Having Better Boundaries Can Backfire

Some People Who Like Your Difficulty Saying "No" Might Get Upset If You Set Limits

Many people who know they need to work on their boundaries fail to prioritize doing the hard work required to heal wounded boundaries, largely because they’re afraid of what it will do to the state of their boundaryless relationships. And that’s valid. If you’ve historically let people get away with crossing your boundaries without any fuss, they may not like it if you start holding them accountable for doing so.

Mary Ellen commented on The Clean Way To Avoid Unnecessary Boundary Confusion In Relationships, rightfully pointing out that there can be consequences to establishing better boundaries- which I absolutely want to validate and decided it deserved its own post. Yes, it’s true that there can be backlash from people who feel unhealthily entitled to cross your boundaries without any consequences, especially when people have come to expect you not to protect your boundaries. Sometimes people feel entitled to things they’re not actually entitled to, like:

-Your undivided attention at their beck and call (without your consent and without reciprocity of attention)

-Your money or property or expecting you to always pick up the tab when you don’t wish to do so

-Your constant praise or approval even when someone is behaving badly

-Touching you when you don’t wish to be touched

-Expecting you to help them get ahead in their business or area of passion when it’s not your responsibility to do so

-Your neurotic tolerance of their physically or verbally abusive behavior

-Expecting you to drop everything and rescue them every time they have a crisis (because of their own boundarylessness)

-Feeling entitled to your network and connections

-Thinking what’s yours is theirs and what’s theirs is theirs

-Expecting you not to center or put your attention on anyone but them (and getting outraged if you do)

-Expecting you to accommodate all of their entitled demands and excessive needs, wants, and luxuries, but not being willing to accommodate your needs, wants or requests

-Feeling entitled to unearned privilege and the benefits that come with it even if it means oppressing a marginalized group or stepping on the backs of others to get ahead (without remorse)

-Having a tantrum if you thwart their often unspoken, exploitative, and corrupt agendas

-Having you do far more than your fair share of the labor without paying you a fair wage to do so while they feel entitled to more leisure time

-A sense of entitlement to dual relationships (expecting business favors from a friend, for example, or expecting to have sex with someone who they are in a “power over” role with)

-Feeling entitled to have their boundaries respected while yours are disrespected

If you suddenly start cutting someone on the unhealthy end of the entitlement spectrum off from the things they feel entitled to but are not actually entitled to, they may not like it! Improving your ability to set and enforce clear, fair, firm boundaries may have some backlash in your relationships with people who like having you boundaryless. Lacking good boundaries and not knowing where your own edges are can make you easy to exploit, and some people really enjoy being able to take advantage of you and feel entitled to keep doing so. Not knowing where other people’s edges are can also make some people feel entitled to crashing through the boundaries of others. Then it’s a harsh wake up if they lose that privilege and are suddenly expected to respect your limits.

The sad news is that sometimes this is the only reason people are in relationships- because they are benefitting from your poor boundaries and they hope to keep doing so. If you change the rules on them, especially if someone else is benefitting from the boundarylessness more than you are, they may not be happy about it. And that’s just sad. Because many of the people who indulge unhealthily entitled individuals do so because they’re terrified they’ll wind up alone and abandoned if they don’t accommodate every entitled expectation. And sadly, because they tend to attract entitled people, this turns out to be true. Then their worst fear may come to pass.

But not always. Fortunately, there are healthy people out there who will not abandon you if you decide to start setting limits and cutting people off from what they feel entitled to but aren’t.

[*If you’re interested in a deeper dive in how to say no with an Internal Family Systems-informed approach to boundary setting, I’ll be teaching an interactive online course Becoming Unf*ckwithable, starting June 20.]

The Dangers of Transactional Relationships

Some people just don’t know how to love. They only know how to use people, so they foreclose real love, friendship, and care for mutual exploitation. Everyone is screened and valued for what they can get from that person, so every relationship becomes an often unfair and unequal trade. Transactional relationships often have fuzzy boundaries, with agreements unspoken but implied. For example, in the classic narcissist/ co-dependent pairing, the implied transaction might be “You make me the center of your attention, laugh at my jokes, listen to my stories, and make me feel good about myself, but do not expect to take up space, get my attention in return, receive my help when you’re in trouble, or challenge me if I criticize you.” If someone is working on better boundaries and decides they’re no longer okay with unilaterally centering the other person without reciprocity of attention, the other party might not respond favorably to a change in the terms of the relationship.

Or let’s take the stereotypical Hollywood version of the gold-digger seeking out a wealthy, sometimes older, more established partner, who is attracted to the gold-digger for their youth, beauty, and charisma and trades money for sex or attention. The agreement is not usually made explicit, but the boundaryless transaction is “You give me money and indulge me with luxuries I haven’t earned in exchange for having a gorgeous hot young thing on your arm that makes you look good.” This kind of gold-digger may be quite predatory and drain the resources of the wealthy partner, yet the attachment is often quite weak because it’s transactional, rather than based on love and intimacy. If the wealthy partner loses all their money, becomes disabled, or otherwise fails to keep up their end of the bargain, the gold-digger may abandon their partner lickety-split in search of the next Sugar Daddy or Sugar Mama. Likewise, if the gorgeous young beauty loses his or her looks, the wealthy partner might trade them in for someone even younger.

If someone who is the sole financial provider for someone who is choosing not to work for a living or look after children decides to change the terms of the agreement, asking the gold-digger to get a job and pay half the bills, things might not go so well.

If you’re used to teaching your friends that you’ll drop everything to be at their beck and call and rescue them out of the crises they create from their own boundarylessness- and then you decide you no longer want to be their rescuer- once again, this might not go over so well.

If your mother has spent a lifetime bossing you around to try to control you, and you decide you don’t like being controlled anymore and want to be your own boss, your mother might take your bid for independence personally and rebel against your desire for autonomy. But she doesn’t have the ethical right to control you, even if you’re underage and especially if you’re over 18, living outside the home, and earning your own income.

If it’s not in your contract, but your boss is used to being able to text you 24/7 and expects you to respond, no matter what, and you decide you want to keep business hours, expect some push back.

If your partner is a workaholic and you’ve just had it with being neglected because the almighty dollar or whoever your partner is rescuing with their work or their blind ambition always gets prioritized above you, then yes, you might meet some resistance if you let your partner know you need to be more of a priority- or you’re going to start changing your priorities and putting your devotion elsewhere.

Some boundaryless people often have some identity confusion because of boundary wounding in childhood, so they may craft an identity out of being nice, sweet, obedient, people-pleasing, accommodating, compliant martyrs who sacrifice their own needs, protection, and even safety in order to prove how committed they are to difficult to love people, often in the name of being “good” or “spiritual” people who love unconditionally (when really they’re just tolerating mistreatment without any limits and not loving their own parts unconditionally.) These folks have a hard time protecting their boundaries from others who they let crash right through them.

Other boundaryless people are more likely to crash right through the boundaries of others, obsessing trying to controlling and willing to be ruthless may take advantage of this tendency. If you’ve tended to be the Mr. Nice Guy or Little Miss Sweetheart, others might not like it if you started expecting to be treated better, protecting your boundaries, saying no, calling people out on bad behavior, or failing to accommodate other people’s entitled expectations of you.

It’s Okay If You’re Not Liked By Everyone

Do you want to be liked? Or do you want to be respected? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be liked or trying to be kind to others. But you also deserve to be safe and protected from exploitation, injustice, or relationships without enough reciprocity. The people you might need to set boundaries with don’t have to like your boundaries. They just have to respect them. Yes, it’s important to consider the feelings of those in our inner circle. But sometimes we have to risk not pleasing everyone in order to teach people how to treat us.

Because of our boundary wounding, we might initially agree (even if the agreement is not spoken about) to the terms of a relationship that we later realize are not really fair. It may take us years to even realize the hidden contracts we’ve unwittingly agreed to. But it’s okay to change those terms once we realize the relationship isn’t as satisfying as it could be. These moments in any relationship are watershed moments that quickly reveal the real quality and value (or lack thereof) of the relationship.

Many years ago, I wrote about one of these watershed moments in a blog post How To Renegotiate A Sacred Contract, because those unspoken contracts can be changed and made explicit. It’s alright to change your mind and request changes in the unspoken contracts in your relationships, taking them out of the fuzzy grey zones and making your agreements with the people in your life more explicit and more fair. Some people will not tolerate these attempted renegotiations, because they feel entitled to your boundaryless ways, and if you attempt better boundaries, they’ll either fight you, attack you, criticize you, continue to expect permission to violate your boundaries, or if you refuse to let them, toss you on the trash heap so fast you’ll see road runner flurries of dust under their feet as they ditch you.

That’s when you grieve and prepare to let go, assuming you have the option and you’re not co-parenting with someone you can’t get away from. It hurts when you realize someone only wanted to be in your life as long as they were permitted to cross your boundaries or take advantage of you transactionally. But honestly, you’re better off without those people, no matter how much it hurts to lose those connections.

Healthy people might be initially be taken aback by your attempt to set boundaries if you’ve been boundaryless for most of the relationship. They may not like giving up what you might be asking them to give up, and they may feel disappointed, angry, hurt, scared, or confused. And that’s okay. They’re entitled to their feelings, and it’s okay to sit with them while they express their feelings, assuming they’re not being abusive and as long as they don’t expect that you’ll collapse your boundary just because they’re having a painful feeling.

But ultimately, healthy people will realize that your new boundaries are actually protective of the relationship. Certain kinds of neurotically tolerant people tend to tolerate and tolerate and tolerate- and then, with no warning, they just leave and never look back, which can feel cruel to the ones getting abandoned. The people worth keeping close in your life will get this and validate your need to change the terms of the relationship for the sake of securing the long term safety, protection, consistency, connection, and loyalty we all want with those we choose to relate with.

It’s usually best, when possible, to just let go and grieve the ones that see you as disposable the minute you don’t comply with their agenda. Because you’re worth having safe, healthy, well-boundaried relationships with people who aren’t taking advantage of you and want reciprocity in their relationship with you. You’re worth having others be as nice, kind, and generous with you as you are with them. You’re worth taking turns being centered and centering someone else. You’re worth not being exploited for your money or objectified for your beauty or dehumanized as some sort of transaction.

Although it can feel very scary to consider starting to practice better boundaries, it’s never too late to find out who really cares about you and who is just using you because you’re not protecting your boundaries. The ones who really care about you will adapt to your new boundaries and respect your recovery process. And if you’re lucky, they might even see the value and importance of recovering from boundary wounding and get into treatment alongside you, which can be a deeply healing, intimate, bonding, and even fun process to do with someone else.

As painful as it can be to see who sticks by you during your recovery process and who falls by the wayside, the narrowing down of your inner circle is a process worth getting through, and the rewards are immense. Even if your circle of loved ones shrinks, you’ll discover that the people who stick around are with you for all the right reasons. You may even start to prefer boundary-loving people and find yourself appreciating the boundaries of others, knowing that they will tend to keep relationships safer for the long term, adding a level of health, protection, transparency, reciprocity, and longevity to your relationships. Once others know what’s okay and not okay for you, and once you know what’s okay and not okay for others, it’s much easier to navigate intimacy safely, without enmeshment, and you don’t have to be walking on eggshells, reading each other’s minds, or fumbling around and confused in the darkness of grey zones.

Sure, you might have some nostalgia for your boundaryless ways and how it feels to be around boundaryless people, just like I did recently when I was in Glastonbury for Beltane this week. But once you get hurt enough, you’ll be willing to give up the parts you like in order to feel safer, more secure, and more deeply intimate with others- without enmeshment. And I suspect you’ll figure this out for yourself and agree that it’s worth the sacrifice. If not, you can always go back to being boundaryless!

If you know anyone who might be interested in recovery from boundary wounding, feel free to invite them to subscribe here with you. Or you might even start a small group gathering to discuss these issues together, start practicing your boundary scripts out loud, and trouble shoot what comes up as your boundaries get stronger.

*For a deeper dive in how to say no with an Internal Family Systems-informed approach to boundary setting, join us starting June 20 for an interactive online course Becoming Unf*ckwithable. The course will be recorded, so if you can’t make it live, you can always watch the recordings. I’ll also be diving deeper into this material with our paid subscribers here.

*The photo is Hippocrates’ temple of Asklepion in Kos, Greece, where I just joined 300 German doctors renewing their Hippocratic Oaths.