Boundaries in Marriage
BOUNDARIES
IN MARRIAGE
Resources by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Boundaries Boundaries Workbook
Boundaries audio
Boundaries curriculum
Boundaries in Dating
Boundaries in Dating Workbook
Boundaries in Dating audio Boundaries in Dating curriculum
Boundaries in Marriage Boundaries in Marriage Workbook
Boundaries in Marriage audio Boundaries in Marriage curriculum
Boundaries with Kids Boundaries with Kids Workbook
Boundaries with Kids audio
Boundaries with Kids curriculum
Changes That Heal (Cloud)
Changes That Heal Workbook (Cloud)
Changes That Heal audio (Cloud)
Hiding from Love (Townsend)
How People Grow
How People Grow Workbook
How People Grow audio
How to Have That Difficult Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding
Making Small Groups Work
Making Small Groups Work audio
The Mom Factor
The Mom Factor Workbook
Raising Great Kids
Raising Great Kids audio
Raising Great Kids for Parents of Preschoolers curriculum
Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of Preschoolers
Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of School-Age Children
Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of Teenagers
Safe People
Safe People Workbook
12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy
BOUNDARIES
IN MARRIAGE
UNDERSTANDING
THE CHOICES
THAT MAKE OR BREAK
LOVING RELATIONSHIPS
DR. HENRY CLOUD & DR. JOHN TOWNSEND
Copyright
Boundaries in Marriage
ePub format
Copyright © 1999 by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
ISBN-13: 978-0-31-031925-2
ISBN-10: 0-310-31924-2
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Attorneys and Counselors, Suite 1000, Literary Agent, Orange, CA
Dedication
To all the couples who, with courage, work
out their boundaries in the service of love.
Contents
Copyright
A Tale of Two Couples
Part 1: Understanding Boundaries
1. What’s a Boundary, Anyway?
2. Applying the Ten Laws of Boundaries to Marriage
3. Setting Boundaries with Yourself
Becoming More Lovable
Part 2: Building Boundaries in Marriage
4. It Takes Two to Make One
5. What You Value Is What You’ll Have
6. Value One
Love of God
7. Value Two
Love of Your Spouse
8. Value Three
Honesty
9. Value Four
Faithfulness
10. Value Five
Compassion and Forgiveness
11. Value Six
Holiness
Part 3: Resolving Conflict in Marriage
12. Three’s a Crowd
Protecting Your Marriage from Intruders
13. Six Kinds of Conflict
14. Resolving Conflict with a Boundary-Loving Spouse
15. Resolving Conflict with a Boundary-Resistant Spouse
Part 4: Misunderstanding Boundaries in Marriage
16. Avoiding the Misuse of Boundaries in Marriage
Conclusion
About the Publisher
A Tale of Two Couples
Recently, I (Dr. Townsend) had two separate dinners with two married couples who are friends of mine. These two couples are in their later years, and each of the couples has been married for more than four decades. They are in what we call the “Golden Years,” the period of marriage in which all the love and work over the years culminate, we hope, in a deep and satisfying connection. However, I was struck by the huge difference between the two couples.
With Harold and Sarah, I enjoyed a buffet dinner where you get a ticket for various parts of the meal and you have to leave the table with your ticket and go get your item. The dinner was winding down; we were ready for dessert. Harold reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his dessert ticket. Tossing it in front of Sarah, he said casually, “Sarah. Dessert.” Not “Please, Sarah, will you get my dessert for me?” And certainly not “Can I get your dessert, honey?” Harold was assuming Sarah would obediently comply with his two-word command.
I didn’t know what to say, so I sat there and watched. Sarah was clearly embarrassed by Harold’s public display of control. She sat there for a couple of seconds, apparently deciding what to do. Then she seemed to gather up her courage and quietly but forcefully said, “Why don’t you get your own dessert?”
Harold looked surprised. Evidently he wasn’t used to her refusing to obey his commands. However, he recovered, made a weak joke about uppity women, and left the table to redeem his ticket. While he was gone, Sarah said to me, “Sorry, I just couldn’t let it go this time, with my friends here.” I felt so sad for Sarah, realizing that her reaction to her husband tonight was the exception rather than the rule. I also realized that, on a deeper level, while Harold and Sarah were legally connected, they were emotionally disconnected. Their hearts were not knit together.
Frank and Julia were different. I was traveling, and they were hosting me. We went to their home after dinner. After a while, it was time for me to return to my hotel, and I needed a ride. Julia, a counselor like me, was primarily responsible for my trip and had been chauffeuring me to various speaking engagements and meetings. So clearly she was the person to take me back.
However, Frank looked at his wife and said, “You look tired, honey. I’ll take John back to his hotel.” I could see the conflict in Julia’s face between her duty to me and her need for rest. Finally, she said, “Okay, thanks.” And Frank drove me to the hotel.
The next day, at the conference, I talked to Julia. I remarked on Frank’s kindness in offering the ride and on her struggle with taking the offer. She said, “It wasn’t always that way. In our twenties, he wouldn’t have offered, and I wouldn’t have taken the offer. But we worked on this issue a lot during those days. I had to put my foot down on some issues, and we almost divorced. It was a difficult period, but it has paid off. We can’t imagine not being each other’s soul mates.” During my time with them, I had observed that Frank’s and Julia’s hearts were knit together, that they were emotionally connected.
Though both couples had many years of marriage experience, each couple’s love and relationship had taken very different turns. Harold and Sarah were unable to love deeply and relate to each other, because Harold controlled Sarah and Sarah allowed him to control her. They had what are called major boundary conflicts, in which one person crosses the lines of responsibility and respect with another. When one person is in control of another, love cannot grow deep
ly and fully, as there is no freedom.
Frank and Julia could have very likely ended up the same way. From what I could tell, they started off similarly in their early married years. Frank dominated, and Julia complied. However, she confronted the problem, she set limits and established consequences, and their marriage grew. Clearly, both couples were reaping the results of how they had conducted themselves in the earlier seasons of marriage. The first couple harvested a sad result; the other, a joyous one.
Your Life Begins Today
If you are reading this book, most likely marriage is important to you. You may be happy in your marriage and want it to keep growing. You may be struggling and dealing with major or minor problems. You may be single and want to prepare for marriage. You may be divorced and want to prevent the pain you went through if you remarry.
Most of us have no greater desire and prayer than a lifetime of love and commitment to one person with whom we can share life. Marriage is one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. It is the mystery of living as one flesh with another human being (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Marriage is first and foremost about love. It is bound together by the care, need, companionship, and values of two people, which can overcome hurt, immaturity, and selfishness to form something better than what each person alone can produce. Love is at the heart of marriage, as it is at the heart of God himself (1 John 4:16).
Yet, love is not enough. The marriage relationship needs other ingredients to grow and thrive. Those ingredients are freedom and responsibility. When two people are free to disagree, they are free to love. When they are not free, they live in fear, and love dies: “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). And when two people together take responsibility to do what is best for the marriage, love can grow. When they do not, one takes on too much responsibility and resents it; the other does not take on enough and becomes self-centered or controlling. Freedom and responsibility problems in a marriage will cause love to struggle. Like a plant without good soil, the marriage relationship will struggle in an unfriendly environment.
Boundaries in Marriage is fundamentally about love. It is about promoting it, growing it, developing it, and repairing it. We want to help you develop love through providing a better environment for it: one of freedom and responsibility. This is where boundaries, or personal property lines, come in. They promote love by protecting individuals.
We wrote Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No, To Take Control of Your Life several years ago because we saw that many people’s personal and spiritual conflicts had to do with a lack of structure and boundaries. They couldn’t say no to controlling or irresponsible people, and so they were always controlled by others’ demands on them. However, many people have asked us since then, “Why don’t you write a book on setting limits in one’s marriage, so that we can solve problems before they start?” We thought that was a good idea, and this book is the result.
As you will see, character is key here. When people grow in character, they grow in the ability to set and receive boundaries in their marriages, and they mature. When they resist hearing the word no, they remain immature.
Many people believe that as we humans grow up physically, we automatically grow up emotionally as well, but that’s simply not true. Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people. Harold and Sarah are still dealing immaturely with old, old boundary issues. Frank and Julia have resolved them and have gone to much deeper stages of love and maturity. The point we are trying to make here is that today is the day to work on your own boundaries in marriage. As the Bible teaches, make the most of today, for the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16). What you take initiative to deal with today will affect the rest of your married life. And what you ignore or are afraid to address will do the same. You’re headed toward either a Harold and Sarah marriage, or a Frank and Julia one, and you are doing that right now.
You may both be open to the concept of setting and receiving truth and boundaries with each other. This openness will make the process much easier, as you will be on the same page with regard to both values and personal growth. Or you may have a spouse who is against boundaries. This close-mindedness can be dealt with also.
An Overview
We have structured the book into several parts. Part I, “Understanding Boundaries,” introduces you to the idea of (or gives you a refresher course on) boundaries and how to set them in your marriage and with yourself Part II, “Building Boundaries in Marriage,” deals with the necessity of two separate lives becoming united, with the fundamental beliefs that under-gird a marriage of boundaries, and with how to set boundaries against outside people and influences. Part III, “Resolving Conflict in Marriage,” describes six types of conflict and how to set limits with a spouse who accepts boundaries and with one who resists boundaries. Part IV, “Misunderstanding Boundaries in Marriage,” looks at some of the ways boundaries can be misused.
These sections provide practical information, examples, tables, and suggestions to help you apply boundaries concepts to your marriage.
Clarifying a Misconception
We need to make clear, however, that Boundaries in Marriage is not about fixing, changing, or punishing your mate. If you aren’t in control of yourself, the solution is not learning to control someone else. The solution is learning self-control, one of the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). So don’t look at this book as a way to make someone else grow up. It is more about taking ownership of your own life so that you are protected and you can love and protect your spouse without enabling or rescuing him or her.
So welcome to Boundaries in Marriage! We hope this is a helpful resource for you, whatever condition your marriage is in. We pray that as you learn to make the word no a good word in your marriage, responsibility and freedom will then help love take deep roots in both of your hearts. God bless you.
HENRY CLOUD, PH.D.
JOHN TOWNSEND, PH.D.
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA
1999
Part One
__________
Understanding
Boundaries
Chapter 1
What's a Boundary, Anyway?
* * *
Stephanie sat in front of the fireplace drinking her cup of herbal tea and reflecting upon the evening. Her husband, Steve, had gone to bed an hour earlier, but the gnawing feeling in her stomach prevented her from joining him. In fact, the feeling was propelling her away from him. She was relieved when he had said that he was tired, for she didn’t know what she would have done if he had wanted to make love to her. The feeling of relief scared her. She knew that it was not a good sign for their relationship.
As she thought about the night, she found herself connecting her feelings not only with what had happened this evening, but with what had gone on in their relationship in the last few years. She was pulling away from Steve more and more. She knew that she loved him and always would love him. She just didn’t know how to get past the lack of attraction to him. She had a negative feeling about their relationship that she could not shake.
“Get specific. What is it?” she could hear her friend Jill asking her. Jill was much better at sorting out thoughts and feelings than Stephanie.
As she sorted through answers to Jill’s question in her mind, the answer came surprisingly quickly in a movie-like collage of memories. Times and conversations she and Steve had had passed through her mind as though she were a detached observer. First, she recalled this evening, when he had ignored her wishes for where they would go to dinner. And several times during the meal he had ignored what she was saying. It was as if he did not really hear her.
Then there was their vacation. She had wanted a nice quiet mountain setting where they could be alone together. He had wanted a big city with “lots of action.” As usual, they had followed his wishes.
Then there was her desire to go back to school and finish her degree.
They had agreed on that when she had dropped out of college her senior year to put him through law school. But every time she brought it up, he explained why it was not a good time right now for them. Stephanie had a hard time understanding that. What he really was saying was that it was not a good time for him.
Many other scenes came to her mind, but that phrase—“for him”—seemed to encapsulate all of them: Their relationship was more “for him” than it was “for them,” or even “for her.” As she thought about it, her detachment gave way to anger and contempt. Quickly, she retreated from such a negative feeling.
Get a grip, she told herself. Love is filled with sacrifice. But, as much as she tried to see herself sacrificing for love, she felt as if she were sacrificing a lot, yet experiencing very little love.
With that thought, she stared into the fire awhile longer, gulped her last sip of tea, and headed for bed, hoping Steve would be asleep.
The Importance of Boundaries
How had Stephanie, after several years of marriage, found herself in such a state? What had gone wrong? She and Steve had begun so strong. He was everything she had always wanted. Kind, strong, successful, and spiritual, Steve seemed to embody it all. But as time went on, their relationship lacked depth and intimacy. She could not understand how she could love someone so much and experience such little love along the way.
The issues are different for many couples, but the perplexity is often the same. One spouse feels something is missing, but she can’t figure out what it is. She tries to do the right things. She gives, sacrifices, honors the commitment, and believes the best. And yet she doesn’t achieve intimacy, or worse than that, she doesn’t avoid pain.