Some Boundaries Aren’t Valid, Actually
Yes, you can technically set whatever boundaries you want in a relationship, and if your partner’s happy to respect them and no one’s getting hurt, then you do you. BUT…
Some boundaries are straight up unreasonable/unrealistic to expect of anyone, and will set you up for failure.
Some boundaries indicate you need to do a lot of deep introspection and personal work, instead of putting it on your partner to manage your trauma/insecurities/biases forever.
Some boundaries are not boundaries at all, but coercive rules. If you’re trying to control your partner’s behaviour or prevent them from doing things they wanna do, that’s not a boundary. A boundary is about what YOU do to protect your needs.
Some boundaries are not wrong to have, but they do mean you’re incompatible with your partner. In that scenario, maybe y’all just need to break up.
To be fully honest, I'm less interested in the nuances of what's a boundary/rule/agreement and I'm more interested in the practicalities of what actually WORKS in practice. If you're imposing something on someone else that they didn't agree to or feel good about, it's likely gonna fail. If you're doing all kinds of things to protect yourself but also doing zero work to self-interrogate or accommodate others as well, it's likely gonna fail. And there are so many other examples I could list...
Relationships are a balance of needs/desires, and sometimes two people could have totally reasonable boundaries but are incompatible in a way that they cannot be together without at least one of them being miserable. That's just life. Loving someone doesn't mean staying with them, it means recognising what's best for them and sometimes that is not you.
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