Emotional Boundaries in Partner Relationships [Part 2]

Note: Read Part 1 here

Signs of Poor Boundaries in Relationships

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

This insight by poet John Donne captures the interconnectedness of humanity. While we are part of the human collective, we are also independent beings. As such, we must continue to protect, develop and preserve our core selves.

Lack of a Sense of Identity

If we can't imagine who we would be without our relationship, we lack a sense of our own identity and the boundaries of the self that protect and define us as individuals. We draw our identities and our sense of self-worth from our partner as we did in the earliest stage of our biological growth in our family of origin. We draw our sense of worth from ourselves we look for such fulfilment in others and are willing to do anything it takes to make the relationship work, just as we may have done in our enmeshed family of origin, even if this means giving up our emotional security, friends, integrity, sense of self-respect or worth, independence, or employment.

Chances are we come from a dysfunctional family of origin and have learned co-dependent behavior patterns. We may even endure objectification in the form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse just to save the relationship. The structure of the relationship in this case would not be that of true partners in a dynamic relationship but that of parent and child, or master and slave. Many children forced to take on roles of a family where the important relationship of the parents is unequal find themselves forced to take on roles of a surrogate spouse or adopt roles that strive to restore dignity to the family and bring balance to the system.

When boundaries are not established in the beginning of a marriage, or when they break down, well... such marriages don't grow past the initial attraction and transform into real intimacy. They never reach the true “knowing” of each other and the ongoing ability to abide in love and to grow as individuals and as a couple--the long-term fulfilment that was God’s design (Cloud & Townsend, 2002, p. 49).

Living with Constant Guilt

“All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she’d taken on the world’s hurt; she held herself responsible” (Hilderbrand, 2008, p. 6).

One characteristic of growing up without well-defined and practiced boundaries is that we may learn to feel guilty if we fail to ensure the success and happiness of other members of the household. We may feel responsible or be made to feel responsible for the failure or unhappiness of others. Thus, we may come to feel responsible for our partner’s failures. The guilt we feel when our partner fails may drive us to keep tearing down our personal boundaries so that we are always available to the other person.

When we feel the pain, the guilt, or the anger of being overly responsible for another person’s behavior or life experiences, we may seek to alleviate this feeling by rescuing them from the consequences of their behavior as we learned to do in our family of origin. This deprives them of one of the most important facets of an independent, healthy, and mature life, the ability to make their own life choices, and accepting the responsibility for and the consequences of their decisions. Often people bear the burden of their partner’s unacceptable behavior for a lifetime.

Enabling and Rescuing

Empathy and compassion are worthy qualities, but they can be confused with love, especially when boundaries are nonexistent or have become distorted. Healthy boundaries lead to respect for the other person, and a mutual flow of feelings between the two partners, all of which are features of mature love. When one partner is in control and the other is needy and helpless, there is no room for the give-and-take of a healthy relationship. According to Brooke (2013) some adults have become so accustomed to parents saving them that they will stampede through all others’ savings, whether it be financial or emotional. They have not learned to be the architects of their own happiness.

People who grow up in a dysfunctional family may fail to learn there is a difference between love and empathy. Children growing up in these conditions may learn to have empathy for the emotional crippling in their parents' lives and believe that the only time they get attention is when they show compassion for the parent. They think that when they forgive, they are showing love. Actually, they are rescuing the parent and enabling abusive behavior to continue. They learn to give up their own protective boundaries in order to take care of the dysfunctional parent, becoming a surrogate co-dependent spouse.

In adulthood, they carry these learned behaviors into their own relationships. If they can rescue their partner from the consequences of their behavior, they think that they are showing love. They get a warm, caring feeling from helping their partner, a feeling they call love. However, this may actually encourage their partner to become needy and helpless enabling the negative behavior to continue. An imbalance can then occur in the relationship in which one partner becomes the rescuer or enabler and the other plays the role of the helpless victim. In this case, healthy boundaries that allow both partners to live complete lives are absent. Equality in a partner relationship requires the presence of healthy, flexible boundaries.

Accepting “Fate”

For some, the anxiety over change is more stressful than the misery of the status quo. They may cling to the irrational belief that things are good enough as they are, and that change is a difficult and fearful prospect. They feel a measure of security in the relationship, or that they do not deserve any better. Life has always been a sacrifice of the self, and that this is as good as it gets. In the process, however, they give up the chance to be the person God meant them to be and to explore their sense of personal fulfilment and fruitfulness. They give up not only their life dreams but also their sense of worth in order to maintain the security of a relationship. Cloud (2013) said,

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.”

Living in Fantasy

Children from highly dysfunctional households often believe that things will get better “one day,” and that a normal life may definitely be in their future. In fact, some days are actually within their definition of normal, but then the bad times return. Those normal days encourage the fantasy that all problems in the family will someday disappear. This is a common cycle in highly dysfunctional families. When they grow up, these adults carry the same types of fantasy into their relationships. They may portray to others that they have the perfect relationship and they may believe strongly that someday all of their relationship problems will somehow be solved. They ignore the imbalance, control, manipulation, and abuse in the relationship. By doing so, they are unable to confront them, find a path to resilience, and the fantasy of a happier future never materializes.

COMING SOON

Part 3: Setting Boundaries and Healthy Responses

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About the author: Dr Evelyn Biles is the Founder and President of Global Mosaic International, a ministry for the teaching, coaching, and mentoring of leaders and counsellors. She is also adjunct professor at the School of Psychology and Counselling at Regent University, USA. She currently serves as Curriculum Advisor for SonLight Care, a ministry that equips lay counsellors to serve the local church in Malaysia.