The idea that boundaries are dangerous comes from an unhealthy idea about unconditional love. By definition, unconditional love is exactly that—love without any conditions. Love without bounds or boundaries.
It’s a wonderful idea.
You do not have to be tall, rich, amazing, truthful, organized, or funny. If love is unconditional, it is always there for you. Having a parent’s unconditional love is how children learn the meaning of emotional safety. With it, they have the power to venture into the emotionally risky world knowing they have a solid home base to fall back on.
Unconditional love is what a parent communicates when they tell you they “love you no matter what.” You can come to them with anything, anything at all, and you will not be rejected or abandoned, no matter your age, socioeconomic status, or criminal history. This is the bedrock of secure attachment and is the single most comforting experience that life can provide.
If you were fortunate enough to experience unconditional love from your parents, your beliefs about life are the envy of every codependent. Secure people have healthy boundaries, and they likely have healthy ways of expressing them. That is what being secure is all about.
A secure person is not going to shout their head off at anyone because emotional eruptions are exclusive to emotional immaturity. If you are unable to succeed in establishing an internal sense of safety, or validation of your ego, the hatred of your powerlessness will emerge as a quick, sharp reaction to anyone who triggers you. If there is no lack of security, there is no need for big reactions.
Unfortunately, big reactions are what you can expect when you establish boundaries with people who don’t know what they are. If you had a codependent parent, they probably reacted poorly to any behavior that asserted your independence from them.
One of the first ways a child asserts independence is by telling their parents “No.” This is a boundary most parents are unable to accept because most children are about two years old when they start saying it. This boundary is dangerous for the child since independence at that age opens them up to a world of fatal perils. Parents instinctively know this and appropriately ignore the child’s protests.
A lot of parents believe that a child should have no boundaries until they are either 18 years old, out of the house, or married. For the child’s safety, of course. In some cultures, children are never expected to have boundaries. Ever. Parents will visit or move in at their leisure with no need for discussion.
This norm is meant to protect the parents’ safety and their way of life. Time, social expectations, economics, tradition, and technology all factor into what creates an appropriate boundary for a certain person at a certain age. One thing is consistent, however. Certain boundaries are dangerous at certain times, and learning to fear them is a natural part of growing up.
The fear of boundaries is deeply connected to the fear of survival. For those with abandonment issues, there is no fear quite like the unknown– that unexpected surprise that will take their loved ones away forever and leave them all alone. The best defense against this fear is to eliminate surprises, and this is usually accomplished by demanding absolute transparency.
Parents demand transparency from their children to screen their actions, thoughts, and plans from dangerous pitfalls. They are naturally terrified of hidden dangers to their children and will interrogate them until the crack of dawn to discover a secret they suspect is being kept from them.
Boundaries are not just dangerous, they are deadly. In the age of cyberspace, parents must be extra vigilant against scams and sexual predators. They are not only protecting their children, but their future caretakers in some cases. They require full transparency from beginning to end and act like boundaries will lead to mortal danger.
When children who grow up terrified of boundaries enter the dating world, they often suffer from severe jealousy. They engage in a relentless campaign to scour a partner’s social life and sexual history in search of threats to their current relationship. Any thought, feeling, or experience with a former partner will be heavily scrutinized for any lingering sense of sentiment or joy for the past.
Any resistance against transparency will provoke intense feelings of fear, and details only build evidence for the case that the codependent is not in full possession of their lover’s heart. They act just like their parents did when they tried to have an identity independent of them.
If a lover asks them for privacy, personal time, space, or respect, they will repeat the same script used against them when they tried to assert developmentally appropriate independence from an emotionally immature caregiver. “You’re mean.” “Ungrateful.” “Selfish.” “Your words hurt.” “You have no right…”
——————-Reality Check——————-
The idea that boundaries are dangerous is the only thing in life that everyone must learn to accept, and then accept to unlearn.
Boundaries are your right. If you don’t exercise your rights, they will disappear. That is the reason we take our 15-minute lunch breaks, decline sex when we are not interested, and vote. These are vital boundaries fought for you by countless generations of people who found themselves under a tyrannical employer, society, or government.
Your rights as a person include safety, privacy, freedom from torture and exploitation, and equality under the law. If you ever feel like these rights are being violated, you owe it to yourself and the next generation to speak up in a calm, assertive manner, and state your case. Boundaries may be uncomfortable, but they are not dangerous. The absence of boundaries is dangerous.