The Boundary of the Self Is Drawn in Esteem

I have struggled with boundary issues my entire life.

In my 20s and 30s, I found myself in friendships with people who left me drained and with whom I didn’t feel a kindred connection. With them, friendship meant sacrificing my needs to satisfy theirs.

Initially, I felt energized by these friendships. Still, after a while, I realized I was enervated by them and stuck without knowing how to extricate myself from them.

That made me resentful and uncomfortably aware that, without my participation, I would not have been in the situation I so often seemed to find myself in.

There was the friendship with Clara (names changed to protect the BOUNDARIES of those who also suffered from poor boundaries), who, despite having a girlfriend, treated me like I was her girlfriend with the requisite obligations to attend to her every need.

Her expectations included that I miss work and grant deadlines to nurse her back to health when she got sick (conveniently, for her, she got sick all the time).

There was Stella, who consistently interrupted my work day by popping by unannounced or calling midday to “catch up” or ask what I was doing.

When you’re a writer who works from home, many people presume that a non-office job means you have flexible time.

People invite me to hang out midday and even stop by unannounced during the workday. You’d think after two years of a pandemic that found so many of us working from home would have resolved this fantastical idea that writers hang out at all hours of the day, shopping online or cleaning out our closets.

Even after 20-plus years of writing, I’ve been unable to adequately communicate to people that random interruptions disrupt my focus and rhythm and that it's practically impossible to reclaim—this is still a boundary I struggle to set.

The point is, I’ve been there and continue, in some regards, to be there. People in my life still push back when I draw a boundary. Which means they also have boundary issues.

I've known many people (I've been one of them!) who claim they want to get married only to remain in long-term relationships with people who have made it clear, explicitly or otherwise, that they are not marriage-minded.

We can claim to want something and remain connected to someone who does not share that desire. A person who truly wants a commitment would not continue to be with someone who does not. If you wanted to stop working insane hours to slow down and move to the country to tend to a vegetable garden, would you take a job that required you to be on call all the time?

Not if you truly wanted to slow down.

And so, when one person has a continuing boundary issue with a friend, it’s most likely because one person struggles with setting them and the other struggles with accepting them.

Why is it that some people can’t set firm boundaries while others cannot accept them? What ARE boundaries, and why do so many people not have them?

For the answer, let’s turn to the foremost expert on boundaries…

My most profound insights don't go in the free version—they're distilled from my 27 years in therapy, decades of independent study, and work as a mental health advocate. These deeper dives are reserved for readers committed to going deeper.

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