Boundaries within a Healthy Relationship

Personal boundaries are limits you set to protect yourself. Healthy boundaries form by having good self-understanding and clear personal values. An important part of respecting yourself and developing healthy relationships is understanding and honoring these boundaries.

In a friendship or romantic relationship, understanding each other’s values means you don’t change who you are and what you believe simply based on the other person. You remain an individual within the relationship. Clear boundaries help ensure that you respect yourself and that others will respect your values.

Each relationship has its own set of boundaries that must be respected. Examples of boundaries could be:

• You and your friend have an understanding that you can talk on the phone until 11 p.m. If you call your friend at 2 a.m. on a school night, that’s disrespecting the boundary.
• In a romantic relationship, you know when and in what context you want to become physically intimate. You know your partner’s feelings about this, too.
• You balance time you spend with friends and with family to be respectful of both. However, if your family wants you to spend all of your time at home, that’s not respectful of you.

When Boundaries Should be Crossed

Some situations require crossing boundaries, such as when a person’s health or life is threatened.

For example, teens have privacy boundaries with their parents. However, if a boy has a growth on his penis or a girl has pain in her pelvis — possibly because they contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI) — teens should break that privacy boundary and seek guidance and information from parents or other trusted adults.

Time Apart

Often, teens in romantic relationships begin to spend all of their time with one another, foregoing time with family and other friends and skipping regular activities.

Although it might feel good at first to spend all of your time with your new partner, isolating yourself from your friends can actually be unhealthy and bad for your relationship in the long run.

Setting up times when you’re not with your partner:

• Gives you something to talk about and share with each other the next time you’re together.
• Allows both of you to pursue interests that the other doesn’t share and that make you unique.
• Helps you keep your relationship in perspective and your life balanced.
• Maintains friendships for support. If you ignore your friends and only talk to them between relationships, you’ll probably lose those friendships.

Last reviewed: March 2019