On boundaries

Ironically on the surface, but fittingly upon reflection, the reason I've devoted so much ink, of late, to harping on the serial boundary-impingers in my past is that I'm really ready to make less use of my overfed sense of boundaries. Boundaries are like mistrust: they are often necessary, but they're not the best lens for every relationship. Just as trust--something that has to be earned--is a healthy basis for healthy relationships (once you decide to trust someone, you needn't, shouldn't verify; if you can't trust him, you don't let him into your life, at least not in a capacity where trust matters), you shouldn't have to assert boundaries in a healthy relationship. In a healthy relationship, you're on the same team; when you're on the same team, you don't need to constantly assert, "you will not cross this line," because the lines are shared. Your teammate decides to engage (or refrain from engaging) in a given behavior that affects you based on how that behavior makes you feel, because you're in this together and that person wants you to be happy.


No matter how much someone may love you (mom) or have feelings for you (others), they're not on your team if their behavior toward you is based on or aimed to test how much they can get away with, how much you'll put up with until smacking them down or leaving. I invoke mom here to make it clear that sometimes you can't (or shouldn't, necessarily) keep those people out of your life; they can also be coworkers or in-laws. We have to deal with those people, and that's where boundaries come in: when those people cross lines, we refortify and reassert those lines. But that's not what you want to do in a loving, healthy relationship. Healthy relationships are more win-win than 'ha, ha--I won that one.' There are compromises to be had, of course, but they're approached from the lens of what's best for us, not how can I get the most out of this at the expense of the other.

The thing is, just as when you've been burned too many times by trusting (and sometimes, being burned is a reasonable price to pay for choosing to trust) and you start looking at others through a lens of mistrust, you can, if you're not careful, overuse your boundaries lens if you've been relying on it a lot. So I'm ready to give my boundaries lens a rest and deal with people who want to be on the same team.