He says he checks your phone because he cares. She says going out with friends means you don't value the relationship. You do everything together, you report your every move, and from the outside it all looks sweet — but it's been a long time since you had any "time of your own".
You can't even put your finger on what's wrong. You're just tired. It feels as though you've gone missing.
If any of this rings true, this article is for you.
Why does "too close" leave you gasping for air?
Salvador Minuchin, a pioneer of family therapy, put forward a concept back in the 1970s: enmeshment. He observed that in some families the boundaries between members are extremely blurred — one person's emotions become the whole family's emotions, and one person's decisions have to be signed off by everyone (Minuchin, 1974).
Apply that idea to a romantic relationship and you may recognise some familiar scenes: the moment your partner is unhappy, you assume it's your fault; you want half an hour to yourself and they ask, "Don't you love me any more?"; you start giving up your own interests because you don't want to spark a row.
Enmeshment is dangerous precisely because it looks so much like love. "We're inseparable" sounds like a promise, but living it out is draining. You aren't drawing closer to a person — you're losing yourself.
Photo by Julius Drost / Unsplash
Can you still be yourself inside a relationship?
The psychologist Murray Bowen used the term "differentiation of self" to describe whether a person can manage two things at once: staying close to another person without losing their own stance and views in the process (Bowen, 1978).
People who are highly differentiated don't feel "if you disagree with me, you don't love me" when they argue. They can tolerate a partner holding a different opinion, and they don't need the other person to agree with everything just to reassure them the relationship is safe.
People who are poorly differentiated, by contrast, tend to swing to one of two extremes in a relationship: over-fusion (accommodating everything, suppressing their own needs) or emotional cut-off (withdrawing, going cold, pulling away the moment they feel encroached upon). The two reactions look completely different, but they share the same root — these people don't know how to find a balance between "drawing close" and "being themselves".
A study of 137 couples found that people who could hold on to an "I am I" stance (referred to in the research as the I-position) had noticeably better relationship quality. What's even more worth noting is that it isn't only your own level of differentiation that matters — your partner's level of differentiation also affects the quality of your relationship, and the effect holds for both men and women (Lampis et al., 2019). In other words, boundaries aren't just about "me" — whether you can be yourself in a relationship depends, to some degree, on whether your partner is willing to let you be yourself.
How your attachment style shapes your attitude towards boundaries
Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to find setting boundaries hard? This has to do with your attachment style.
Hazan and Shaver (1987) extended attachment theory from the parent-child relationship to adult romantic love, finding that adults also display three attachment tendencies in love: secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent.
People with anxious attachment fear being abandoned most of all. They tend to over-give in a relationship and don't dare voice their own needs, because a voice inside says: "If I make my partner unhappy, they'll leave." For these people, "setting a boundary" sounds like pushing the other person away — so they would rather keep giving ground.
People with avoidant attachment go to the opposite extreme. Intimacy makes them uneasy, and the moment someone gets close they want to flee. Their "boundary" is really a wall — not there to protect the relationship, but to protect themselves from being hurt.
A recent longitudinal study lent further weight to this pattern: people with avoidant attachment felt less autonomy in day-to-day life together, and this was linked to lower relationship satisfaction three months later; people with anxious attachment showed a similar trend, though it reached statistical significance in only one of the two studies (Genesse et al., 2025).
Put another way, whether you "don't dare set a boundary" or "use a wall in place of a boundary", the outcome is often the same — you aren't happy in the relationship.
When your self-worth is tied to the relationship
There's another, more hidden situation: how good you feel about yourself depends entirely on whether the relationship is going smoothly.
The psychologist Knee and colleagues called this "relationship-contingent self-esteem" — when you pin your entire sense of self-worth on the relationship, a single remark from your partner can send you plunging from heaven to hell (Knee et al., 2008).
Their research found that partners with high relationship-contingent self-esteem did feel a stronger sense of commitment to the relationship — but their satisfaction and intimacy were no higher. In other words, the fact that you "can't bear to leave" doesn't mean you're doing well. You're simply trapped.
This is precisely one of the costs of lacking boundaries: when you can't tell "me" from "us", your emotions get swept along entirely by the other person. Not because you love too deeply, but because you don't know who you are.
Photo by Michiel Annaert / Unsplash
A boundary isn't distance — it's the space that lets you love well
Here's something a lot of people get confused about: setting a boundary is not the same as keeping your distance.
Research on Self-Determination Theory tells us that in any relationship people have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When a romantic relationship can meet all three at once, people feel safer and more fulfilled within it — relatedness is the strongest predictor, but autonomy and competence are just as indispensable (La Guardia et al., 2000).
The family-therapy scholar Anderson (2020) argues that autonomy has long been misread as "being selfish" or "not caring about your partner", but that the truth is quite the opposite: autonomy isn't something that stands against the relationship — it's one of the keys to making a relationship work in a healthy way. When you don't have to sacrifice yourself to prove you care, you can actually show up in the relationship more authentically.
At heart, a boundary is the concrete expression of that autonomy. It can sound like:
"I'd like some time on my own tonight — it doesn't mean I don't want to see you." This isn't coldness; it's you being able to express your needs honestly while still in the relationship.
"You're allowed to disagree with me, and I won't take it to mean you don't love me." This isn't distance; it's you letting two people keep their own thinking within intimacy.
"My phone is my private space." This isn't hiding something; it's you believing that trust doesn't need surveillance to hold.
A large review covering 295 studies notes that differentiation of self — that is, a person's ability to hold on to themselves within a relationship — is consistently positively associated with both mental health and marital quality (Calatrava et al., 2022). This isn't the quirk of a single study, but a conclusion that holds across cultures and across samples.
In closing
You don't need to pretend you have no needs of your own just to "keep the relationship going". That isn't selfish — it's the precondition for being able to keep loving.
But in the end, knowing all this and actually doing it are always separated by a stretch of road that isn't short. You may have finished reading this article nodding along, yet back in the relationship your first reaction is still to give ground, still to grit your teeth, still to feel that speaking up will cost you the other person.
That stretch of road is the one that really has to be walked.
Where do partner boundaries begin? With understanding your own relationship habits
If you've read this far and what surfaces is a particular relationship, a particular person, a particular remark that unsettled you but that you couldn't bring yourself to say — perhaps what you need isn't just an article, but a structured way to practise setting boundaries.
TreeholeHK's "Building Personal Boundaries" interpersonal communication programme won't have you memorising formulas or reciting from a script. Instead, it starts from your own relationship experiences and uses interpersonal communication skills to help you see clearly the places where you've kept giving ground, and to practise reclaiming the space that belongs to you — without harming the relationship.
Learn more about the "Building Personal Boundaries" programme
Does setting boundaries between partners harm the relationship?
No. Research shows that people who can hold on to themselves within a relationship are in fact more satisfied with it (Calatrava et al., 2022). A boundary isn't a rejection of your partner; it's what gives you enough psychological space to go on loving well. When you can express your needs honestly, the relationship won't collapse under long-term suppression.
How can you tell intimacy apart from enmeshment?
Intimacy is both people willingly drawing close while keeping their own independent space; enmeshment is one person's emotions and decisions being completely controlled by the other. The family-therapy scholar Minuchin (1974) noted that the hallmark of enmeshment is blurred boundaries — you can't tell whether a feeling is your own or your partner's. If you find your emotions rising and falling entirely in step with your partner's, this may be enmeshment rather than intimacy.
Can people with anxious attachment learn to set boundaries?
Yes. People with anxious attachment usually fear that setting boundaries will drive their partner away, but research shows that a greater sense of autonomy is associated with higher relationship satisfaction (Genesse et al., 2025). Setting boundaries is a gradual process — start with small things, practise expressing your needs, and slowly build up the experience that "expressing myself doesn't mean losing the relationship".
Is it normal for a partner to ask to check your phone?
It depends on the motive and how often. An occasional glance out of curiosity and long-term monitoring under the banner of "trust" are completely different things. Bowen's theory suggests that constantly needing to check up on and monitor a partner in a relationship often reflects insufficient differentiation of self — you need the other person's compliance to ease your own anxiety (Lampis et al., 2019). Healthy trust is built on respecting each other's private space.
How do you start talking about boundaries with your partner?
Avoid an accusatory tone (for example, "You keep invading my space") and speak from your own feelings instead ("Lately I've felt I need a bit more time on my own"). Pick a moment when you're both relaxed, and don't raise it in the middle of an argument. Anderson (2020) reminds us that autonomy isn't about opposition — it's about letting both people be more authentically themselves within the relationship.
Key takeaways
Setting a boundary isn't about drawing a line in the relationship to wall your partner off — it's about being able to love someone without losing yourself in the process. When you can hold on to an "I am I" stance within a relationship, you have something real to give the other person — rather than a shell that's already been hollowed out.
Further reading
Want a fuller understanding of the psychology behind boundaries and how to set them? This guide covers the complete framework, from theory to practice: A Psychology Guide to Boundaries — Protecting Yourself Without Harming the Relationship
In intimate relationships, boundaries that are too loose and boundaries that are too rigid both cause problems. Understanding your own boundary style is what helps you find the way of relating that suits you both: Is Your Boundary a Wall, or a Door Without a Lock?
References
Anderson, J. R. (2020). Inviting autonomy back to the table: The importance of autonomy for healthy relationship functioning. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 46(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12413
Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.
Calatrava, M., Martins, M. V., Schweer-Collins, M., Duch-Ceballos, C., & Rodríguez-González, M. (2022). Differentiation of self: A scoping review of Bowen Family Systems Theory’s core construct. Clinical Psychology Review, 91, 102101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102101
Genesse, D., Brassard, A., Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Muise, A., Raposo, S., & Péloquin, K. (2025). Being me while loving you: The role of autonomy in the association between insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 51(1), e70079. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.70079
Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511
Knee, C. R., Canevello, A., Bush, A. L., & Cook, A. (2008). Relationship-contingent self-esteem and the ups and downs of romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(3), 608–627. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.3.608
La Guardia, J. G., Ryan, R. M., Couchman, C. E., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Within-person variation in security of attachment: A self-determination theory perspective on attachment, need fulfillment, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 367–384. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.3.367
Lampis, J., Cataudella, S., Agus, M., Busonera, A., & Skowron, E. A. (2019). Differentiation of self and dyadic adjustment in couple relationships: A dyadic analysis using the actor-partner interdependence model. Family Process, 58(3), 699–713. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12370
Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy. Harvard University Press.
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