Boundaries in Relationships
You might find yourself saying yes when you mean no, taking on more than you can sustain, or prioritizing the needs of others while losing track of your own. Over time, this can lead to exhaustion, resentment, or a sense that how you relate to others feels out of alignment with what you want or need.
This page explores boundaries in relationships, including patterns often described as codependency or people-pleasing, and how these relational patterns can be understood through an existential–humanistic perspective. My work as a therapist in Eugene, Oregon focuses on helping people better understand these patterns, reestablish contact with their own needs, and move toward more sustainable and meaningful forms of connection.
Losing Yourself in Relationships
In truth, difficulties with boundaries tend to develop slowly in our interactions with others. These patterns can remain hidden for long periods of time, often only coming into awareness when something no longer feels sustainable.
Early signs can include:
- Taking responsibility for how others feel
- Avoiding conflict or the discomfort of disappointing others
- Feeling guilty when setting limits
- Adapting yourself to maintain connection
- Struggling to identify what you actually want
These behaviors can support connection at first. However, when they become habitual or structural features of a relationship, they tend to create an imbalance—one where the relationship is maintained at the cost of one or both people’s sense of agency and self.
Over time, these patterns can lead to emotional exhaustion, resentment, anger, anxiety, or a sense of disconnection from your own needs. If you find yourself unsure where your needs begin and another person’s end, it may be a sign that your boundaries need attention.
Understanding Codependency
The term codependency is often used to describe patterns of boundary confusion or difficulty. For some, this term resonates, while for others it may feel overly clinical or limiting as a label.
My perspective is that rather than viewing codependency as a fixed identity, it can be more useful to understand it as a relational tendency—a way that patterns of interaction begin to tilt in how you organize yourself in connection with others. In this sense, it may be helpful to think of it more as a verb with degrees of intensity, rather than an all-or-nothing label.
When we consider what codependency means existentially, at its core it reflects a question that is both universal and deeply human:
How do you stay connected to others without losing connection to yourself?
What Are Boundaries?
Boundaries are commonly understood as something you actively set within relationships—for example, saying no, communicating limits, or protecting your time and energy. While these behaviors are part of the picture, they don’t fully capture the deeper nature of what boundaries are.
At a deeper, existential level, boundaries reflect your ability to remain in authentic contact with yourself while also being in contact with another person. This space between self and other can be difficult, and at times even paradoxical. It often involves holding tension, complexity, and contradiction all at once.
Said more directly, fully developed boundaries are about being both connected and distinct at the same time.
Relationships and Boundaries
Difficulties with boundaries take shape between people, and are often co-created within the relationship.
A common pattern is that neither person intends to create a problem, yet when boundaries are unclear, a loop begins to form. One person overextends or accommodates, while the other begins to rely on that accommodation. Over time, limits and needs go unspoken, and tension begins to build within the relationship. In the long term, this tension can show up as anger, anxiety, frustration, or resentment.
In longer-term relationships, one partner may begin to feel responsible for the emotional tone of the relationship, while the other feels confused, pressured, or unsure how to respond. Both can end up feeling disconnected despite trying to stay close. These dynamics often appear alongside relationship conflict, where communication and emotional responsibility become entangled.
In this light, what appears to be care may actually reflect a loss of clarity between self and other. Boundaries are not just about protection or setting limits—they are what make a more honest, sustainable, and authentic connection possible.
How Therapy Can Help
Therapy helps bring greater awareness and clarity to how these patterns of interaction operate both individually and within relationships. This work can take place one-on-one or through couples therapy.
It often involves:
- Noticing where you override your own needs
- Understanding how these patterns developed
- Exploring conflict, responsibility, and care
- Developing the ability to stay in contact with your own experience in real time
In couples work, these patterns often become visible within therapy. This creates an opportunity to slow things down, examine what is happening, and begin to experiment with more direct and authentic ways of relating.
Intersecting Experiences
Boundary difficulties often overlap with other areas of experience. These are not separate problems, but different expressions of a shared pattern. You may want to explore:
You can also explore the full range of concerns I work with on the Who I Work With page, or learn more about my approach through Existential–Humanistic Therapy.
Boundaries & Codependency Therapy in Eugene, Oregon
I offer therapy for individuals and couples navigating boundaries, codependency, and relationship patterns in Eugene, Oregon, with both in-person and telehealth sessions available statewide.
If you’re considering therapy, you’re welcome to begin on the contact page.