Boundaries 101: Respect Them Even If You Don’t Get Them.

Boundaries are not a debate. You don’t have to like them, agree with them, or even fully understand them for them to matter. A boundary is someone drawing the line around what they can and can’t carry. And yet, so many people respond to boundaries with guilt trips, arguments, or outright dismissal.

The psychology here is clear: boundaries create safety. Without them, relationships slip into enmeshment - where one person’s needs, emotions, and identity get blurred into another’s. That’s not intimacy. That’s codependency dressed up as closeness.

But here’s the kicker: people often react badly to boundaries not because the boundary is wrong, but because it exposes the ways they’ve been benefiting from someone’s lack of one. When you stop answering emails at 9 PM, your boss feels inconvenienced. When you stop bailing out a friend, they feel abandoned. What they’re really losing is access to your labor.

Healthy relationships respect limits. Toxic ones test them. And the test isn’t about the boundary itself - it’s about whether you’re willing to hold it when it gets uncomfortable.

You don’t have to explain your boundary into the ground. You don’t need to justify it with trauma essays or PowerPoint slides. “This doesn’t work for me” is enough. Respect isn’t measured by agreement; it’s measured by response.