Boundaries are a perpetually hot topic. In this post, I’d love to share what I’ve learned about the topic over the past few years, if I may.
A boundary is a flexible, invisible line around you that marks off what you are responsible for (that’s inside your boundary) and what you are not responsible for (that’s outside your boundary). You are responsible for your own actions, efforts, self-care, mood management, etc. Other people are responsible for the same in their own lives. Boundaries = gevurah, which balances out chesed.
When boundaries are weak, relationships suffer. You feel responsible for other people’s lives, or other people feel responsible for yours. Boundary problems can run the gamut from feeling guilty about saying no to enmeshment where you live completely on someone else’s terms. But if you have strong and flexible boundaries, you can consciously choose what to allow inside of your boundaries, which actually means you can be there for other people in more helpful and meaningful ways than if your boundaries were riddled with holes. Knowing that you have the right to decide what comes inside can help you feel safe letting more inside because you don’t have to worry about getting completely overwhelmed.
It’s not all or nothing, of course. In different relationships, maintaining boundaries are easier or harder. It’s hard to get this perfect but the more in tune you are with how safe you feel being who you are, saying what you need to say, and establishing limits with different people, the more easily you’ll be able to recognize when boundaries are an issue with someone.
Boundaries are a really hard thing for a lot of us because so many families struggle with poor boundary-setting. A lot of us grew up feeling responsible for other people’s moods or actions and doing whatever it took to keep them happy. Some of us were outright held responsible for problems we didn’t cause. Communication, which is a crucial component of boundary maintenance, wasn’t modeled; we became used to picking up nonverbal cues and acting on them in order to maintain a certain environment, instead of engaging in open dialogue with family members. This possibly spilled over into how we dealt with our friendships, causing us to try to mind read or hope they could read our minds, too (unless we had friends who insisted on establishing boundaries). Also, as we became adults, we didn’t always get the freedom and privacy we were naturally entitled to.
And then shidduchim appeared on the scene: people telling you what you should want, who you should date, what you should wear, who you need to talk to. People not respecting your time or privacy, pulling you aside at a kiddush, stopping you in the grocery store, calling you when you’re on your way into work. The message is “You need to accommodate this. We have your best interests in mind [often, they do] so you’re going to let us into this most intimate part of your life, on our terms.”
Here’s where boundary work comes in. It’s really hard because setting limits is scary (Who do I think I am? What if they’ll be mad at me? What if they know better?). But if you really listen to yourself and pay attention to your gut reactions, you’ll know when someone is overstepping a boundary — or when you’re violating your own boundaries in an effort to please others — and that the harm outweighs the potential benefit. It feels stressful, anxiety-provoking, and low-grade infuriating when someone crosses a line. And as much as it would be great if other people would stop overstepping, it’s up to you to enforce and reinforce those boundaries. Hence the post I wrote a couple weeks ago about knowing that you have the right to say no. Learning to say no doesn’t happen overnight. But it does get easier with a lot of practice. You can practice in your journal, by writing out your no to everyone who needs one from you. This will help you do it in real life. And when you do say no to something that doesn’t work for you, it is so empowering.
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to share any thoughts or questions.
