What Are Boundaries In A Relationship?

Setting parameters so that others don’t take advantage of you and wreak havoc in your life is important, but how you think of this concept of boundaries is crucial.

Instead of building your world from the outside in, construct it from the inside out. This is not only how you save a relationship but help it thrive.

Build yourself with the indestructible building blocks of a strong sense of self. This entails your creativity, talents, integrity, and understanding of feelings and how relationships work.

You are the center of your life. You are at the core. You create the quality of your existence. So, the more expansive you make your interior life, the fuller you are as a person and the more capable you’ll be of living the life that you want. And here’s the point —

When you are strong on the inside,
your partner and others
are not able to trespass
on your personal space.

When your partner or anyone else is violating your borders, then you haven’t cultivated enough of a relationship with yourself. Being congruent from the inside out is what will make you happy because you’re integrated and whole. For example, when you feel happy, your lips and eyes are smiling and so is every cell in your body.

The following poem by J. Coudert succinctly sums up where all healthy relationships emanate from. The relationship with yourself is where you’ll find a strength that is invincible.

It is rewarding to find someone whom you like, but it is essential to like yourself. It is quickening to recognize that someone is a good and decent human being, but it is indispensable to view yourself as acceptable. It is a delight to discover people who are worthy of respect and admiration and love, but it is vital to believe yourself deserving of these things. For you cannot live in someone else. You cannot find yourself in someone else. You cannot be given a life by someone else. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave nor lose. To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution.

Your sense of who you are is how to define your relationship with your partner. Construction of barriers and boundaries do not defend or protect you. They only keep you distant from those you love. Being engaged in boundary battles is unnecessary since there’s nothing to win or lose. You are powerful because of who you are, your inner self, not because of your expertise in personal fortress construction.