Can Setting a Boundary Actually Bring You Closer to Someone?

On the pairing of autonomy and intimacy, and why one supports the other.

There’s a fundamental paired theme in psychology that so much of our life is organized around: autonomy and intimacy. Separation and connection. Me and we. Both are really important.

Intimacy supports autonomy. The internalized intimacy, broadly, such as in our attachment experiences as young children, the internalization of a secure relationship with a caregiver, forms over time that secure base inside from which we can venture and explore autonomously out into the world.

Go the other way, though, and autonomy supports intimacy too. If you’re getting invaded and enmeshed and engulfed by another person, so that there’s no autonomy, if me is getting lost in we, that can be very beautiful for some period of time. But on the whole, if you’re getting engulfed and enmeshed with another person, that will eventually undermine the relationship altogether, sometimes because that person, wittingly or unwittingly, will start taking advantage of you. You start becoming an extension of them, rather than an independent, differentiated being in your own right.

Autonomy also supports intimacy in a more direct way. If you know that at the end of the day, or the end of the conversation, or the end of a fun evening, you are going to keep your own counsel, you’re going to decide freely and independently what you’re going to do in this relationship, then you’re going to be more willing to enter into the depths of connection, of joining with that other being. Because you know you can always find your way back to your own secure base. If you’re really confident in your own autonomy, that you don’t have to believe what someone says, you’re going to be more willing to step away from your own positions and your attachment to your own views, to actually be open-minded to what they have to offer.

I had a recording engineer, the very first time I recorded a program, a really wise, no-nonsense, seen-it-all kind of person, Randy Roark. At the end of that first recording, I was kind of nervous about what might happen with it. He said, well Rick, I’ve been with all the big teachers, seen them come, seen them go, and I’ve seen that there are two kinds of teachers: knowers, and learners. And you, Rick, are going to be okay. Be a learner.

If you’re more autonomous, you’re more comfortable with being a learner. You’re more comfortable with not knowing, with acknowledging error, with room for improvement along the way. That supports you in relationships too.

There’s one more reason boundaries are good for relationships, not just for you. Boundaries stop other people from destroying a relationship. If you have boundaries, you can often find a middle place, a more limited but still sustained form of relationship with someone, because you’re halting them, or disengaging from certain things they’d otherwise do. Without that boundary, you’d have to be out completely.

If you want to go even deeper into building this for your own real relationships, join me for the Setting Healthy Boundaries workshop on September 19th, live online! Use the code SUBSTACK10 for 10% off when you register.

The content in this article has been adapted from my spoken word.