'Boundaries' as a Front for Coercive Control

A quick favor before we begin: If you haven’t yet filled in my new survey on waiting in relationships please do so here. Thank you!

One of the more fascinating developments in contemporary relationship discourse is the extent to which the language of therapy has become a language of politics while continuing to present itself as something above politics. Concepts such as boundaries, healing, emotional safety, accountability, attachment, and trauma are now invoked far beyond clinical or therapeutic contexts.

They shape the way people discuss friendships, workplaces, families, and intimate relationships. They structure online debates. They are deployed to explain interpersonal conflicts and justify personal decisions. Increasingly, they function as a moral vocabulary through which people understand themselves and others.

This is not, in itself, a bad thing. Few would argue that our culture suffers from an excess of emotional literacy. The popularization of therapeutic concepts has given many people language for experiences that were once difficult to articulate. It has helped survivors identify abuse, encouraged conversations about mental health and legitimized forms of suffering that were previously dismissed or ignored.

Yet every political vocabulary carries its own distortions, and therapeutic language is no exception. Once concepts leave the contexts in which they were developed and enter popular culture, they acquire new functions. They become available for reinterpretation, manipulation, and strategic use.

The same language that can help people recognize domination can also become a remarkably effective way of obscuring it. The contemporary discourse of men around boundaries offers a striking example of this phenomenon.

• Instead of saying, “I don’t want you to have male friends,” someone says, “My boundary is that I won’t date women who have close male friendships.”

• Instead of saying, “I don’t want you posting pictures of yourself,” someone says, “My boundary is that I need a partner who respects the sanctity of our relationship.”

• Instead of saying, “I want access to your whereabouts and communications,” someone invokes “reassurance,” “transparency,” “attachment wounds,” or “relationship safety.”

• Or, as Y.L. Wolfe recently reported, a man might say ‘my boundary is that I don’t want to date someone I’m not having sex with, so if you agree to go on a date with me, you need to acknowledge that you are also consenting to sex’.

• Or, as Jonah Hill did with his ex-partner Sarah Brady, men might repackage their coercive control tendencies as boundaries and go as far as threatening her entire career just to soothe that gnawing hole of insecurity and need for control.

I can already anticipate the question: “Are you saying that men can’t have boundaries?” No, that’s not what I’m saying.

Here is how it works and how you can distinguish a genuine boundary from an attempt at coercive control.