Though boundaries usually help us keep healthy and happy relationships, we sometimes don’t put boundaries in place due to fear of upsetting the other person and losing the relationship. Unfortunately, a long-term lack of boundaries can be the very thing that leads to losing the relationship anyways.
How do lack of boundaries negatively impact your relationship? Let me explain. Most of us avoid saying no, upsetting the status quo, or making those around us uncomfortable, in a failed effort to preserve the relationship. We don’t tell our family that we don’t want to come to dinner this Sunday because we always go. If we didn’t go to dinner, we believe they would be upset. We don’t tell our friend that yelling during a disagreement hurt our feelings because we don’t want to make him feel he has to walk on eggshells around us. These all seem like reasonable small concessions, no big deal, when it means keeping our relationships comfortable, right? Unfortunately, this does not work, at least not for the long-term.
The problem is that most of these concessions are not just on occasion. Most of these issues happen over the course of years and compound on each other until we don’t feel the same towards those in our life. Most of the time we start to have resentment towards these people and the relationship that we worked so hard to preserve starts to feel like a burden. It’s very draining to never be able to miss a Sunday dinner or to never let your friend know he hurt you.
If you’re saying to yourself right now “but I love my insert person here,” my answer is “of course you do.” You would never work so hard to minimize your own needs and feelings if you did not love them. But love with resentment is a recipe for bitterness and, at its worst, the end of the relationship. Many people sit in my office contemplating ending their marriage because they feel taken for granted. Adult children tell me how challenging their relationship is with their parent and how they dream about having less contact with them. Friends debate ghosting each other after years of friendship. People think that if the other person doesn’t change, ending the relationship is the only option.
However, when we sit down to explore these relationships and why they end, most of the time it becomes apparent that the client has not considered their own ability to set boundaries and begin to protect their own energy, ultimately changing the relationship. You may not believe that you can share your feelings or have better boundaries to protect yourself, but you can. Occasionally, we find that this revelation is made too late to recover the relationship. However, more often than not, a decision to implement healthier boundaries is the beginning of a new understanding of our role in relationships and what choices we actually do or do not have.
Confused on what boundaries are? See my last blog to learn more! Want to know more about how to set boundaries? Read my next blog.
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