The Difference Between Healthy Intimacy and Unhealthy Enmeshment

Before we talk about the specific ways boundaryless people tend to pair up, let’s make a distinction between healthy intimacy and unhealthy enmeshment. Healthy intimacy depends upon clear, loving boundaries that separate one individual from another. To be healthy in your closeness, you need to be a separate, individuated autonomous being- and so does the other person. Enmeshment, on the other hand, happens when two peoples’ boundaries are too porous and they cannot maintain their individuation, autonomy, agency, personal will, emotional and bodily protection, financial independence, psychic privacy, and sense of self in the presence of another individual. 

When two people both have good boundaries, it’s easy to get close to each other without getting all tangled up in each other’s shoelaces. But if there’s not enough separation and individuation between you, if you’re fused and enmeshed rather than genuinely intimate, then one person tends to control too much of the other person’s life (often in the name of “helping” or “caregiving.”) Over time, that person who is being controlled will tend to either passive-aggressively rebel or just give up in passive resignation and 100% submit, in which case, the domination is complete.

Without good boundaries, it's almost like one person gets swept into another person's energy field with magnetic (and sometimes ecstatic) force. And it can happen both ways, a mutual magnetism that becomes a kind of vortex. The vortex may feel very good at first, as if the sense of being lonely and separate dissolves and you fuse into one boundaryless being, which can be feel very yummy, blissful, and erotic. People might even spiritualize this feeling and interpret it as “we are One” or someone is your “twin flame” or that you’ve known someone in a past life- and maybe you have! But it could also be a sign that you’ve just paired up with your perfect boundary-wounded “woundmate” and are getting high on the intoxicating feeling of having no bounds.

High On Love

The early phases of enmeshment can make you feel drunk on love, almost as if two people are under a spell of enchantment. This phase can be full of love bombing, feelings of being high, and a sense of relief from the pain of everyday life that might have preceded the enmeshment. Whether that intoxication happens between romantic partners, parents and children, close friends, spiritual seekers with a guru figure or cult leader, or even business colleagues experiencing a kind of boundaryless “vocational arousal,” that intoxicating phase never lasts. That's when the destructive side effects of enmeshment tend to kick in and become problematic.

Healthy intimacy, on the other hand, may feel less ecstatic at first. It may start with a spark, but it's more of a slow, steady burn than a gasoline fire that blows up and burns out quickly, leaving behind a slippery stink. Healthy intimacy takes time to build, earns trust as time passes, and gives both parties enough space to feel themselves as individuals- but also enough closeness to grow in knowing one another at a reasonable pace, knowing not just the light of each person, but also the shadow. When we idealize someone and put them on a pedestal, they’re bound to come crashing down when the honeymoon phase ends. But when we become genuinely intimate with someone in their wholeness- and they do the same with us, real love and true intimacy become possible.

You Have To Be Separate To Be Safely Close

Healthy individuation allows two people to move towards one another and move away from each other without undue distress in either direction. Both can respect each other's space without inappropriate distance or intimacy avoidance. Both can also tolerate staying close during high levels of emotional intensity, not just joy and ecstasy, but also sadness, anger, jealousy, fear, or other uncomfortable emotions, without pulling away and creating the kind of distancing that can interfere with emotional intimacy. Yet you're not smothering each other either. You're able to take time away from each other to pursue different interests, other relationships, or process and metabolize intense experiences if you need reasonable (but not excessive) space to do so. 

With healthy intimacy, there's a drawing together and a drawing apart that is relatively seamless and not excessively triggering to one or both of you. When triggers inevitably happen, repair attempts are welcomed by both. You can tolerate ruptures in the closeness without excessive clingy, needy anxiety or avoidant distancing that is more like a wall than a boundary. You can repair quickly when there is disconnection to restore the right amount of comfortable space versus closeness. In attachment theory, you might call this kind of healthy intimacy “secure attachment.”

Enmeshment, on the other hands, is the kind of closeness that can be smothering and makes you feel like you might just die if you ever lose this person. You can't imagine surviving life if they died, left you, or needed to go away for six months to pursue some independent dream. This happens when one or both people lose their sense of individuality and merge into a boundaryless union. Usually the stronger person, the one with more ego strength or more of the “power over” patterning and wounding, determines what that one personality will be like, with the “power under” partner submitting. A dependency is created that makes one or both parties vulnerable to rupture of the closeness. One person might lose their belief systems, interests, and friends, acquiescing to the other and submitting to a form of domination by the other. It can become a “cult of two,” with one person in the lead and the other doing most of the following. Or you may take turns leading and following, depending on areas of competence and weakness.

Side Effects Of Enmeshment

The one doing most of the following may lose their sense of self when there's too much closeness, collapsing into the other, which can feel terrifying- for good reason. You may have trouble identifying or asking for what you need from the other. You may find it hard to feel yourself or think for yourself. You may get brain fog around the other, have trouble making your own autonomous choices, and develop a dependency on the strength of the other. You may lose your sense of assertiveness to initiate conflict or impact your world or others you’re relating with. You may struggle to get core needs met without the other person. The less powerful of the enmeshed pairing may literally collapse into the more powerful swirl of the energetic imprint of the one they're enmeshed with. This person may even get sick as a side effect of the enmeshment.

If you’re the one doing most of the leading, you might not recognize that there's a problem, because you still feel like you have your own identity, even if you may also feel smothered sometimes and crave more space from someone who might be afraid to give you too much space. You may not realize that the other has been swept into your orbit, adopted your way of being, and isn't capable of asserting themselves enough to resist the tidal pull of a magnetic or charismatic personality. In attachment theory, you might call this kind of attachment “insecure attachment.”

While healthy intimacy results in bonding, secure attachment, closeness, emotional depth, and ongoing discovery of the mystery that is another person, unhealthy enmeshment actually interferes with intimacy and can be a sneaky way to avoid real intimacy. Because of the lack of boundaries in an enmeshed relationship, closeness becomes legitimately terrifying- because you literally lose yourself in the other person- and losing yourself is psychologically dangerous. It’s only safe to get tenderly close to someone- emotionally, physically, spiritually- if you’re protected by clear boundaries that keep you separate and prevent either of you from controlling the other, reflexively complying with the other, or passive-aggressively rebelling against the other- all of which sabotage real intimacy.

Freedom & Intimacy

Healthy intimacy is paradoxically both bonding and liberating, such that the more you know and love and feel close to someone you’re intimate with, the more you bump up against your own shadowy parts and growth edges. And the more you do your deep healing work with another person who is also doing their own deep healing work, the more you free yourself from the burdens of unresolved trauma and can reap the rewards of intimacy. 

The deeper you dive into the intimate relationship (with good boundaries!) the more you paradoxically free yourself- and the more free the other person becomes. But it’s not the same kind of freedom you might have if you’re not in an intimate relationship. If you’re single and you have no intimate relationships, then you’re free to be utterly selfish. You have no one else to be accountable to- and some people like that. But being a lone wolf can also make you lonely. You sacrifice connection, belonging, and the safety of being part of a human clan.

It’s liberation work, for sure, but it doesn’t liberate you from the responsibilities of intimacy- like checking in with your intimate partner before making decisions that impact your partner- or considering your partner’s needs when you’re trying to get your own needs met- or being willing to inconvenience yourself when your partner has sincere needs. Being tethered to someone else that way can feel like bondage to people who don’t understand good boundaries, but intimacy is not bondage. What you sacrifice in the way of freedom is worth the rewards of deep connection, trust, and safety.

When you’re deeply intimate with someone, trust grows and builds over time, you feel safe enough to speak your truth, you ask for closeness or distance if you need it, you work together to share power and negotiate healthy boundaries equally, you communicate your needs and respond to the needs of another, and you enjoy the love that builds when people become intimate emotionally.

Enmeshment, on the other hand, can bond two people, but it's more like bondage, a kind of prison, which at its extreme, can become manipulative and dangerous if one party tries to rebel against the domination. It's entangling the way ropes and cords can coil around you and constrict and strangle you, rather than liberating you through being bound together in a flexible, freeing, and loving way that may limit certain freedoms, but only because you’ve both chosen to negotiate those terms together. If one person who is corded to another starts to pull away as an attempt to restore individuation, problems inevitably ensue in an enmeshed relationship.

Enmeshment most commonly happens between two boundary wounded people, while healthy intimacy depends upon reasonably good boundaries that are not used as walls to protect against intimacy. When intimacy is present and the relationship is healthy and safe, one person is not setting boundaries in a “power over” move, the way someone with boundary wounding might. A healthy boundary does not boundary against intimacy, employing rigid withholding, distance, neglect, or abandonment as a unilateral manipulation. On the contrary, a healthy boundary protects deepening care, connection, and closeness and is navigated between two people to find solutions that work to help both parties get their needs met.

The good news is that trauma can be treated, boundary wounding can be healed, and healthy intimacy is the reward worth doing the hard work to enjoy.

To learn more about how to set, enforce, and protect your boundaries and those of others- so you can reap the benefits of healthy intimacy, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, where I’m releasing my unpublished manuscript The Boundaries Handbook.

*Photo credit Monique Feil