How to set and hold healthy boundaries for healthy relationships.

Key points

• Healthy boundaries are essential for healthy relationships.
• Boundaries are about your own behavior, not about controlling or punishing anyone else.
• Boundaries make it safe to be vulnerable and connected with others.

Good Boundaries, Great Relationships

With Mel Robbins' new book, The Let Them Theory - and the poem by Cassie Phillips that inspired it - getting a lot of attention lately, lots of people are talking about boundaries.

As couple and relationship therapists, boundaries are one of the most important parts of our work. Why are we so focused on boundaries, as therapists who want to help people be closer and more intimate with one another? Because healthy boundaries are the core foundation of any healthy relationship.

First, let's review what boundaries are (and what they are not). Imagine that you have a bubble of personal space around you. A boundary is a decision you make about what you let inside of the bubble. For example, you might want to let people inside the bubble if they bring you joy, if you care about their well-being, or if you're collaborating on something meaningful together. You might want to not let someone inside the bubble if they demand more from you than they are willing to offer, or if they mistreat you. We can have lots of bubbles of different sizes for different aspects of our lives.

Importantly, upholding these boundaries is all about what you do, not what others do. You can't force someone to behave differently within your bubble; their behavior is not within your control. So what do you do if someone violates your boundary? You can shrink or move your bubble away from them by changing your own behavior: For example, you might invest less emotionally in the relationship, physically leave the situation, share less information about yourself, be less open and vulnerable, or even cut off the relationship entirely.

Weak Boundaries Weaken Relationships

When we struggle to set and hold healthy boundaries, our personal bubbles will inevitably get invaded. We will allow people to take more from us than they provide to us, and we will give more in relationships than we receive. This imbalance leads to resentment and frustration, and over time, this will erode the connection that maintains that relationship.

Often, our first instinct when we feel our boundaries crossed is to try to control other people's behavior because we are trying to keep ourselves psychologically safe (and maintain the relationship in the way we want it to exist). So having weak or ineffective boundaries often leads us to engage in behaviors that are not consistent with our values, such as being angry and argumentative with loved ones, trying to micromanage our partners, and being judgmental about other people's personal choices.

Strong Boundaries Let Relationships Flourish

Healthy relationships require a foundation of mutual respect, and this includes respecting other people's right to make their own decisions—even if we don't like, agree with, or tolerate their choices. So how do we let other people make their own choices without letting them harm us or violate our personal space? We set and hold strong boundaries.

Boundaries certainly protect our own individual well-being, but they also protect and nourish our relationships with others. Upholding our boundaries allows us to build trust in ourselves so that we can keep ourselves safe, regardless of what other people say or do. And this sense of safety, in turn, allows us to take the risk of being vulnerable in connection with others. And vulnerability is the key ingredient to being open, authentic, and intimate with the people we care most about.

Boundary Mistakes to Avoid

People tend to make one of several mistakes when learning how to set and hold good boundaries.

• We focus on trying to convince other people to respect our boundary, rather than focusing on our own behavior. The way that others respond to boundaries you set is not within your control. One of the hardest parts of holding good boundaries is accepting the fact that other people might feel upset, hurt, or angry about your boundaries—and you have to respect them enough to let them feel that way.
• We convince ourselves that allowing someone to repeatedly violate our boundaries is being kind, compassionate, or loving. Sometimes it feels easy to give people second, third, fourth, and more chances, even after they've shown us through their behavior that they aren't willing to respect our boundaries. Allowing someone to harm you isn't kindness, and protecting someone from the natural consequences of their own choices isn't compassionate. Creating more distance between your heart and someone's hurtful behavior is sometimes precisely the consequence the other person needs to experience in order to learn and grow into a more emotionally responsible human.
• We use boundaries as a punishment. Boundaries are unequivocally not a way to punish other people. In fact, punishment is by definition an attempt to change someone else's behavior, and remember that boundaries cannot be used to change other people. Holding a strong boundary in a healthy way involves respecting others' autonomy and treating them with kindness, not lashing out with anger or passive-aggressive attacks.
• We fall into a trap of attempting to set rigid, broad boundaries in order to avoid any kind of emotional pain. Relationships will always involve some amount of emotional pain because we're all human, and the people closest to us can often hurt us the most. Being in connection with others necessarily involves risking hurt feelings, rejection, betrayal, and many other sources of pain. The only way to avoid this kind of pain is to avoid any kind of connection with others at all, and that can look like setting overly rigid, overly distant, unhealthy boundaries to keep others away. But healthy boundaries don't prevent us from experiencing pain; instead, what they do is help us take care of ourselves enough to know that we can survive the pain. Healthy boundaries give us the strength and resilience to be able to take the risk of being in connection with other people.