Obsessing about boundaries is making us less human
When a client says “I have problems with boundaries with X person in my life,” or “I need to have more boundaries with my mother,” my therapist brain perks up. Boundaries are everywhere in our cultural vocabulary right now (thanks therapists!) and yet, we seem to have flattened their meaning.
A quick Google search for boundary will give you some version of: “how you want other people to treat you.” In popular culture, boundaries become a kind of cheat code for “don’t say or do that around me.” And because I’ve told you that you shouldn’t do or say that around me, if you keep doing it, then I have the right to cut off contact, ghost, or otherwise disengage.
The Discomfort Dilemma
To be clear, this isn’t about excusing or enduring abusive behavior. Accountability is non-negotiable; what I’m questioning is how easily we label discomfort as danger. Somewhere along the way, we started treating boundaries as the solution to all discomfort in our relationships. The moment something feels uneasy, our first impulse is to draw a line. But boundaries can give us the false impression that we can regulate human relationships into safety and comfort.
The truth is: being human is messy. We are, by nature, relational. Our entire species depends on asymmetric human interactions from our earliest moments—a newborn requires caregivers to provide constant food and safety while giving nothing in return.
And if you’re thinking, “But Kalpana, a newborn gives joy,” I’ll say: no, a newborn might stir joy or love within you, but it hasn’t given you anything other than sleepless nights. Your emotions and feelings are your own. No one gives them to you or makes you have them.
The Ownership Problem
It also gives me pause that the word “boundary” was originally used to define property and land ownership. Should it concern us that we’re using a fundamentally ownership-based framework to describe how we relate to one another? Why are we borrowing the logic of capitalism—control, separation, possession—to describe human relationships? Capitalism and western individualism shapes our obsession with “boundaries” instead of shared or collective care.
Growing up in an Indian family in the West, I was taught that I have obligations in relationships that naturally counterbalance my individual needs. I was raised to think first of others, then of myself. In many ways, this results in harmony created by looking at the greater good of all individuals in a relationship, family or community. But the individual can be too easily subsumed by relationship and hierarchy—children beneath parents, women beneath men, daughters-in-law beneath mothers-in-law. Neither model, taken to its extreme, teaches us how to stay in relationship with difference and discomfort.
Understanding How People Treat You and How It Makes You Feel
So if boundaries aren’t about control or ownership, what should they be about? I think they’re about awareness—of how we feel, what we need, and what kind of relationships we want to build.
When we have a strong feeling about how someone treated us, that emotion is data. It tells us something about ourselves: that something in the relationship worked (pleasant sensation → pleasant feeling), or that something didn’t (unpleasant sensation → unpleasant feeling).
If we repeatedly experience unpleasant feelings in a relationship, that deserves attention. But setting a rule for how someone else should behave isn’t the only option. Other possibilities include:
Ignore it. Ignoring isn’t always avoiding or bad! Sometimes, you can just let something go.
Communicate. Say what didn’t work, why it didn’t work, and make a request. You might have to repeat it because people forget, need time to learn, or fall back into old patterns.
Assess reciprocity. Is the relationship balanced? Reciprocity, the give and take of care, effort, and support, is key to trusting and enjoying a relationship. You may not do things the same way for each other, but does the overall balance feel right?
We often reach for boundaries because we feel like our contributions are unseen or unappreciated in our relationships. If the reciprocity doesn’t feel good, have you talked about it?
Boundaries as Loving Distance
My favorite definition of a boundary comes from social worker, organizer, and activist Prentis Hemphill: “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
That definition lands for me because it captures the real work: the ongoing grapple between self and other. How can I love me and ask for what I need, while also loving you and hearing what you need?
Boundaries aren’t rules for control—they’re choices we make in service of love. And sometimes, love requires distance. When that’s the case, we can pause and ask ourselves:
How does this boundary reflect my values?
What action am I willing to take if it’s crossed—and does that action align with who I want to be?
What feelings might come with enforcing this boundary? Am I ready to hold them with compassion for myself and the other person?
Too often, we trade one set of emotions for another. Out of sight is rarely out of mind; irritation or hurt might give way to grief or anger.
Just being human
Maybe the problem isn’t that we need better boundaries, it’s that we’ve turned boundaries into a cure-all for the discomfort of being human. Real relationships will always include friction, longing, misunderstanding, and repair. Boundaries can help us find steadiness within that mess, but they can’t save us from it.
