Boundaries Aren’t Working? Here’s Why (And What To Do About It)
Have you tried to set boundaries with your spouse and, rather than getting cooperation, you get apathy or resistance? Your spouse doesn’t even care that you set a boundary and does what they want anyway, or they make you feel bad for setting the boundary, or they get angry or use any number of tactics to get you to relent.
One of the reasons you find it necessary to set a boundary with your spouse in the first place is because (s)he is a boundary-buster and isn’t considerate of your thoughts, feelings, or opinions - so of course your spouse is not going to care that you set a boundary. They haven’t cared about your thoughts, feelings, and opinions up to this point, so why do you think they will start to care just because you are setting a boundary? They won’t.
How to get your spouse to respect your boundary
What should you do when you set a boundary and your spouse doesn’t respect it? The first thing you have to do is to get clear on what a boundary is for and what it isn’t for. Many times when people first start setting boundaries, it’s because they’ve been advised by someone that they should because of their spouse’s behavior - so they think that a boundary will get their spouse to change. They don’t really like setting the boundary because it feels selfish or harsh and it makes their spouse upset with them, but they do it in hopes that their spouse will respect it. They also think that a boundary is a “one and done” kind of thing, so when they set it and their spouse doesn’t respond to it the way they thought their spouse would, they don’t understand why the boundary didn’t “work” to bring about change.
But that’s the wrong way of thinking about boundaries. A boundary isn’t something you set in order to get someone to change. In fact, it isn’t something you set for (or on) someone else at all. A boundary isn’t something that you do to someone else in order to put restrictions or limits on them. It isn’t: “I will not allow you to do this or that to me.” Rather, it is a hedge of protection that you put around yourself. It’s saying “If you do this or that, here’s what I will do to protect myself from that.” A boundary isn’t for your spouse to change, it’s for you to change what you expose yourself to. [Get my guide to setting boundaries here]
If you don’t see a boundary as a way to protect yourself but, rather, as a way to get someone else’s behavior to change, then you are not going to get the results you want. Your boundaries won’t “work.” Nothing will change.
Believe in your boundary
Knowing what a boundary is for isn’t enough to get it to “work,” though. Not only do you have to set the boundary to protect yourself, you have to believe in what you are doing or it won’t work (it won’t serve to protect you from your spouse’s behavior). When you’ve had a history of allowing yourself to get walked on, gaslighted, and convinced that your viewpoint isn’t as important as your spouse’s, it’s hard to make the shift to believing that you have a right to boundaries and that your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are valid (even if they upset your spouse).
But boundaries aren’t going to work unless you believe that you have a right to them. This requires a shift how you think about your relationship. You have to change what you believe about your role in the relationship, because beliefs dictate actions. You have to believe the right things in order to be strong enough to set a boundary based on your beliefs, and you have to believe strongly enough in it that you are willing to stand up for it. A boundary only works when you are willing to do anything to back up what you believe in.
Beliefs that get in the way of boundaries
If beliefs dictate actions, then the beliefs that you have about marriage will determine how you interact in the relationship - your beliefs will determine what you expose yourself to and what you don’t, what you protect yourself from and what you don’t, what you determine is acceptable to you and what isn’t. Those will define your boundaries. Perhaps these are some of the beliefs you’ve held:
I have to be submissive (i.e. obedient)
It’s not respectful to disagree
I have to default to my spouse’s judgement
I should not be looking at my spouse’s faults until I take the log out of my own eye
It’s not my place to judge
I shouldn’t try to control my spouse but just patiently tolerate who they are and what they want to do, even if it hurts me, and eventually they will get better
I shouldn’t say anything negative about my spouse
I need to be kind
Marriage is about unity, so I should always understand where my spouse is coming from
When you do marriage from the standpoint of those beliefs, those are the beliefs that influence how you interact. And when you have a spouse who reminds you (with words or actions) that those are the things you should believe in, then boundaries go against those beliefs. Those beliefs don’t allow for boundaries or any sense of “separateness” - you aren’t allowed to have your own thoughts, feelings, or opinions. So you aren’t going to be able to set and enforce boundaries, because you don’t believe in opposing your spouse, judging your spouse’s actions, pointing out your spouse’s faults, doing something your way, doing things that don’t feel kind, or doing things that might upset your spouse or make him/her feel misunderstood or hurt.
So you do marriage based on those beliefs, and then you get the result of those beliefs:
Your spouse is demanding and insists that they’re right
You start to feel like submission is more like slavery
You don’t get to share your own thoughts, feelings, or opinions because your spouse always disagrees with them
You don’t get a say in family life
You are constantly working on your own bad behavior while trying not to pay attention to your spouse’s
You lose your ability to discern right from wrong because you are trying not to judge
You let your spouse do whatever they want, even if it hurts you, and you just keep forgiving them
You only say positive things and don’t talk about behavior that might be perceived as negative
You are always nice (i.e. a pushover and people-pleaser)
You are always looking at things from your spouse’s perspective and dismissing your own perspective so that your spouse feels heard
And then someone advises you to set boundaries, and that feels wrong. Based on what you believe about marriage, boundaries would feel like…
you aren’t being submissive
you’re disagreeing
you aren’t trusting your spouse’s judgement
you’re criticizing
you’re judging
you’re trying to control your spouse’s behavior
you’re focusing on the negative
you’re being selfish
you aren’t being sympathetic to your spouse
Can you see how your beliefs won’t let you set boundaries? And if you try to set boundaries anyway, and they don’t “work,” then you feel stuck. That’s because the beliefs you have don’t support the boundaries you want to set.
Beliefs that support boundaries
In order to effectively set boundaries, you have to have beliefs that lend themselves to boundaries. Then the boundaries will simply be the natural outpouring of your determination to stand up for your beliefs. And your determination to stand up for your beliefs will help you not only set the boundaries but also take action to enforce them.
So how do you adjust your beliefs to make them more aligned with the boundaries you know you need to set? A good place to start is to take in the whole counsel of God as you consider what Scripture has to say about relationships. If your beliefs about the kind of husband or wife you should be is based on the few passages of Scripture that tend to get preached on, written about, and drilled into married couples who are looking for solutions to the challenges they are facing in their marriage, then you are missing out on the rest of what God has to say to you regarding relationships.
Here’s an example: There’s a passage in Scripture that people quote as saying “kindness leads to repentance” (Romans 2:4). They use this to encourage people to continue to be kind, implying that your kindness will eventually change your spouse. If you believe this, then when your spouse does something hurtful, you will try to be an example of what you think love and kindness looks like in hopes that they will see your kindness and feel bad for what they did and repent.
However, you are starting to see that this isn’t working for you, right? Your kindness hasn’t changed your spouse at all. So you have to ask yourself “why?” And to find the answer, you have to go to Scripture.
The full passage surrounding the verse on kindness leading to repentance is found in Romans 2. Here’s the context: “do you show contempt for the riches of [God’s] kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” And it goes on to say: “Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself… for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger” (verses 4, 5, 8).
Here are a few things to notice in that passage:
1. It’s God’s kindness that is intended to lead someone to repentance - not yours. You are to do the “natural” and leave the “super” up to God. God’s kindness can lead to repentance because God’s kindness is not enabling sin (like yours is… just sayin’). God’s kindness still allows for natural consequences - it isn’t like your kindness, which erases natural consequences. And that brings us to the second point:
2. Your idea of what “kindness” looks like is not accurate. It is not “kindness” to enable someone to continue their wrong behavior and to withhold consequences from them. Doing so deprives them of the opportunity to feel the pain of their own consequences, and it’s the pain of consequences that might motivate a person to change - but it’s what you are taking away when you don’t set boundaries.
3. When someone (like your spouse) shows contempt for the riches of your kindness (i.e. your kindness doesn’t lead to repentance), the appropriate result is not more kindness, more forgiveness, and more patience… the appropriate result is wrath and anger. That’s what the passage is saying. But you tend to keep showing more kindness, don’t you? But more kindness in that situation isn’t Biblical. If your spouse is not responding to your kindness with repentance, then they are showing contempt for your kindness. And contempt for your kindness leads justly to wrath and anger. [Here’s how to handle anger so that you do not sin]
When you adjust your beliefs about kindness, you recognize that you have been believing that kindness (and more kindness) leads to repentance when the truth is that unresponsiveness to kindness leads to judgement, wrath, and anger - not to more kindness.
With this new belief, you can now see the benefit and the Scriptural alignment of setting a boundary, and the boundary becomes something that you are willing to stand up for and do whatever it takes to live it out. And voila! Boundaries become easier. You still believe in kindness, but now kindness looks different than what you thought it looked like, and your new perspective on it aligns with reality and the truth of Scripture instead of with idealism.
Shifting your beliefs to help you set boundaries
If you’re having trouble setting boundaries that “work” with the beliefs you hold, here’s how to start shifting how you think about what you believe:
When you find yourself behaving a certain way because of a belief you hold (e.g. “I have to hold my tongue because disagreeing is disrespectful”), ask yourself:
How am I defining the word or phrase that I’m believing in (e.g. “what does it mean to ‘respect’?”)
Where does that definition come from? (e.g. books you’ve read, sermons you’ve heard, values that were passed down, your spouse’s definition, a misrepresentation of Scripture, etc.)
Does my definition of the word really line up with what God says about it? (Don’t assume you know the answer to this question! Open your Bible and read through the gospels and New Testament letters and ask yourself “What Would Jesus Really Do?” and how did his disciples live that out?)
How does God display his character regarding that topic in your own life (i.e. How does God “respect” you? Does he say anything negative about you? [Yes, he does - look at Scripture.] Does he forgive bad behavior even when you have no intention of repenting? [No, he doesn’t - look at Scripture.])
Am I really living true to God’s Word? When you’ve looked into where your beliefs come from and whether they are consistent with the way that God models perfect relationships for us, you can determine where your beliefs haven’t lined up with the truth of God’s word and start realigning yourself to “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable”… and really make a difference in your relationship.
Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything
When you believe in what you are standing up for and are willing to do whatever it takes to protect that belief, that’s when a boundary “works.” And you’ll find that even your belief about what it means for a boundary to “work” begins to change. You begin to see that it’s not that a boundary “works” when it gets the other person to change; a boundary “works” when it protects you from behavior that is not acceptable to you. Your spouse may or may not change as a result of the boundary, but YOU change because of your belief and the boundary you set to protect it. You change what you do when someone violates you, disrespects you, dismisses you, or hurts you. Your spouse might change when you set and enforce boundaries, but the important thing isn’t that your spouse changes or that your situation changes, it’s that you find that…
Hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation…
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