advantage of each other.
This page covers:
Why are boundaries an important component in employer/employee relationships?
Most businesses have guidelines for employer/employee relationships. An employee needs to know what is expected of him in order to work effectively. Therefore, it is important to think through what rules of conduct ought to exist between you and a personal assistant. More importantly, these defined boundaries should be maintained in such close working relationships.
Crossing the boundaries in an employer/employee relationship can change the nature of the relationship and make the definition of the relationship unclear to one or both people involved. This confusion can lead to a situation where the working relationship must be ended.
From a consumer:
 Cara was the best worker I ever had. She had a sense of humor, was warm and fun to be with. The inevitable happened, we fell in love... or so I thought. After a few months, less and less was getting done around the house. I suggested she come back in after my evening worker left. She came a few times, but I noticed it wasn't the same. I was really hurt. But I had to let her go. I lost a good worker for what I mistook as love. 
 If you step over the line too far, it may not be possible to restore a working relationship. This is why it is important to define boundaries early in the relationship and maintain those boundaries.
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Maintaining Boundaries
Close friendships do develop in long-term employer/employee relationships. These can be mutually beneficial. When this occurs it is important for both the employer and the personal assistant (PA) to keep the working part of the relationship separate.
Set up clear boundaries:
- Decide in advance what your rules are about a worker borrowing personal things or money; or about using your supplies, food, telephone, stereo, computer, television, and other things.
- Be understanding of the worker's personal concerns. Make reasonable changes in your schedule as long as your needs are being met and the worker does not begin to take advantage of you.
Inappropriate behavior
You always should treat your PA with due respect. Try to be aware of anything that they may feel sensitive about.
You should never subject your PA to verbal, psychological or physical abuse or demands.
Sometimes, a PA will need to work with you in an intimate way. This is part of his or her job and you must never mistake this for physical attraction. You must never sexually harass him or her.
Be prepared to stop a conversation or your behavior if your PA asks you to. What you see as humor or harmless banter may be offensive to him or her.
How to avoid crossing the line
- From the beginning, do not plot to make a PA your boyfriend or girlfriend. It can only end up in a disaster.
- Be upfront with PAs who want to cross the line when it comes to sex and drugs. "Just say No!"
- If you choose to drink alcohol or use an illegal drug, wait until the worker has left. If you need help in order to engage in such activities, do not ask a PA; instead, rely on a friend or a willing live-in.
- Do not encourage your PA to participate in illicit or sexual activities.
- Do not engage in sexual activities with your employees. If you do choose to socialize with an employee, do so during non-working hours. Make dates as you would with anyone else. You may discover that your PA's romantic interest in you may fade when he or she is not getting paid to spend time with you.
- The boundaries you first established with an employee will be hard to maintain if you cross the line into intimacy.
List adapted from Avoiding Attendants from Hell: A Practical Guide to Finding, Hiring & Keeping Personal Care Attendants. June Price (1998), Science & Humanities Press. p. 36, Chesterfield, MO
Recognizing fading and blurred boundaries
Signs of unclear boundaries
- Unnecessary physical contact occurs.
- Socializing with a PA outside working hours.
- Assuming too much familiarity; for instance, borrowing money or clothes from each other.
- Extending working hours so that the PA will be around more.
- Disclosing unnecessary personal information.
Vignettes
Consumer:
I thought I was being helpful one day when my PA asked if she could bring her children since her usual sitter was sick. I said yes. Then it began to happen more frequently, and eventually I became their baby sitter so she could run her personal errands. I felt badly about it, but in the end, I had to let her go because my work wasn't getting done and I had other things to do with my time.
PA:
I almost quit being a personal assistant. One employer smoked pot and I suspected he may be doing something else, but I wasn't sure. One day he asked me to go pick up something for him and gave me the money. Later I realized that what I picked up was another kind of dope. After I told him I would not do that again, he started getting surly. I thought he would get over it, but after weeks of being badly treated, I gave notice.
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Intimate Relationships
Your relationships with your PAs are close and complex. Your relationships with friends or family members who also provide services for you (paid or unpaid) can be even more complex. It is important that both kinds of relationships function as smoothly and effectively as possible.
Family and Friends
These close personal relationships bring with them all of the history between you and family or friends. Parents may think they know what is best for you; brothers or sisters may have a special emotional hold on you; friends may feel a change in the role they play in your life. Whether they are paid or not, you will need to work hard to help them understand the need to separate out the work they do for you from the personal bond you share. It may be difficult, but it is worthwhile to develop a working agreement with a family member or friend as you would with any other worker.
Personal Assistant
You do not need to be best friends with your PA. However, you must be able to work together to ensure that you get the best care possible. The intimate nature of your personal care makes it important to keep conflict to a minimum. In addition, it may be difficult for one or both of you to deal with the physical intimacy without getting emotionally involved.
You cannot demand that your PA fall in love with you or perform sexual favors. Your PA is likely to quit, and you would open yourself to charges of sexual harassment. It is often difficult to share so many aspects of your life without trying to share all; that is one of the reasons we stress the need for you to establish and maintain a business-like relationship. If your PA makes unwelcome advances, you must assert yourself to keep the relationship on a business-like level.
Do not allow yourself to be pressured into a degree of intimacy you do not want. Protect yourself from sexual abuse, as well as the charge or threat of sexual abuse, which is a crime. Review the page on Abuse for help with these issues.
There is reason for caution when romance enters the picture. In the worst of circumstances, the PA may be paid but intimate hours replace time needed for essential services. If you decide to move the romantic interludes to non-working hours, both lover and PA may be lost.
If you both fall in love, you need to find another PA. Even in the best of circumstances, eventually you should seek another PA for the benefit of both the support services and the romantic relationship.
Mixing the roles of partner and PA is hard on both relationships. Hiring another PA is not a sign of an unstable romantic relationship. It is the answer to avoiding unnecessary fatigue for the partner.
When due to an accident or illness a person begins to need assistance with certain tasks, often the partner feels able and willing to do the job. For the short-term this might be possible. In the long-term, it is necessary to protect the partner from unnecessary fatigue that can result from being the only PA. It is important to delegate some PA needs to outside help.
- If you meet with your worker as a friend outside of working hours, do not ask the worker to do work related tasks during that social time. Repeated violation of this could cause resentment, spoil the friendship and ultimately the working relationship. You could lose both a friend and a worker.
- Keep romantic interludes outside regular working hours.
- When love blossoms, do not expect your lover to now fulfill all of your care needs. Mutually determine which tasks will avoid unnecessary fatigue for your partner and hire a PA to assist with them.
Consumer:
John was my PA for three years. We became really good friends over that time. When we realized it might be something more, we both were a little scared. When we decided that what we were feeling was real we talked about how we wanted life together to be. Were we ever wrong! He thought he could do everything. He still had to make a living. So, finally we decided to get a personal assistant for me so our life together could be more normal rather than John being primarily a caregiver.
PA:
When Harry had a stroke, we knew it would take a while to recover. But I had been a nurse, so I thought we could handle it. It wasn't long until I felt overworked, tired all the time, chained to the house. I really felt guilty when I caught myself snapping at Harry. Once we got a personal assistant to help with Harry's care twice a day, our life got back to normal, well almost normal. But we are both happier now. It was hard to admit that I am not Wonder Woman.
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When Boundaries Have Been Crossed
How do I cope with the new situation when boundaries are crossed in the employer-personal assistant relationship?
How you cope depends on which boundaries were crossed. It also depends on how crossing the boundaries effect your relationship with your PA. If you regret that you allowed a boundary to be crossed, you can try to restore the relationship. However, in some cases, it may not be possible. You may have to end the relationship to ensure that your needs are met.
You may think of crossing boundaries as sexual relationships or abusive borrowing of money or property. See what happened to John when the professional nature of the employer-worker relationship was chipped away gradually.
From a consumer:
Gary's check was late in arriving from the county office. He asked if I could let him have five dollars to cover bus fare until the check arrived. He was a good worker so it was easy for me to give him the five dollars under the circumstances. He paid me back right away. After a while we started doing seemingly harmless things, like lingering over a cup of coffee and eating together. We found we had a lot in common and became friends. We started borrowing CDs, books, clothes and other things from each other. Then I noticed that some things around the house weren't getting done. Other things weren't being done the way I wanted them done or totally forgotten. When I mentioned it, Gary made an excuse and said he'd take care of it. But things did not improve. Each time I tried to discuss it Gary got annoyed, then angry. He really did not want any discussion or corrective feedback. I guess out of frustration, I started nagging about getting the work done. One day he said if I didn't like the way he did things I could find someone else to do the work. I hated to do it, but in the end, I had to let him go.
To restore boundaries and the work relationship
- Be clear with yourself about why the situation is a problem for you, how you feel about it, what you are doing or not doing that contributes to the problem.
- Deal with the situation immediately.
- Admit to yourself and your worker that you are sorry that you and your worker crossed a boundary and that you have concern that it is interfering or will interfere with the professional work relationship.
- If you crossed the boundary or allowed your worker to cross the boundary, apologize and tell the worker that you made a mistake, in either case.
- Discuss openly, with sensitivity and respect, how you feel and why you are concerned.
- Allow an open discussion about what specific changes each of you can make to restore the relationship.
- If you can agree to the changes and the goal of restoring the relationship, set a date and time to review if it is working.
- Make it clear that you will not allow it to happen again.
- If this does not work and boundaries remain unclear, you will have to end the professional work relationship.
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