Will Boundaries Improve My Relationships, or Leave Me Lonelier?

Will Boundaries Improve My Relationships, or Leave Me Lonelier?

Healthy boundaries tend to deepen and transform our relationships, although the transition can bring a time of feeling more alone whilst those relationships shift and settle. What we have without boundaries is rarely real closeness, rather it is an inner exhaustion and a slow resentment, and beneath both, as an undercurrent we may barely notice, a hidden loneliness... the loneliness of being the one who meets everyone and the world’s demands whilst rarely being met yourself. This loneliness very often grows from what is called self-abandonment, where we leave ourselves, quietly and over many years, in order to keep others close, so that the fear of becoming lonely through a boundary is often the fear of something we are already living. Therefore, understanding the difference between being alone and being lonely, and between a boundary and a wall, can ease much of this fear, allowing a boundary to become a way of coming home to ourselves whilst staying in relationship.

Is being alone the same as being lonely?

When women ask me about boundaries and the feeling of loneliness, I notice that two very different experiences are often mixed up together in this question, for being alone and being lonely are different. The social neuroscientist John Cacioppo, who spent much of his career studying loneliness, described it as perceived social isolation, meaning that it lives in how connected we feel internally rather than in how many people surround us, so that we can live a fairly solitary life without feeling lonely, or have a full social life and feel lonely nevertheless.
Carl Jung put it in his own way in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, writing that loneliness “does not come from having no people about one”, but from being unable to share with others the things that feel most important to us. Therefore a boundary may well bring more time alone, at least for a while, however, whether it brings loneliness is a different story altogether... and the answer has far more to do with our relationship within ourselves than with the number of people around us.

Were you lonely before you set a single boundary?

In the women I work with, whether in the circles I facilitate or in 1:1 sessions, I see a kind of loneliness over and again, many a-time belonging to the woman who carries the emotional responsibility, or whose always there and  reliable, who listens and holds so much (and it’s draining), also, a woman who shape-shifts into whatever the room needs before anyone has even asked. Very often she’s lost track of what she actually wants or needs, and although her life looks full, with people close to her, she is quietly lonely inside it, since she’s the one meeting everyone whilst rarely being truly met herself. Again, loneliness isn't only the absence of people, it's also the quiet ache of having abandoned ourselves in the presence of others, very often because, somewhere along the way, disappearing was how we learned to stay safe and loved.

The humanistic psychologist Clark Moustakas described something very close to this in his book Loneliness, distinguishing the loneliness that belongs to simply being human from what he called loneliness anxiety, which arises from a gap between who we are and who we pretend to be, and which can leave us feeling alone even in a crowd. Gabor Maté writes about how a child can feel deeply alone even with a loving parent in the room, when that parent is too stressed, depleted or preoccupied to be truly emotionally present, something he calls proximate separation. What I see, in my own life and in the women I sit with, is that we don't leave this behind in childhood, since the ways we learned to cope with it quietly become the ways we relate and love. When reaching for someone brought no real response, we learned to stop reaching, to need less, to read the mood of the room and tend to it, and to become the one who listens and feels out, rather than the one who is heard... and so, as adults, we often find ourselves in friendships, families and partnerships where we give a great deal and ask for very little, drawn to people who are near but not quite available, because that closeness without contact is what love has always felt like. Even when someone does turn towards us, we may not know how to let them in, so we stay busy holding everyone else, surrounded by people and still feeling alone, met by no one because we have forgotten how to… Seen this way, the question turns around, since the boundary is not what creates our loneliness... very often the loneliness is already there and a boundary may be just that, the beginning of its healing.

What did this loneliness feel like for me?

I know this loneliness from the inside out, since as a child I felt extremely lonely, both at home and at school, and as I became an adult the experience followed me even into a crowd of people, where I was included in the conversation and yet felt not connected, as though I were standing just outside the group whilst taking part in it... it felt surface level, even a little performative, because I couldn’t go any deeper, and I longed for a depth I couldn’t even know to name, let alone reach within myself for it. When my daughter was very little I noticed it again, as  experiencing myself as unseen and unsupported, whilst conversations with other mothers turned to how far everybody’s children had come rather than to any real meaning, and later, when I was there for everybody else in my work, one question kept returning: who’s there for me? In my younger years I don’t think I knew who I was, so I couldn’t bring myself into the room, whereas in my later years, I did know, yet I couldn’t share it, for I either felt a block, didn’t know how or because I sensed it would not be received.

Why does a boundary feel as if it could cost us love? 

Belonging…it’s one of our first and most primal needs, and as children we need closeness, touch, care and safety in the presence of others, since these are not  luxuries but the ground our very survival rests on. What can happen, when the truth of who we are is not welcome, is that we learn to protect the connection with our caretakers by losing connection with ourselves…  Hence, we stop trusting our gut and therefore our ‘womb knowing’, we stop expressing our needs and naming our limits, and we stop speaking the truth whenever it might disappoint or unsettle someone. This isn’t any weakness, nor is it a flaw inside us. Why? As a child, we cannot look after ourselves  and therefore will do whatever it takes to keep the relationship intact, even when that relationship is hurtful, cold or lacking in touch.

Gabor Maté describes this as the conflict between two essential needs, attachment and authenticity, explaining that when a child cannot have both, authenticity is what gets sacrificed, because losing attachment would mean losing the very relationships their life depends on. In shamanic traditions we might speak of losing parts of our soul through the wounds we received as children, and I have come to see gathering those pieces back as one of the greatest works of adulthood, learning that we can stay connected to ourselves and remain in relationship, and that love does not require our disappearance. Therefore the fear that a boundary will cost us love is very often an old alarm rather than a prediction, which is a theme I explore in Why Do I Feel So Guilty After Finally Saying No?, and in What Is the Difference Between People-Pleasing and Fawning?, where the body learns that pleasing keeps us safe.

Will I become cold or selfish if I stop people-pleasing?

Let’s have  a deeper look, since it’s possible to become colder, although what makes us cold isn’t a boundary but a wall we may build within ourselves for protection. After years of having no boundaries at all, many of us flip from one extreme to the other, from giving ourselves away to everyone to letting no one in, and Pia Mellody, in Facing Codependence, she describes exactly this pendulum swing, between having no boundaries and building walls of anger, silence or withdrawal that keeps everyone out alike. Thus, the wall is not the healing of our people-pleasing so much as the same wound wearing a different guise.
The wall often has a voice of its own, saying something like  “I don’t need anybody” or “I don’t care”, and it can feel like strength also even like relief for a while after so many years of being too available to everyone... However, it carries its own price, since it can harden into isolation, cynicism, and into a numbness that may be mistaken for goodness, wisdom, but which leaves us just as lonely as before …. only now behind a different sort of door.
In my own teachings I work with the image of the Desert Wanderer, the woman who emerges after a long descent and many challenges with her boundaries clear and rooted, whose heart is open and whose love is fierce, meaning that she holds compassion without abandoning herself. However, the wall, with its “I need no one”, is her shadow, the place she can fall into when the old hurt has not yet been felt, acknowledged and grieved.
What matters most, I find, is to keep the heart open, so that it does not close up and fill up with bitterness or resentment. Therefore it is important to be conscious of whether what we are building leaves room for warmth, a willingness to repair and being reached, or whether it simply keeps everyone at a distance. A boundary says where I begin and end whilst keeping the door to relationship and life open, whereas a wall closes the door altogether… and in my work I often notice the difference showing itself in the body, as a little more space and ease with a boundary, once the first fear of it has passed (in the beginning it can be quite uncomfortable), or a familiar bracing and hardening with a wall.
Very often, a boundary is not a turning away at all but an act of love, because we set it due to the fact we do care about the person enough to want the relationship to continue, in honestly and without resentment quietly building beneath it. The therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab has said, the purpose of a boundary is to stay connected rather than to end the relationship, whereas a wall is what we build when we have stopped hoping that it can.

What happens to my relationships when I begin?

When we begin to hold our boundaries, some relationships do deepen, whilst on the flip side some people react badly at first and then come round, some relationships quietly rearrange themselves, and some do end. The psychologist Harriet Lerner, in The Dance of Anger, describes how any change in an old pattern tends to bring a “change back!” reaction, pressure from others, and from within ourselves, to return to the familiar steps, which is why the first response to a boundary is so often not the last. On my own road to setting boundaries, I have discovered that a main purpose of a boundary is to stay connected rather than to end the relationship, so that we can be in it in a healthier and truer way… and in my experience that is often what happens, although not always straight away.

Much of the advice online says that anybody who walks away when you set a boundary was never good for you anyway, however I see that a little differently, since some endings are, yes, a relief for us, whilst others are a real loss that truly needs grieving, even though the boundary was right... and so very often relief and grief arrive together. The Desert Wanderer can hold paradox in exactly this way: “I love you and I cannot stay”, or “This hurts and it is right”, and allowing ourselves to grieve what changes, rather 

There’s one situation worth talking about, since the person on the other side of your boundary may show narcissistic patterns, such as rage, criticism or calling you selfish, or other forms like, covert aggression, such as punishing through guilt, silence, sulking or withdrawal, and here what matters is not the label but the behaviour. In such relationships the “change back!” often comes as an escalation, which behavioural psychology calls an extinction burst, where an old way of getting what they want intensifies once it stops working, before it eventually lessens, provided the boundary is held consistently. The clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, author of It’s Not You, describes how often boundaries in such relationships are met with exactly these reactions, which can make this one of the hardest and loneliest stretches of all, since you may be made to feel that you are the cold one.

A boundary will not change who the person is, as she also observes, though it can change what they are able to do to you, which is why holding it steadily protects you from being taken advantage of or hurt. When you cannot simply leave, because you share children, care for a parent or depend on your work, this may mean keeping communication practical and in writing, and no longer explaining or defending yourself... and since holding your ground alone is not always enough, please read the note on support and safety further down this page, and what I write about this in How Did You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?, whilst I will explore narcissistic relationships more fully in a coming blog.

What does a boundary look like that keeps me connected?

The attitude I find helpful to keep in mind isn’t “How do I win?”, nor “How do I keep everybody comfortable?”, but rather “How do I remain connected to myself whilst remaining in relationship with the people around me?” Moreover, remembering our purpose matters more in importance, because knowing the why we are entering a conversation, or even a relationship, gives us direction and keeps us on course… something to return to when emotions rise, and in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy the psychologist Marsha Linehan asks people to clarify beforehand what they most want, whether a particular outcome, the relationship itself, or their own self-respect. My mother always told me to keep my honour, and I have come to understand that this is exactly what self-respect asks of us, so that holding our purpose in mind becomes an anchor, and we are less easily pulled back into pleasing or into a fight.

When our truth has no voice, it doesn’t simply disappear, since it either comes out sideways, as resentment, irritability or a sharpness we later regret, or it turns inward, into numbness, exhaustion and self-criticism, which I write about more fully in Why Do I Feel Resentful After Saying Yes?. A boundary that keeps us connected lets that fire speak in truth, in a clear no or an honest “this doesn’t work for me”, before it has to burn down the wrong house or burn us from the inside.

How does belonging to ourselves change our relationships?

The first belonging is with ourselves, and when we are hard on ourselves rather than on others, give to others and not to ourselves, and listen to everyone except ourselves, we leave ourselves out of the picture, and therefore, that sadness, bitterness, hollowness or numbness quietly follows suit. When a woman begins to belong to herself on the inside and lets her own inner world matter, it changes everything on the outside, including how she mothers, how she loves, how she shares her work and how she shows up in her friendships... which is why belonging to ourselves is not a retreat from relationship but the ground that real relationship grows from.

We cannot force ourselves into this belonging through harsh willpower, however, because it was once an ingenious way to get through…  leaving ourselves was once a brilliant way to survive, and the young parts of us that learned it still believe that being fully ourselves will cost us love. Therefore the way home is a gentler one, turning inward with curiosity and self-compassion, and slowly mothering those frightened young parts, until they begin to trust that we will not abandon them again.

How did I come home to myself?

What changed came slowly, and it began with something I had avoided for years, staying at home with myself long enough to see and feel what was really in there... which was fear, terror and shame. I didn’t find my way through it alone though, since in my different therapy training, and later in well-held circles, I discovered my depth in relation with others, where we went into the inner world together, and moving through sadness or vulnerability side by side became the very thing that brought me into connection with myself in order to make set the boundaries and make connections with others. 

When perimenopause pulled me back from the world, I was more alone than I had ever been, and yet I did not experience being lonely at all. I feel very at home in myself now, and I enjoy my own company rather than feeling that something is missing, noticing my own rhythm, which is delicious, especially after being pulled away from it for so long. I no longer feel that there’s something wrong with me, which has brought into a homecoming even with my shame, so that sitting here at home with my cat and my dog, I am alone without feeling left out, which would not have been possible years ago.

Ways forward

The road back begins with something simple, though not so easy, which is, noticing and listening to what is happening inside you and letting it matter. You might take a few minutes in the morning or evening to ask yourself whether you are tending to your own inner life, your needs, desires, creativity and dreams, or whether the outer world has been taking up too much space and asking too much of you.

It can also help to take yourself for a walk alone, without a podcast, music or phone, until your breath feels grounded, and then to ask yourself gently, without judgement:

• Where have I been giving my energy away?
• Where have I been keeping the peace at the cost of myself?
• Where have I swallowed a no I needed to say, or held back a yes I longed to give?
• What truth have I not yet allowed to have a voice?
• What is one direction, or one small action, I can take now?

Being with our own quiet matters more than we might expect, since when we first remove the outer noise, what rises is often not peace but emptiness, and Gabor Maté describes how such emptiness can grow from early emotional needs that went unmet, which we then spend years trying to fill with busyness and doing. This is where being alone and being lonely can feel almost the same, though in my own experience, staying with that emptiness with compassionate curiosity, rather than rushing to fill it, is what slowly allowed it to become a quiet beingness I could rest in.

Seeking out spaces where the inner world is welcome, a trusted friend, a therapist or a well-held circle (not every circle is well held), can show us that depth with others is possible, and that we no longer have to perform or take on roles in order to belong. You don’t need to do any of this quickly, since belonging to yourself grows at a pace your body and being can trust, and very often it begins with something as small as pausing before you answer, which is how I learned to find my own yes and no, as I describe in How Did You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?.

When to seek support

When loneliness feels heavy, persistent or hard to bear, or when low mood or exhaustion have stayed with you for weeks, your GP or huisarts is a good place to begin, and exploring this with a trained professional or therapist can make a real difference, since some feelings only become safe to feel when somebody holds them first with us with care and without judgement. It’s also worth remembering that not all loneliness comes from leaving ourselves, since some of it comes from real isolation, from living far from home, from loss or from circumstance, and in that case the longing for connection is a healthy signal which asks us to reach out, rather than a sign that something is wrong with us.

NOTE: When a boundary is met with anger, coldness, punishment or threats, or when you are being hurt, threatened or controlled, you can call Veilig Thuis (Safe at Home) on 0800 2000, free, day and night and anonymously if you wish, or 112 when you are in immediate danger. I describe the signs of a relationship where your no is not safe more fully in How Did You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?.

Questions and answers

No, although they are quite related, being alone is a physical state whilst loneliness is a feeling of disconnection, therefore we can be alone without feeling lonely, and feel lonely even when surrounded by people.

Is it normal to feel lonely after setting boundaries?
Yes, it’s quite common to feel more alone for a while as relationships shift and settle and this time phase usually eases as the relationships that can hold your truth deepen and new, more reciprocal connections have time and room to grow.

Will I lose friends if I stop people-pleasing?
Well, some relationships may change or end, whilst many others become closer, deeper and more real, since a boundary’s purpose is to make connection possible in a healthier way rather than to push people away.

Will I become cold or selfish if I set boundaries?
A boundary is not selfish, although it could harden into a wall when it comes from our older hurts rather than from belonging to yourself, therefore, it’s worth noticing whether you still leave room for warmth, repair and being reached.

What is the difference between a boundary and a wall?
A boundary shows where you begin and end whilst keeping the door to relationship open, whereas a wall, is often built from anger, silence or withdrawal, keeps everyone out alike and tends to deepen loneliness rather than ease it.

Why do I feel lonely even though I’m never alone?
This kind of loneliness often comes from shape-shifting to meet everyone else’s needs whilst your own truth that goes unspoken, so that people are close to and only know the version of you that you present rather than to inner you, which can leave you lonely in the middle of a full life.

What is attachment versus authenticity?
Attachment versus authenticity is Gabor Maté’s description of a conflict between two essential needs, closeness with others and being true to ourselves, in which a child who cannot have both will usually gives up authenticity in order to keep the relationships that they depend on.

What is self-abandonment?
Self-abandonment describes the pattern of leaving our own feelings, needs and truths behind in order to keep others close or comfortable and it is very often a survival strategy learned in childhood rather than a flaw in who we are.

A gentle invitation

Belonging to yourself is rarely a single moment of insight, but rather a slow homecoming that so often begins in the company of others who can truly meet us without our having to perform, and it is the work I love sharing with women, in 1:1 sessions, where we can meet the old fear beneath a boundary at a pace your body can trust, and in the NewMoon Women’s Circle at De Roos, where women experience depth together and discover that being truly met is possible.

With tenderness and truth,
Wen-Wei

Wen-Wei Ong is the founder of Rest2Flow, a trauma-informed practitioner and mentor for women in Amsterdam and online, working with somatic and body-based practice, depth-oriented enquiry, hypnotherapeutic and guided imagery work, ritual and cyclical wisdom.