Before you set another “boundary,” 🙄 I want to pause and ask whether you actually have one.
Here’s the misconception. A boundary is not something another person can cross. It is a commitment you have made to yourself, communicated clearly enough that the people in your life know ahead of time what you will do. If you have not done that work, you do not have a boundary. You have an unspoken expectation, and you are setting people up to fail it.
And this costs you more than you think. When you are walking around upset with people for violating expectations you never communicated, not only do you have to live in the upset, you come across as controlling and unsafe. The people in your life start managing around your moods without knowing what they are managing, and they like you less for it. Say the same thing out loud, from a caring commitment to making the relationship work better, and most people appreciate the candor and respect you more for it.
Most of what gets called a “boundary” is a demand wearing a therapy badge. “I have a boundary that you don’t text me after 9pm” is not a boundary. It is a request (a valid one, at that). Whether the other person honors it is their behavior, not yours. The boundary version: “I will not respond to work related messages after 8pm.” One asks you to change. The other tells you what I will do.
Take this common misuse. “I have a boundary that you don’t interrupt me” is not a boundary. You cannot control whether another adult interrupts. You can only control what you do when they do. The actual boundary: “If we start talking over each other, I am going to stop and wait until you are finished, then pick up where I left off.” Now you have something you can keep. Now the other person knows what to expect from you. When the moment comes and you do stop and wait, you are not punishing them. You are doing what you said you would do.
The same pattern is everywhere. Declining the invitation you would normally accept out of guilt. Leaving the dinner at 9pm because you said you would. Changing the subject when your mother starts in about your parenting. Each is a thing you do. The other person’s behavior was never the boundary; it was the expectation.
It helps here to draw four distinctions that get blurred any time someone uses “boundary” to mean something else. Values are what matters to you. Standards are the conduct you hold yourself to. Expectations are what you anticipate from others. Boundaries are what you will do in response to specific things. Almost everything called a “boundary” today is one of the other three, in costume.
Here is where most people stop. Knowing you need to do this thinking and knowing you need to communicate it are different activities from actually doing them. The first is private and time-intensive, and requires real mental efforting. The second is public and costs something. You do not have a boundary until you have said it out loud. Until then, you have a resentment in the making.
There is a leadership version of this practice a coach gave me earlier in my career. I was clear about what I was out to accomplish and clear about who I was as a leader, and I was also coming in hot with most of my direct reports. He had me write a kind of user manual for myself. Not a list of demands. A clear articulation of how I work best, what predictably gets a sharp reaction from me, what someone working with me could count on me for at my best, and what to expect when I was stretched thin. Then he had me ask each of my direct reports to write theirs.
What changed was not that we stopped having edges. What changed was that the surprise went out of the relationship. We had told each other what we would do. The friction that used to feel personal now felt logistical. The conversations that used to require fifteen minutes of recovery now took three. We had given each other something to work with.
Sit down and write yours. Be honest about what you actually do, not what would sound good. When you take feedback well and when you do not. When you are at your best and when you are stretched. What you say yes to and what you say no to. What people can count on you for. Then communicate it, and ask them to write theirs back.
The quality of your life is largely the quality of your relationships, and the quality of your relationships is largely the quality of what the people in them can count on. This work gives you something most people are walking around without: relationships where both people know what they are getting. Decisions that felt impossible become obvious. Conversations that cost a week cost an afternoon. You stop carrying low-grade resentment toward people who were never told what you needed.
If you know someone whose “boundaries” are mostly unspoken expectations stacking up into resentment, forward this to them. It might save them a relationship.
