Everyone is discussing ‘boundaries’ at the moment. People want to know what healthy boundaries are and how to enforce personal boundaries without offending others. When we hear the word boundaries, we may immediately think of boundaries in marriage, boundaries in dating, and our family boundaries. However, boundaries are all-encompassing, and they can be found everywhere in life. They’re vital for healthy relationships and ensuring our needs are met, but they can cause conflict.
Developing, identifying, and communicating my boundaries has been a lifelong journey and powerfully transformational. It has helped me define who I am and consequently allowed me to share myself authentically with others. I’ll be sharing personal reflections on boundaries that have helped me, hoping they may resolve some questions and challenges arising in our culture regarding boundaries.
Let’s start with a question: Do we have the right to set our boundaries? The obvious answer seems to be, “Of course we do!” We should be the only ones to decide what is and isn’t okay for our sovereign domain. We set our limits, and others should accept that. We’ll delve into what other people aren’t responsible for later on.
It’s a provocative question because people seem to have many opinions about other people’s boundaries. Sometimes people are not okay with the boundaries that others have set. Some examples that come to mind right now include:
Vaccinations. Some people don’t want something inserted into their bodies.
Restrictions on time can prevent connection.
Using boundaries to get out of doing chores and commitments.
There are many frustrating moments with people demanding specific conditions for relationships, which they label as boundaries. Later, I’ll talk about how there might be confusion happening.
Some people reject boundaries and say they are tired of them. They say boundaries are anti-community, anti-collaboration, and self-centered. It poses an interesting question about what it means to be anti-community. It makes sense that prioritizing your own space over the community could be seen as a conflict. Boundaries, and discussions about them, are at the heart of most conflict. People have issues with other people’s needs because they interfere with their boundaries. Conflict is about negotiating that line between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be a negotiation, so communicating our boundaries and taking responsibility for that process.
Some challenges arise with boundaries. Sometimes they can be used for division or be anti-collaborative. Another mistake is creating the expectation that others are supposed to be doing things. There can also be boundary competition, leading to confusion about whose boundaries are more important, which isn’t the right question. There is a general confusion about what boundaries are and aren’t. Another challenge is understanding who is responsible for preserving, meeting, respecting, and creating boundaries.
I’ll share several ways to clarify and address some of these challenges.
I received a piece of advice from a young woman I met in 2017. She said to the group of people and me there: “You cannot pre-negotiate your boundaries.” You cannot expect someone to know your boundaries until you’ve spoken about it. You can’t hold it against them. Of course, we have some cultural boundaries, expectations, and fair assumptions about what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior, so you might call on those. Nonetheless, until you’ve told someone what works for you, they don’t know. We need to find effective ways of communicating our boundaries.
Two big concepts are helpful for these problems. Boundaries are not only a point of division, but they’re also an intersection point. There is an opportunity to maximize the nuance of a boundary, taking forward the best of what both people want to create precise clarity about what people don’t want or aren’t willing to give.
I imagine boundaries as a three-layer bubble or force field, with a particular hierarchy:
● The innermost layer is my no-zone, my limit. The place that is only for me, and no one can cross those lines. That is the part that I have a right to.
● The middle layer is my needs. I can understand and ask for my needs, but no one else is responsible for meeting my needs; that’s my responsibility.
● The outer layer is desire: The things that would make my life my best life.
The limit is my sovereign space. Often, when we reflect on boundaries, this is what we’re thinking of. A place where someone says no, you cannot cross here, like a border. Many boundaries involve our bodies: consent, touch, food and medicine. Everyone has the right to define where their boundaries are and change them in different contexts.
The needs layer is where the most challenging conflicts arise. In the conflict resolution field, needs are distinct from strategies and demands. Needs are universal and inviolable, but they’re often confused with strategy. Strategy is a method to get a need met. If you need silence, you may say, “I need you to be quiet”, which is a strategy to get your need for silence met.
Some of our needs can be special, and we may come with precise ways of getting those needs met. Having a need is not a demand on anyone else. If you have a need, you’re responsible for communicating it and making sure it gets met.
It’s vital to communicate what you really need, as the other person needs an opportunity to say no. This is where that problem of ‘outlandish’ boundaries or expectations comes into play. What happens if we talk and find out someone is unwilling to meet our boundaries in a relationship? What if our needs run up against someone else’s limits?
This is where the clash happens. It might be a deal-breaker, but it’s worth being specific here; it’s only a deal-breaker for that particular need and limit because there are other options. Sometimes people’s needs might run into each other. Someone may require quiet, but another wants music. You must communicate this; however, you can’t expect someone to change their world for you.
It may not seem like desire is a boundary, and in certain ways, it’s not. Thinking about the boundaries force field, we might call it our aspirational bubble, reaching out the farthest. We need to communicate how far that reaches out. This provides the opportunity for someone to say, “I’m never going to do that; that’s not something I can do for you.” When we speak about our desires and aspirational space taking, we learn where other people’s boundaries are.
An immense amount of knowledge and intimacy can come from speaking about what you need. We are negotiating the edge between self and other, and this is the ultimate conflict. How do I weigh my autonomy, sovereignty, and agency against the desire to be in a relationship where I may not have total control of all those things? When we think about negotiating or communicating boundaries, we’re talking about the mutual description of that line; how we draw it and its quality. It’s an opportunity for people and their relationship to grow. The absence of that powerfully intimate conversation can lead to disaster, and there’s a huge risk when we don’t communicate.
An absence of boundaries is unfair and unsafe for everyone involved. I was in a relationship with someone who had very clear boundaries, whereas I did not. She desired and needed many things that I was willing to provide. I was happy to change things for her. Eventually, I realized that I had given up things I didn’t want to give up, and I had offered to do things I wasn’t willing to do. Had I been aware of that and able to communicate those boundaries, we could have avoided mutual pain: My pain from having my boundaries crossed and her pain from crossing someone’s boundaries when she never wanted to. I eventually realized there were things I wanted that she was never willing to give.
Conflict is an opportunity to thrive because it shows us what we really care about. It gives us direct access to what’s right at the center of people’s hearts, especially in that dance of boundaries. Part of why it’s so intimate is because it’s deliciously nuanced. Numerous things make up our boundaries, desires, and needs. Mixing and matching in a certain way can be delightful. There’s a lot of nuance in negotiation.
It’s essential to recognize that boundaries are valuable for building trust. When people mutually understand the extent of their relationship, they can settle into it more. We consider someone who respects boundaries and is clear about their own to be trustworthy. We already know about respecting someone else’s limits, but we can also show respect through honest communication. Often, we must face whether we can be in a relationship with someone if our boundaries seem irreconcilable. Sometimes, we need to give things up to be together.
If we are explicit in communicating the boundaries process, we can share in that experience of giving and receiving. There’s an ongoing opportunity to check in when we recognize how we share and experience space. It helps us shift our attention between each other.
We can reduce all conflicts to a single sentence: I have a great idea, but to make it happen, I have to work with others who have their own ideas; therefore, we must communicate and negotiate our boundaries, needs, and desires. We have the right to set boundaries, but we do not have the right to expect others to meet our needs: that is our responsibility alone.
The dance between self and other is at the heart of conflict, and it creates infinite, unbreakable tension.
I am Duncan Autrey, a conflict transformation facilitator and educator.
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I love this Duncan really great breakdown on the dynamic of boundaries in multiple settings.
I love this Duncan really great breakdown on the dynamic of boundaries in multiple settings.