Boundaries: An Essential Foundation for Intimacy

By John Amodeo

One of life's curious paradoxes is that you can't have intimacy without boundaries that define and protect your autonomy. You can't expect another to hold you tenderly unless you learn to hold yourself with kindness and caring. Without being rooted in yourself, what is called "union" degenerates into sloppy enmeshment; what is called marriage is a loss of self, not a discovery and expansion of your inner beauty and selfhood.

The way forward lies in your ability to surrender to love and intimacy while having the backup ability to maintain a certain kind of boundary that keeps you connected to yourself. Understanding how to create flexible personal boundaries — differentiating your world from another's world — creates a healthy foundation for midlife love.

The delights of intimate relating will evade you until you can respond to the following questions:

• What do you want in this relationship apart from real or imagined pressure to supply what he wants?
• What are your needs apart from hers?
• Can you remain respectful of his needs while honoring your own?
• Are you willing to deal with the consequences of not giving her what she wants?

Only by having clear boundaries can you, in the words of Gibran, give your hearts, "but not into each other's keeping....And stand together, yet not too near together." Boundaries keep you disentangled in a way that supports the healthy growth of love and intimacy.

To assess your own boundaries, consider these questions:

• While listening to people, do you compulsively nod your head in apparent agreement when you actually disagree or don't understand what they mean?
• Do you laugh at jokes you don't find funny?
• Do you try getting people to like you without considering whether you like them?
• Do you avoid conflict because you want approval and acceptance?

As your self-worth becomes less influenced by others, you're less susceptible to being injured by others' judgments, sarcasm, or opinions. By knowing and affirming yourself, you're not predisposed to giving people the power to judge you. You can evaluate others' opinions and either accept or reject them based upon your self-evaluation. Criticism may still sting, but your hurt will be less enduring if your assessment of yourself is given more credibility than others' opinions of you.

"Boundaries" is simply another word for knowing yourself and taking care of yourself. It means discovering and affirming your limits — knowing what you can and can't accept in a relationship. It means finding a refuge within yourself — treasuring the deepest chamber within your heart that no one can defile. It means realizing you're a separate person — a human being who deserves dignity and respect, like every member of the human family.

As you grow confident that you can calibrate your boundaries as needed, you're freer to surrender to the spontaneous joy of loving. Trusting your ability to set firm limits as a "backup system," you can extend yourself to others in a warm, easygoing way.

As you feel self-assured about your ability to maintain your sense of self, you can trust yourself to become more relaxed and spontaneous. Deeper levels of intimacy unfold when the border between two people softens. It's important to have control over these borders — control over when to let the drawbridge down and allow someone access to your authentic heart.