All healthy marriages have healthy boundaries. Don’t think boundaries in marriage are just limiting and restricting. Healthy boundaries can make couples deeply understand one thing: rules must be followed for everyone’s sake, and a premise of enjoying the freedom to do what we want in our marriage is to ensure to honor our and our spouse’s needs and values.
Next, let’s talk about must-have boundaries in marriage:
1 Be Honest with each other:
There are never good reasons for a spouse to keep a secret from the other one, whether they are about feelings, plans, financial situations, or past relationships. For a long-term relationship to thrive, honesty between spouses is required.
We all keep deep, dark, or embarrassing secrets; some of our secrets are locked within our hearts; we would not like to give hints about them or talk about them, and we lock them away until one day we can truly trust someone. To encourage your spouse’s honesty, it is important to let your spouse feel that he/she can always rely on you to keep his/her secrets. Especially if your spouse tells you something secret that you dislike, you should not blow up; instead, you still should let him/her rest assure that you will not reveal/disclose the secret.
2 Don’t ignore each other:
This boundary seems like a no-brainer; but tragically, a spouse may ignore the other one from time to time; a spouse may give the other one the silent treatment when he/she doesn’t get his/her way. Or a spouse may just use the silent treatment as a way of avoiding talking about difficult marital issues… Whatever the motivation is, a couple should not emotionally shut the other one out of his/her life. Otherwise, intimacy will fade in a marriage over time; and that may leave a spouse open to entertaining unhealthy thoughts – whether for an emotionally distant spouse or a spouse who feels ignored, if they feel disconnected in the relationship for a long period, they may be tempted to seek deep emotional connection outside the relationship.
Therefore, a spouse should keep communication lines with the other one open. In particular, when a spouse doesn’t get along well with the other one, they still need to occasionally ask each other about various issues in married life; and if a spouse is still willing to make eye contact and open up about what he/she is thinking and feeling, the other spouse can feel respected and loved. That helps heal a problematic relationship.
3 Don’t let other people directly get involved in your dispute or argument:
Whenever you and your spouse have an intense argument or dispute about a serious or critical issue in your marriage, you two need to work hard together on addressing it. Please remember, for married couples, a process of solving a stubborn problem in a marriage can be a hard process of changing thoughts and strategies.
Anyway, no matter how frustrated and unsatisfied you are with an argument/dispute in your marriage, you do not have to get other people involved in it. Surely, this does not mean that you can not have people in your life that you can talk to about your marital problems; anytime you can share your feelings and thoughts with someone you deeply trust, but you need to be careful with how to talk about your spouse in front of other people (especially your family members and intimate friends); regardless of the situation, you should not belittle your spouse.
Understandably, sometimes you are tempted to say something negative about your spouse when chatting with your friends or family members. But after all, they are just an outsider, they don’t know all the details of what actually happened in your marriage, and usually, your opinion is also flawed and prejudiced. Probably they can only hear one side of the story, so they can hardly remain indifferent in a dispute/argument between the two of you. Therefore, if you let other people directly intervene in a dispute/argument between you and your spouse, things will only get worse and more complicated; and probably, your spouse will be inclined to believe that your friends or family members are always on your side, whether your viewpoint is reasonable or not; in the aftermath of the dispute or argument, your spouse will hold a grudge against them.
Even the best judge can fail to fairly judge domestic affairs, not to mention a spouse’s friends or family members.
4 Fight fairly to resolve conflict:
Inevitably, every married couple disagrees over an issue at some point; and married couples have conflict and argue at times.
Anyway, it is better to go ahead and talk it through than to hold it inside the heart and let it fester. But if a spouse uses harsh language, speak in a nasty tone, scream and shout at the other one when dealing with marital conflict, it is unacceptable for the other spouse because those words can hurt the other spouse emotionally; and such a form of verbal abuse tends to inflame conflict. For example, when you strongly disagree with your spouse’s opinion, if you give him/her a severe tongue-lashing in the heat of the moment, it can interrupt his/her thinking process suddenly, and he/she will focus on your negative emotions that you have vented; and what is worse, he/she will remember those harsh words that you have said to him/her; then the conflict can easily escalate later.
Nobody can avoid conflict in their marriage, and what we can do is to learn how to manage conflict safely and prevent it from getting heated. No doubt, when both spouses accept positive, common ground rules for dealing with marital conflict, resolutions become more likely.
Therefore, every couple needs a way to effectively manage conflict and the feelings that come with it. By creating and maintaining boundaries for a fair fight that both spouses agree to, it ensures that future disagreements can have a foundation of honor and respect.
If you want to learn more about how to set fair fighting ground rules and deal with your anger, you might go on to read the posts below:
How to fight fair with your spouse – Fight in a healthy way.
How to manage anger in marriage – Deal with your & your spouse’s anger.
5 Be assertive, and direct about your desires, wants, and needs:
Passive aggression is an unhealthy behavior pattern that a spouse communicates his/her negative feelings through subtle actions instead of directly expressing those feelings. In married life, it has been fairly widespread. And for a passive-aggressive spouse, there is an obvious mismatch between what he/she does and what he/she says. For example, a passive-aggressive spouse wants his/her spouse to do something for him/her, but he/she says something opposite, like “It doesn’t matter!”, “I’m fine!”, “I don’t mind!”; but afterward, he/she conveys a vague sense of annoyance and displeasure with the situation where he/she has declined to open up about what he/she wants.
A passive-aggressive spouse’s essential feature is his/her innate annoyance and bitterness with his/her spouse’s requests; generally, this is conveyed by “forgetting” or not undertaking previously agreed-upon tasks. Furthermore, passive-aggressive behavior is also often characterized by frequent complaints of feeling unloved, unappreciated, undervalued, and not respected. Such a problematic behavior pattern is in complete antithesis to a passive-aggressive spouse’s desires, needs, and wants; as we all know, the more unmet needs of a spouse there are, the more likely he/she is to feel unhappy and unsatisfied in his/her married life.
Moreover, a spouse’s passive-aggressive behavior also often makes the other one feel confused and frustrated because the other one may feel difficult to understand the mind behind the passive-aggressive behavior.
Therefore, if you or your spouse is occasionally passive-aggressive in the relationship, you need to set a boundary that requires one party to simply say “no” when the party means “no” and to simply say “yes” when the party means “yes”.
For more tips, you might go on to read the post below:
8 tips on how to deal with a passive-aggressive spouse.
How to communicate your boundaries:
When you are communicating your boundaries with your partner, don’t assume that he/she always can read your mind about what is important to you; and good communication tricks can help develop a healthy dialogue about your needs and boundaries.
And here are some practical suggestions on how to communicate your boundaries:
- Whether your boundary is crossed intentionally or unintentionally, you should speak in a gentle tone when reminding your spouse.
- If a situation is anticipated to be difficult, you should prepare yourself mentally on how to tell your spouse about your limits and allowances in a more loving and respectful way.
- If possible, talk about those important things that you mind when you get along well with your spouse, instead of letting them out all of a sudden when you have a hard time with your spouse.
- Once you have identified your boundaries, use clear language when you are discussing with your spouse; for instance, when you feel the need to protect your specific boundaries, you might directly tell him, ”Please don’t …”, “I’m not … when you…”
- Set clear consequences: after you and your spouse have already discussed your boundaries – those “musts” and “must nots” your marriage needs to be successful, then you should be clear about what the serious consequences will be if your boundaries are not respected. For example, when you and your spouse reach an agreement that you two should not raise voices during an argument, you should also discuss with him/her how to deal with the consequence of his/her yelling during an argument– the argument will be paused instantly, and you will have the right to walk away alone.
The final word:
The practice of setting and maintaining healthy boundaries is conducive to developing a partnership that a married couple values and respects each other. Boundaries in marriage may appear restrictive, but they promote clarity, security, and protection. When a couple respects and honors each other’s boundaries in their marriage, they feel comfortable, develop positive self-esteem, and avoid a lot of painful consequences.
For more marriage-saving tips, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
For more tips, you might go on to read the posts below:
How to have a long lasting happy marriage.
Top common challenges in marriage – How to overcome them.
What should you do when your marriage is on the rocks?
How to resolve power struggle in marriage – How to move forward.
How to stop divorce and save your marriage – 7 marriage saving tips.