Are boundaries the answer for marriage problems?

Well, yes. But also no. Let me explain!

A while back on episode 347 of the Bare Marriage podcast, Dawn the Minimal Mom joined us to talk about her concept of “The Dignity Line”, and how marriages only work and improve if they exist above the dignity line–where people take accountability, care about the other person, and genuinely want things to work. Below the dignity line you can’t actually affect change in marriage.

Now, proponents of boundaries will say that’s not true–and to a certain extent I’d agree. Let’s say that your husband, for instance, is using porn and treating you as a masturbatory aid. If you said to him,

…you’d be setting a boundary! You’d be saying, “this is what I will not tolerate”, and “this is what it needs to look like for me to go forward.”

And for some people, that jolt will make them change. When they hit rock bottom and experience the consequences of their actions, then they are often motivated to change. People change when the cost of staying the same becomes greater than the cost of changing. 

Often we don’t set boundaries because we think that people will care about our pain. So we explain how we’re feeling, ad nauseum. We explain what we want, ad nauseum. But nothing actually gets done until we set a boundary.

Great. Makes sense. But here’s the truth about boundaries:

For boundaries to work, the cost of the boundary has to be LESS for the person setting it than the cost of staying the same.

Boundaries are supposed to make life easier for you

In fact, books on boundaries will tell you that as you are thinking of a boundary, think of somthing you can live with and follow through on. So NOT having sex, for instance, is easier on you than feeling used and abused when you do have sex. Or if your husband is a slob, leaving his laundry in the corner of the room, undone unless he puts it in the hamper, is easier for you than picking it up, feeling ticked at him, and doing it anyway. 

Again, makes sense.

But here’s what we often miss, and here’s the point that Dana was talking about:

When you are punished for setting a boundary, boundaries can become too costly

Let’s take the laundry example, above. So he’s not respecting the work you do around the house, and he’s making much more mess for you to clean up and making life more difficult for you, so you decide that you will no longer just clean his stuff. You’ll clean the kids’ stuff and your stuff, but not his until he treats you like a partner and at least puts the stuff in the hamper. 

That sounds like a decent boundary. You’re making things easier on yourself while also having him feel the consequences of his actions.

And this is the type of scenario that counselors and books often use to show that boundaries work–you feel better and you’re doing less, while they are now reaping what they sowed, and that’s motivation for change.

The problem with this scenario is that it assumes there will be no pushback.

But what if, in this same scenario, the husband started pitching a fit? What if he took the clothes that were in the corner, and emptied the clean laundry on top of them, all mixed together? What if he took the laundry basket of clean clothes and dumped it in the middle of the living room? What if he decided to berate you for three hours that night so that you couldn’t go to sleep, explaining how you don’t appreciate him, and how you treat marriage like a game where you get to win and make him feel bad, and how you don’t understand how hard he works?

All of a sudden it would have been easier for you to have just done his laundry. 

As Dawn said on the podcast, sometimes the cost of enforcing the boundary is just too high. When you’re in a marriage that is marked by abuse, if you try to set a boundary you will be punished. And that’s why setting boundaries really only works in marriages above the dignity line–when you’re married to someone who truly does want the best for you, and who perhaps is just immature or has some weak areas where they can grow. It does not work when someone is being deliberately selfish, manipulative, and cruel.

We need to think of boundaries instead as being clarifying.

Instead of seeing boundaries as a way to automatically fix a marriage, we need to see boundaries as clarifying. Boundaries show you the nature of your relationship. If setting a reasonable boundary brings about desired change, then you are in a marriage of partnership where both of you can grow and where you’re truly committed to the betterment of the partnership. This doesn’t mean it will always be easy, or that there won’t be some pushback, but you can work towards a solution without punishment.

But if setting a boundary results in hours of someone lecturing or berating you, or someone punishing you, then you know that you are in a destructive marriage with someone who will not care for you. 

And perhaps that is the real benefit of setting boundaries–it lets you diagnose your relationship, see the true state of what is happening, and then make next steps (seeing a counselor to help you decide; getting your financial ducks in a row; consider separation and even divorce).

That’s Dawn’s story, and she tells it well on the podcast! But I thought this insight into boundaries was so important. She talked about how she could never figure out how boundaries didn’t work for her, even though she’d read all the books, and carefully considered good boundaries with her counselors. But then she realized: they don’t work because my husband isn’t working towards a healthy marriage and isn’t able or willing to truly love me or treat me well. And that’s when she made the decision to leave. 

So do boundaries work? 

Yes, if we define “work” differently. Boundaries can help change the marriage for the better when the marriage is marked by mutual concern and care, and boundaries are clarifying about the nature of the marriage when it’s not. In both cases those are positive outcomes, even if the latter is quite painful.

Here’s the part of the podcast where Dawn and I specifically talked about boundaries!

What do you think about boundaries? Have you found what Dawn did–that sometimes the cost is too high? Let’s talk in the comments!