Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

by Lysa TerKeurst

When we dare to be so very known, we risk being so very hurt.

When we dare to be so very hopeful, we risk being so very disappointed.

When we dare to be so very giving, we risk being so very taken advantage of. And when we dare to unnaturally change into what someone else needs,...

To love and be loved is to be enveloped in the safest feeling I’ve ever known. To cause hurt and be hurt is to be crushed with t...

We set boundaries so we know what to do when we very much want to love those around us really well without losing ourselves in the process. Good boundaries help us preserve the love within us even when some relationships become unsustainable and we must accept the reality of a goodbye.

But we can’t enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can’t tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can’t pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it’s really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.

Love must be honest. Love must be safe. Love must seek each person’s highest good. And love must honor God to experience the fullness and the freedom of the sweetest connection between two humans.

Love is not dishonorable. Love does not justify wrongs to enable selfishness. Love does not celebrate evil. Love requires truth. Love leads to honor, kindness, and compassion.

Boundaries protect the right kind of love and help prevent dysfunction from destroying that love. Boundaries help us say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, and establish what is and isn’t acceptable. Love should be what draws us together not what tears us apart.

Setting boundaries from a place of anger and bitterness will only lead to control and manipulation. Setting boundaries as a punishment will only serve to imprison us. But setting boundaries from a place of love provides an opportunity for relationships to grow deeply because true connection thrives within the safety of health and honesty.

I ask that You guide me and help me to walk in Your ways, not mine. Show me how to approach my closest relationships with both compassion and a healthy commitment to reality so I am in alignment with You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

when I didn’t understand addictions. I didn’t understand that good people can do really bad things when addictions take over. I thought I was going crazy.

I had given every bit of love and forgiveness I knew to give, and it wasn’t enough. Love given is wildly beautiful. Love received is wildly fulfilling. But for love to thrive as true and lasting, it must be within the safety of trust. Without trust, love will die. So, I had to say it: “You cannot build trust that keeps getting broken.”

I now believe we must honor what honors God. And in doing so, we must not confuse the good commands to love and forgive with the bad realities of enabling and covering up things that are not honoring to God. When someone’s dishonorable actions beg us not to stay, this should give us serious pause.

My counselor, Jim Cress, once held up a pillow in between my face and his own. He said, “When you are speaking to this person, everything you say must pass through the addictions first. You aren’t talking to the person you love.”

I knew Jim was right. I kept trying to have a conversation with the irrationality of substances that could only allow me to be either the enabler or the enemy. The enabler will be manipulated. The enemy will be lied to. Either way, there is no love in manipulations and lies. Love breathes the oxygen of trust. Love stru...

The seduction of his many addictions had so captured him that I now knew I wasn’t really talking to the man I loved. His eyes were the same shape I’d looked in countless times, but his truest self wasn’t there. He could not see what I was seeing. He would not hear what I was saying. Though we were only a few feet apart, there was a chasm between us.

To admit that would force me to make the choice to once again turn this man I loved over to his choices. To stop the madness, I would have to let go of his hand. Let go of what had been such a big part of my life. Stop myself from stepping in to rescue him over and over. And then remind myself to breathe a thousand painful and fearful breaths every single day. I knew at some point I would stare at my face in the mirror and wonder, But what if I rescued him this time and it finally turned everything around? Or what if I don’t rescue him and something terrible happens? Will I regret this for the rest of my life? Is there anything else I can do?

And it felt like a shameful defeat to me. It’s hard to own what you don’t choose. I knew I shouldn’t own the repercussions of addictions that weren’t mine. But when your life is so tightly woven into a collective fabric of a close relationship, it can be excruciatingly maddening to watch someone choose things you know are destructive. Though their choices are their own, the consequences have an impact on everyone who loves them, much like exploding hand grenades. You don’t have to be the one to pull the pin to be deeply devastated by the resulting shrapnel.

You can’t reason with a person caught in the addiction cycle any more than you can try to talk a live grenade out of exploding. When the pin is pulled a chain of events is set off that creates destruction. Most people struggling with addictions will have irrational justifications that will never make sense. They don’t factor in others. They truly think their choices only affect them. They don’t feel your heartbreak. They don’t want to see your tears. They will tell you that the blue sky is orange . . . that the orange car is green . . . that their glass is full of one thing when you absolutely know it’s something else. And when their lies hit you without even a twitch of remorse from them, you wonder if any truth exists between you at all.

If you go with what they say, you’ll become more and more convinced you’re the problem. If you oppose what they say, they will make sure you feel you are de...

it’s not unchristian to set these healthy parameters. It’s not unchristian to require people to treat you in healthy ways.

It’s not unchristian to call wrong things wrong and hurtful things hurtful. We can do it all with honor, kindness, and love, but we have to know how to spot dysfunction, what to do about it, and when to recognize it’s no longer reasonable or safe to stay in some relationships.

I’ve come to understand that boundaries aren’t a method to perfect but rather an opportunity to protect what God intended for relationships.

This will require you to go into your past to work on what’s still not healed, while also staying grounded. Stop. Take a breath and say, “I know what’s going on here. I’ve been here before. I’m not in immediate danger. There is a way out and I can seek help. I can let this feeling inform me, but I don’t have to spiral into panic.”

The real issue was I started to resent the amount of emotional access to my life I had given to her.

that word access. It’s a big one. It’s especially big if we are knee deep in a close relationship and we start feeling unheard, unsafe, uncared for, taken advantage of, or made to pay consequences for choices that we had no control over.

We don’t want to get so consumed with the pain and chaos of unhealthy relationship patterns that we become a carrier of human hurt rather than a conduit of God’s love.

Love can be unconditional but relational access never should be.

God loves us but He has established that sin causes separation from Him. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were no longer given the same kind of access. What started out as a lot of access to God, with one ...

am more familiar with sin but not as much with iniquity. As I studied this, I discovered iniquity points to the character or motivation of the action more than the action itself. So, it’s not just what someone does or doesn’t do; it’s what her actions represent. I think this is where things can get so confusing when we know something someone is doing is hurtful to us, but we can’t pinpoint it as sin. It may even contribute to our relationship feeling a little “off”—like something isn’t quite right. That’s why I’m so grateful the Bible also addresses iniquity, which gets into the nuances of hurtful issues within human relationships that don’t clearly point to sin. Reread the verses above and notice that both sin and iniquity have consequences that change the access God allows in His relationships. What we are looking for are patterns of hurtful and harmful behavior. A hurtful statement can be called a mistake. But a repeated pattern of hurtful statements or uncaring attitudes or even unjust expectations is much more than a mistake. These patterns are misuses of the purposes of a relationship. Why is this so crucial to understand? Because unchecked misuse of a relationship can quickly turn into abuse in a relationship.

A recent Christianity.com article I came across sums up this dangerous progression so well: “Continued iniquity leads to irregular desires, which leads to a degenerate mind.

Unchecked misuse of a relationship can quickly turn into abuse in a relationship.

Like God, we must require from people the responsibility necessary to grant the amount of access we allow them to have in our lives. Too much access without the correct responsibility is detrimental.

The mistake I’ve made is trying to get the other person to increase their responsibility. And if they refuse, I’ve just felt so stuck.

Now, instead of feeling stuck because I can’t control the choices of the other person, I take control of reducing the access to the level of responsibility they are capable of. That solution is called a boundary.

People who are irresponsible with our hearts should not be granted great access to our hearts. And the same is true for all other kinds of access as well—physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial.

Bottom line: God established boundaries to protect intimacy, not decimate it. And we should do the same. How to do this appropriately is what this entire message is about.

And in the end, we will be more equipped and eager to love others without betraying ourselves in the process. That’s the best way to honor God’s design for love. And that’s really what all this is about.

A note from Jim on access Allowing someone access without accountability will eventually lead to abandonment. If I give you unlimited access to me and there’s no accountability, either I’m going to leave the relationship, or you will. If someone perpetually acts out, that person has abandoned the relationship. Remember: If you don’t have clear rules—if you don’t set boundaries for the relationship—then you’ll be ruled by the other person. You just may not know it.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. (Proverbs 4:23)

Because of the Fall (Gen. 2–3), all of us have some level of distortion or dysfunction. We do not perceive, think, feel, or behave in the healthiest way possible at all times.

Often, our lack of self-awareness collide with the other person’s lack of self-awareness, and we have a choice to make. We can use this conflict to make us more aware of our issues or totally ignore what the other person is saying and stay wrongly convinced that this will get better on its own. But it won’t. Appropriately addressing the issue is healthy. Ignoring the issue increases the likelihood of dysfunction.

In a relationship when truth is manipulated, denied, or partially omitted for the sake of covering up behaviors that should be addressed, dysfunctions may not just be difficult, they may become destructive. We then run the risk of a pattern of wrongs being tolerated as acceptable, because over time they start to feel less alarming, more acceptable, and eventually our version of “normal.”

Us for sure

But worst of all, I have betrayed myself by knowing something was off in a relationship but letting that person convince me otherwise.

This revealed for me personally that I had some codependent tendencies I hadn’t realized. In other words, if she wasn’t okay with me, I was having a hard time being okay with me.

Sometimes my boundaries don’t work. And it’s because of me. Here’s why:

have been more concerned with tending to other people’s needs to the point I don’t always know what I need.

I know all this. And still, sometimes I can so desperately want things to be better that I try to reframe reality and convince myself that the person has changed when they haven’t. My confusion or exhaustion, or my compassion, can make me want to give in. Even when the reality of life screams no. Even when I know I’m rescuing, and I shouldn’t be. Even when it hurts me. Even when it’s unhealthy for me. Even when, based on past experiences, I know saying yes in the short term will cause extremely hard dynamics in the long term. Still, I find myself giving in.

He loves us unconditionally and He will not tolerate our sin. Both are true with God and both can be true in our relationships as well. God had grace but His grace was there to lead people to better behavior, not to enable bad behavior. And the same should be true of our grace as well.