A few years ago a client told me his wife had been reading a book about boundaries. Popular book, popular author. She read it, and then she asked for separation, and then she started using the exact language from its pages. He knew because he bought his own copy and sent me one.
He would make real headway. Some warmth would come back. Then she would go talk to the friend she was reading it with, and the scripts would come back out.
“Your reality is not my reality. You just don’t understand. You’re just an unsafe person.”
Here is what that did to him. The boundaries she set were unfalsifiable.
- If he leaned in and tried to be kind, that was controlling.
- If he backed off and gave her space, that was stonewalling.
There was nothing he could do that counted as progress, because the condition he was under the boundary for was never named out loud. It was: do my feelings still hurt?
I am not blaming the author. I have read that book. I know she was more careful than her reader was.
Still, I have watched this same thing run more than once, with that book and with others, and it has convinced me that boundaries are one of the most mis-taught and therefore misused tools in the marriage help industry.
This episode is the map and the critique. Next episode is the fix.
The standard model, in one sentence
Boundaries as they are commonly taught are a property line, enforced by a consequence, triggered by how you feel. And almost nothing is taught about how to lift one.
Some of that shape makes sense once you know where it came from. The modern popularity traces back to the 1980s and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, where the situation being solved was a spouse with an addiction and a partner taking the collateral damage. Those are intense situations, and the tool got built for them.
Then it got handed to everybody.
Problem 1: The trigger is just a feeling
Ask most boundary material how you know when you need one and the answer comes back: in short, when you feel like it. Do you feel disrespected. Do you feel resentful. Do you find yourself feeling the same hurt over and over.
But a recurring problem causing recurring feelings is usually proof of personality differences, not proof that the marriage cannot be saved. I made that whole argument back in episode 27.
A boundary is a sledgehammer. It is a bust-it-up kind of tool. Take one out for a problem that only needed a scalpel and you have done a lot of collateral damage to your relationship, maybe needlessly.
Problem 2: The consequence contradicts the property line
You get told the point of a boundary is that you are only responsible for what happens inside your own fence. Fine. I am on board with that. You cannot be responsible for your wife. She is her own person.
Then you get told a boundary is a limit plus a consequence, and that a boundary without a consequence is just a suggestion.
But a consequence is aimed at the other person. It exists to make her learn something. So the teaching hands you a fence and then tells you to go over it. You cannot be told to walk across the property line, mess up the neighbor’s yard so they get the message, and also be told you are only responsible for your own side.
Problem 3: All the teaching is on setting it, almost none on lifting it
Page after page on why you deserve a boundary, how big it should be, how to hold your ground when your spouse objects. Then the question of when it comes down, or how the relationship gets put back together, gets an offhand mention at best.
Nobody defines what a successful boundary even looks like. So there is no way out from under one, which is exactly the trap my client was in.
Problem 4: The boundary is pointed out of the marriage
Every escalation is a step toward less contact. Boundaries and ultimatums blur together, and some people blur them on purpose. And it is genuinely rare to find anyone teaching this who does not sound almost celebratory when the boundaries end a marriage.
Not every boundary has to be a divorce ultimatum. But so many of the people teaching this went through a divorce themselves that there is an inevitable pull in that direction. One way or another the boundary ends up framed as an intermediary step before divorce rather than a way to build a marriage up.
That is my whole critique in one line. One of the tools that is meant to protect the marriage is consistently used to bring it to its end.
What I actually want a boundary to do
Invert every one of those and you get a decent wish list.
- A trigger you can actually define, before you reach for the tool
- A boundary done from a posture of leaning in, tilted toward the marriage rather than away from it
- A boundary done in earnest for the relationship, so the property lines end up neighboring each other instead of dividing
- A boundary that is empathetic and fair to your spouse, and never unfalsifiable
- A boundary clearly and fairly scaled to the size of the hurt it is answering
I did not cover how to do that here. That is next episode, and I will give you the actual framework: two words that carry most of the weight in using a boundary well, and two more that tell you whether you need one at all.
Please hear me on this. Boundaries can be good for your marriage. I want them to be good for your marriage. I purposely did not throw stones at any particular person in this episode, and if you are another teacher out there listening, I am trying to stay kind about it.
Grab the free cheat sheet for this episode at husbandhelphaven.com/episode-38. And if you want the full teaching now rather than waiting, I did a four-part series on communicating for connection inside Husband Help Group back in December, and it is sitting there for members.