Setting Boundaries vs. Making Requests

Hey gang! 👋

Here’s your weekly dose of Pillow Talk - your 5(ish) minute read on how to have a healthy, confident and pleasurable life. Today we’re gonna take a look at the 3 types of boundaries and the difference between setting a boundary 🙅‍♀️ versus making a request 🙋‍♀️.

What are Boundaries?

Boundaries are like your own personal rules of engagement. They're the lines you draw to protect your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Think of them as a kind of psychological immune system – they keep the good stuff in and the not-so-good stuff out.

Your boundaries can be porous, rigid or healthy. Having porous boundaries basically means you don’t have any. They look like too much closeness via oversharing, justifying, people-pleasing, co-depending, enmeshing, and not saying no.

Rigid boundaries are the opposite. They’re the guard you put up and the distance you keep from others. They look like under-sharing, staying away from others, avoiding vulnerability, having lots of rules, and often saying no.

Then we’ve got healthy boundaries. These are the goodies that sit between being too porous and too rigid. They look like trusting yourself and trusting others, knowing when and what to share (and when and what not to), being comfortable saying either yes or no depending on your needs, and not getting defensive.

Why do Healthy Boundaries Matter?

Setting healthy boundaries isn’t selfish, it’s self-care. Without healthy boundaries it’s super easy to feel depleted, resentful, angry, tired – you get the gist. Not having boundaries also goes hand-in-hand with anxiety, depression and burnout.

In sex and romantic relationships, a lack of healthy boundaries will send you straight to fighting, dysfunction, and breakdown.

If too porous, we don’t set any limits and power imbalances often play out. If too rigid, we set unrealistic limits that our partners will never meet.

We also do a lot of assuming rather than contracting. We assume our partners know what the limits are and we get pissed off if our expectations aren’t met.

Whilst they might not sound sexy, healthy boundaries are about as sexy as it gets. We’re more likely to have great sex and great relationships when we have clarity, confidence, and feel in command of our lives. Boundaries help us to do just that.

Here are some examples:

Physical Boundaries: These include things like expressing comfort levels with different sexual activities, preferences, or practices. For instance, saying "I'm not comfortable having anal" or "I won’t discuss our sex life with you if you’re going to share the details of our conversation with others.”

Emotional Boundaries: These involve setting limits on how much emotional energy you can devote. A boundary could be saying, "I need some space to myself to digest before I respond" or "I’m going to schedule quality time in for us to spend together before we have sex."

Digital Boundaries: These are a little less front of mind but are important nonetheless. They include contracting preferences regarding things like communication frequency, social media interactions, sharing of personal information, or online behaviours. Some examples might be… “I will not always reply to your messages right away” or “I’m going to put our phones in the other room so we don’t check them during dinner.”

Setting a Boundary vs. Making a Request

A boundary is a firm line – a declaration of what you need to feel secure and respected in your relationship(s). It’s something you do that requires the other person to do nothing. This is different to a request, which is where you ask the other person to do something for you.

Real quick example.

A request is saying something like, “I’d like for us to have more intimacy” or “I don’t like kissing with that much tongue, can you use less?”

A boundary would be rephrasing this as, “I’m going to set aside 15 minutes each night to ask you about your day and give you some cuddles” or “I really enjoy kissing each other. Let me show you how I like it” (followed by demonstrating the type of kiss you’d like).

Subtle but important difference. You’re not setting a boundary if you’re asking the other person to do something, you’re making a request. Setting a boundary is on you and it requires you to both communicate it and action it.

1 Thing to Try This Week

Set 3 boundaries (and make sure they’re not requests). These can be with others or with yourself. Make sure you say ‘em out loud and then follow up on the behaviour you need to put it into action.

2 Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Where do I feel overwhelmed and/or resentful in my life? Am I setting healthy boundaries around these areas?

2. When it comes to sex and intimacy, what are my non-negotiables? Have I explicitly communicated these with my partner(s)?

3 Recommended Resources

📚 Drama Free by Nedra Glover Tawwab (also for those that missed it, her first book, which I’ve suggested before – Set Boundaries, Find Peace)

🎧 Unlocking Us: The Gifts of Imperfection – a podcast Brené Brown

📚 Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No by Cloud and Townsend

Happy rest of week y’all!

xx Anna from Ferly

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