Stop Setting Boundaries.

What your therapist is too lily-livered to tell you about relationships.

If you’ve known another person recently, you might’ve come into contact with their HR Department. Not all people have one. Increasingly, though, it’s common to find yourself called before another person’s one-man committee and sternly told just what’s what. Usually, you’re reprimanded (by friend, partner, or relative) without explanation or apology. You’re made aware of the rules of proper engagement. You’re advised to stop what you’ve been doing, or begin doing something you’ve failed to do, effective immediately. A boundary has just been set, and boundaries aren’t up for discussion. You’re dismissed.

Psychologists invented the “boundary,” a therapeutic term, to help people-pleasers advocate for themselves. But then, something happened. Just as the first soft-hearted person raised their quivering voice, the collective voice of TikTok interrupted: “Actually, we’ve all got a few demands.” And so began the indiscriminate encouragement of boundaries-implementation. Everyone, apparently, needs their own set of associational regulations and prescriptions. It’s now conventional wisdom that boundary-setting is right, good, and useful. You’re unlikely to hear about mental wellbeing without hearing about boundaries, too—they’re thought to be an indispensable feature of healthy relationships. Take TimelyCare, a third-party mental health provider used by over 400 colleges and universities across the United States, including my own. One self-care module, entitled “Boundaries Yoga,” begins with a warning: as difficult as boundary setting might be, it’s necessary to protect the mind and body. Don’t you want to “strengthen your center and radiate truth?”

Well, sure, maybe—maybe if the meaning of “strengthen your center and radiate truth” was clear, it’d be clear that it’s the sort of thing I’m likely to go in for. You know what? Let’s take a stab at it. While we’re all radiating truth, here’s one: there’s something fundamentally odd about boundaries, about this new way of relating to one another. In the age of the boundaries arms-race, here’s a call for disarmament.

When you’re laying down your arms, it’s useful to start by explaining what you’re not doing, because it’s natural for others to feel a bit spooked, like you’re plotting something sinister. Two disclaimers, then. You shouldn’t let people walk all over you, and you shouldn’t walk all over other people. As far as other people are concerned, walking is the sort of thing to be done side-by-side, hand-in-hand.

Boundaries, though, prevent that—instead, it’s: “Step back! Hands up where I can see them.” In assuming their defensive posture, the boundaries-peddlers miss what’s valuable about relationships. What are relationships about, after all, if not knowing and being known by other people? About banishing human loneliness? About “intertwining souls?” Erecting emotional walls will cheat you of connection and deprive your relationships of depth. It’s hard to be known by another person when you’re wearing a hazmat suit because you’re terrified that they’re toxic.

Relationships aren’t supposed to be sterile environments. Relationships are inherently messy and high-risk. Don’t be too precious about your “emotional safety.” There’s none to be had, anyway—not really. Expect to be hurt, even by well-intentioned people who love you. Expect to come face to face with their insanities (you’ve got plenty of your own). You won’t escape unscathed, and that’s alright. Relationships aren’t about maximizing your personal utility function. You’ll have to compromise. You’ll have to sacrifice. That’s not evidence that you’ve gotten a “bad deal.” You haven’t gotten a “deal” at all—relationships aren’t business transactions.

Besides, not every hurt is evidence of a wrong. The language of boundaries obscures this fundamental principle by making our silly, petty, petulant requests appear legitimate. When you employ therapy-speak to complain about your pet-peeves and peculiar sensitivities, you transform your desires into dictates, into laws which can’t be questioned. Of course, your requests look “valid,” dressed-up as the tenets of some moral code, and bearing the (dubious) “stamp of approval” of the psych-world. But the word “boundary” can’t make your boundary actually valid. A tool, meant to help us get more of what we rightly deserve, has become a cudgel, used to help us get more of what we happen to want.

Legitimate requests receive the inverse treatment. When you communicate something serious or common-sense through the laying down of “your” boundary, others believe that you’re expressing a personal preference, instead of an ethical no-brainer. What could’ve been a restatement of the Golden Rule—“Treat me as you’d like to be treated”—becomes “Here’s how I’d like to be treated...I don’t know about you.” You could’ve appealed to the strongest possible justification: the universal standard for proper human interaction. You could’ve looked reasonable—you were reasonable. Instead, you looked whiny and dramatic.

We don’t want to look whiny and dramatic. We definitely don’t want to be whiny and dramatic. We want relationship tools which really are good (for the depth and quality of our connections), right (in their treatment of other people), and useful (for us, in communicating with them). Boundaries aren’t that tool. It’s time to fire your personal HR Department.