Are You Setting Boundaries or Making Demands?
Boundaries are a popular topic within mental health care, and for good reason!
Boundaries help us protect our need for safety, for comfort, for setting the standard on how we’re treated and what people can expect from us. They help us prevent emotional burnout, prevent resentment within our relationships, and protect our energy for what matters to us.
But there’s a common misunderstanding that boundaries are about telling people how they’re allowed to engage with you. Social media may be a contributing factor to this: people often set “boundaries” on their social media pages on what will get you blocked by them, but these are more behavior expectations than true boundaries. But since it’s become so common to use the idea of boundaries in this sense, the actual nature of what boundaries are, how they function, and what they’re for has gotten a little muddied.
As we’ve said before: It’s common to think of boundaries as a way to control someone or a way to end relationships, but boundaries are actually designed to help us maintain our relationships over the long term.
Boundaries are about letting others know how you will respond when their behavior isn’t acceptable to you.
By communicating what this response will be, you’re giving people the opportunity to show up in your relationship in a way that supports you both. But when boundaries start sounding like rules for how people can act around you, it starts slipping away from boundary territory and into demanding people do exactly what you want them to do.
Boundary or demand?
A boundary, as we said, is when we make it clear what we aren’t able to tolerate for our own safety (physical or emotional). When we set a boundary, we’re clear in why the boundary is important, what you will need to do for yourself to maintain that boundary. It’s about your own behavior, not about dictating what someone else does.
A demand is when you tell someone how they have to behave around you. It’s not telling them what you need or how you’ll be engaging within the relationship, it’s just giving them terms and conditions for how they’re allowed to behave around you–when in reality, it’s not up to us how others behave. The only thing that is up to us is how we respond to someone else’s behavior.
For example, “You can’t text me more than X number of times a day,” is a demand–you’re telling someone how to behave. “I can’t check my phone frequently throughout the day, so I may not answer every time you text me, but I’ll get back to you when I can,” is a boundary. If the issue is you don’t want to have to answer every message as soon as it comes through because it can be overwhelming and distracting, decide how you can alter your response to the issue, and communicate that.
Boundary or ultimatum?
Similar to boundary vs. demand, the difference between setting a boundary and setting an ultimatum is about whose behavior it’s focused on. Taking the example above, if you were to tell your partner that if they text you more than X number of times per day, you’ll break up with them, you’re not only making a demand, you’re hinging the health of your relationship on their response to your demand. That’s an ultimatum.
When you set a healthy boundary, you make clear what your own behavior will be. Sometimes if these boundaries are repeatedly violated, it becomes necessary to remove yourself from the relationship. The difference between ending a relationship after violated boundaries and ending a relationship due to a failed ultimatum essentially comes down to intention. Are you willing to take ownership of your own behavior within your relationship and develop your boundaries around that? Or is the relationship dependent upon the other person doing what you want? Those questions can help you figure out if you’re setting healthy boundaries or setting ultimatums.