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Boundaries and How to Set Them

 

How do you define having personal boundaries? What is a boundary?



Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Boundaries are essentially your rules of engagement in your relationships. They are the bottom line treatment that you expect the other person to adhere to and they have what you’re prepared to do should they violate those boundaries. If something is your bottom line you may give one warning if that boundary is violated but, you are prepared that should that boundary be violated again you are done with the relationship and no amount of apologies will get you to change your mind.

They are literally the outline for the way you are to be treated so you don’t want your boundaries to be so weak that you hate the way you are being treated, yet you stay in the relationship. If the person makes you feel like crap, you are confident and you are going to stick up for yourself by removing that person out of your life unconditionally.

Boundaries are not deceptive and if they are then either your communication is not great with your new partner or they are utilizing boundaries as a method of manipulation and control. They should be clearly articulated and stuck to hell or high water or else people will not respect them and they will continue to walk all over you until you decide enough is enough.

EXAMPLES

Boundaries are your hard bottom lines. Healthy people have nice strong boundaries that they won’t allow to be eroded. Below is a list of health and unhealthy boundaries and for each point in healthy boundaries there is a converse example in the unhealthy boundaries which is directly related to the healthy boundary of the same number.

Healthy Boundaries

  1. A healthy person won’t overshare or go into details about their personal life until a solid and trusting relationships is established with the person they are with.
  2. A health boundary would be meeting your date at the restaurant and sitting with them for a few hours then saying goodbye possibly with a kiss at the end of the date.
  3. A healthy Boundary would be to not allow your mate to stay the night until a couple of weeks goes by.
  4. A healthy Boundary would be that you will never put up with physical abuse and if it happened you would breakup with the person and never look back.
  5. A healthy Boundary would be to solid and certain about the level of privacy you’re willing to give up to your new mate and when. You might decide that they can use your phone after being together for several months knowing that they will have access to it to do whatever they want. They could snoop through your texts, emails, or put spyware on your phone so you won’t let them use it until you’ve been with them for 6 months and then it’s always supervised.
  6. A healthy boundary would be they can use your phone as long as they ask and as long as they stay in the same room as you.

Unhealthy Boundaries

  1. An unhealthy person will spill it all out right away and will be clueless that telling someone your deepest darkest problems are not acceptable to dump onto the other person. They just figure they are open books and that is a good thing and they don’t consider that the other person may not want to hear it
  2. An Unhealthy Boundary would be meeting your date at the restaurant and then going to their place afterwards to have sex. Personal intimacy gets rushed and opens the door for all kinds of problems.
  3. An unhealthy boundary would be that the person comes over every single night and stays the night from date night one forwards.
  4. An unhealthy boundary would be to take physical abuse and keep giving chances.
  5. An unhealthy boundary would be to allow your new mate full access to your phone
  6. An unhealthy boundary would be to allow them to break your rules about your phone with no consequence signaling that you are a pushover.
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