The Connection Between Love and Boundaries Is Often Misunderstood

—

The connection between boundaries and love is often misunderstood.

Setting boundaries is perceived to be an act of pushing away, of putting distance between you and the other. But a boundary in its most sacred form is simply delineating between what happens within a certain space & what does not. In this sense, creating boundaries is a drawing in rather than a pushing away.

Setting boundaries is as much about what you are saying “yes” to as it is about what you are saying “no” to. It is actually generous to reveal your boundaries, and a deep act of vulnerability to ask for what you need.

Personally, I love boundaries!

Partly because I love them, and partly because I work with so many people who struggle with them, I wanted to clear up this misunderstanding of what boundaries are.

Often, people who have an aversion to boundary setting or receiving, view it as an act of separation, in opposition to love.

But the act of setting or holding a boundary is not correlated to having an open heart, or a closed heart, or anything about how much one person loves another.

I have set boundaries and have had boundaries set with me with a wide open heart, where the space between us is deeply receptive while there is a boundary being set. I’ve also had the experience of somebody not setting a boundary and being disconnected and closed in relationship to me.

Of course, our boundaries—like all communication—will be received better if set with an open heart, especially if they are with people who we love and want connection and intimacy with, but whether we have an open or closed heart is irrelevant to whether we are setting a boundary are not. So, let’s set that piece aside for now, and just talk about the connection between boundaries and love.

When I work with my clients, I often hear things like:

“But we love each other so I guess I need to learn to be OK with (insert behavior they are totally not OK with) or “I’m not getting what I want, so I’m out of here.”

Neither of those is what I could call setting a loving boundary.

Begin by Slowing Down

Many of us have never taken enough time to truly know & feel what we do & don’t want – in our lives & in our relationships. To become more intimate with our own needs & desires requires slowing things down.

I remember when my son was young, he used to say “no” to everything first. You could say:

“Hey Trent, would you like some ice cream?”

And he’d say, “No! . . . I mean yes.”

By saying no first, he was slowing things down. Some part of him needed to set his boundary first and then he could take the step forward and say yes. He was discovering more of who he was in the process.

If you are new to saying “no,” or setting boundaries, sometimes a good first step is to assume “no” first. By saying “no,” or “not right now” or “I need to think about that and get back to you,” you slow the interaction down enough to be able to tell whether you are truly a “yes” or a “no.”

It’s an enormous act of self-love to set a boundary. Not only can I love who I know myself to be by setting the boundary, but I also discover more of who I am, as I go.

Setting boundaries is an act of love for the other.

I believe it’s not just an act of self-love to set a boundary, but an act of love for the other as well. There are a few reasons why I believe this.

First, it honors the other person as a whole being.

If I am willing to set a boundary with you, I believe you can receive it, and I trust you enough to speak it in the first place. If I don’t want to be close to somebody, I will just distance myself.

Setting a boundary requires that I step in closer. If I am setting a boundary with someone, it means I’m engaging in the relationship.

It is also an act of love and generosity to not withhold parts of ourselves from them.

Both the things we are not OK with, and those things we desire in the relationship.

Secondly, when my children are acting out—and this happens with adults all the time too!—they sometimes get spun out and lose their minds a little bit.

They’ll say things they don’t mean, or kick and scream.”  Something I say to my kids when this happens is, “I love you too much to let you act like that” because I know they don’t want to hurt me, or each other, and they don’t want to break anything. At that moment, they are having strong feelings that overcome their ability to make good decisions about how to behave.

Setting a boundary with them at that moment is an act of love. It’s setting a container. It says, “This is what happens inside this space, and this is what doesn’t happen inside this space.”

Self-Centered vs Healthy Boundary-Setting

There are self-centered ways to set boundaries, which is more along the lines of:

“I’m not getting what I want so I’m out of here” or “I deserve better than this.”

Then there are healthy ways. An example of this is:

“In order to____, I would need____.”

As in, “In order to continue talking about this with you right now, I would need you to stop stomping around the house.”

I love this format because it takes radical self-responsibility while also asking for what you need. It’s saying, “Even if I’m the only person in the world who needs this, that is what I need.”

It does not say, “You are a bad person, and if you really loved me, you would already know this!”

It is a radical act of love for the other person because it does not assume the other person is behaving in this way on purpose to aggravate you.

So many of us assume if the other person isn’t doing the thing we want or need, then they must not want to, aren’t willing to, or won’t, but often we’ve just never asked.

It’s important in relation to giving the other person all the information they need to make their own choices.

It’s vulnerable because it acknowledges that we actually do have needs.

Most humans have a desire to be self-reliant. We tend to be afraid of needing anything from other people. And there is also a more new-age belief that we ‘should’ be able to ‘be ok’ with any behavior from other people & simply ‘rise above it’ or ‘not take it personally’

Frankly, I don’t believe that’s true. We DO need other people, and we DO have limits.

This format also takes out the judgment of whether that other person wants it, or anybody else wants it, and it honors that I want this: that it is true for me.

I believe creating boundaries is sacred work.

—

This post was originally published on KendraCunov.com and is republished here with permission from the author.

—

What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.

◊♦◊

Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.

If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.

Register New Account

Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.

—
Photo credit: Getty Image
—
[Erase this and the checklist below after you have checked it!]

1. Paste the story into the TEXT tab.
2. In the Publish box at the top right, advance the date one year. Hit SAVE DRAFT.
3. Enter your title. Use a brand-trigger word! The title should be unique to your post, not generic. It should let the reader have a good idea of what they’ll read. Do not use click bait. We use AP style.
4. Enter your subtitle or DEK. This is written in 3rd person with sentence case. Click save draft.
5. Copy your DEK and paste it into the snippet (in the Yoast box) and into the excerpt.
6. Format your post if the formatting did not paste correctly. After adding paragraphs while in the TEXT tab, hit SAVE DRAFT again. Go to the Visual tab to do the rest of the formatting.
7. When you add a post to the Text tab, the hyperlinks to not transfer so you’ll need to add them back manually. Do this in the Visual tab. Save Draft.
8. When you are finished with the body of your post and have saved, add the photo before you enter the Call to Action.
   1. There is a training video for photos.
   2. When you add the photo to Yoast, Facebook image must be edited to 520 x 310.
9. If you are not the author of the post, go to the author box and select the name of the author IF the author was previously published on GMP. If not, you will need to add a new user. There is a training video for adding a new user.
10. In the Categories box, unselect “uncategorized” under the “All Categories” tab. Switch to the “Most Used” tab and select “Featured” and the next best match for your post.
11. Edit the permalink: Click on edit; Click in the permalink and remove unnecessary words such a to, the, a, an, etc..Bring your cursor to the END of the permalink and add a dash ( – ) and then add the slug that Lisa Hickey gave you when she sent you your editor agreement. This is important; it is the only way to track pageviews and eventually get paid for them! Click on OK and the SAVE DRAFT.