Boundaries and Knowing What You Need to Show Up |
The word boundaries gets thrown around a lot in conversations about relationships and mental health. People reflexively think of boundaries as a way to keep others at arm’s length — if not as an excuse to say: “Back off! You're dead to me!”
That version not only fails to foster recognition and connection, but it also fuels conflict and unnecessarily keeps relational scenes between people stuck.
To me, the point of a boundary isn’t to simply push another person away (the end). It’s an intentional choice that invites relational connection.
A boundary is any parameter, limitation, or stabilizing action that we feel we need to be as present and open to possibility with our scene partners in life as we can, without feeling compromised. Our boundaries are ours to name and claim, regardless of whether others understand or validate them.
Far from an excuse to exit a relationship (stage left), boundaries are what allow us to stay in the scene—even when it’s uncomfortable.
This relational view of boundaries is backed up by years of psychological research. Communication privacy management theory (Petronio, 1991), for example, explains that when individuals effectively deploy boundaries related to privacy with other people (friends, family, co-workers, romantic partners), they have the capacity to strengthen trust and intimacy, rather than create rifts.
More recent studies on this theory and relational boundaries consistently show that intentional, self-preserving parameters often enhance communication, mutual respect, and interpersonal satisfaction. (Petronio and Child, 2020).
The first rule of improv........