13. Know Your Boundaries

When betrayal enters your relationship, everything feels uncertain, including your ability to stand up for what you need. You might feel like you're walking on eggshells, avoiding conflict or confrontation, all while slowly losing yourself. But what if reclaiming your voice starts with something simple: knowing your boundaries?

In this empowering episode of After the Affair, I break down exactly what boundaries are (and what they’re not), why they matter so deeply in your healing journey, and how you can begin setting them without anger or control. Whether you’re still in the relationship or navigating life post-affair, this episode is your roadmap to protecting your emotional well-being with love and clarity.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the core difference between boundaries and expectations and why mixing them up causes pain.

• Learn how to set a boundary that protects you without trying to change or control someone else.

• Discover why boundaries must come from a place of calm, not resentment or reactivity.

• Explore examples of real-life boundary-setting conversations you can adapt to your own relationships.

• Uncover the hidden cost of people-pleasing and how it leads to resentment, disconnection, and self-abandonment.

💬 Reflection questions:

Have you ever said “yes” when your whole body was screaming “no”? What boundary have you struggled to set in your healing journey?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go. Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings. After last week's episode I was having conversations with a few people who were asking me questions about it and wanting to better understand the difference between rules versus boundaries.

So I thought well that's a perfect segue so that's exactly what I'm going to do this week. Talk about boundaries. Let's establish exactly what a boundary is and when I'm talking about boundaries I'm thinking specifically around relationship and emotional boundaries.

So what is a boundary? Well first of all it's something that you create entirely for yourself and if it's used properly it can achieve life-changing results. An emotional boundary is not dissimilar to a property boundary. You imagine your property and you have your fence that delineates the section of land that is yours in which the house resides.

You want to protect your property and if someone crosses your physical property boundary without good reason then you might act accordingly. Your emotional boundaries are the same. There is a line where other people end and you begin.

An emotional boundary promotes self-responsibility. It's about really taking ownership of yourself and saying that this is me, this is what I'm comfortable with and anything that falls outside of that then I'm going to do what's necessary to protect myself. An emotional boundary also brings us closer to the other people in our lives.

It can bring us closer to everybody especially the ones that we have loving relationships with. Our family, our parents, our children and of course our partners. Among the most important things about boundaries and I'll come back to this a little bit later is that boundaries always come from a place of love.

It's always from a clean place. So when would you use a boundary? Well much like the physical boundary that I mentioned before around your house, your land or maybe it could be your room, your shed or if you're anything like me my workshop. I don't like people coming into my workshop uninvited and taking something or damaging something and if they did then that would be a violation of my boundary.

I would ask them to leave and if appropriate maybe even call the police. There are various types of boundaries. There is the physical and emotional ones.

Emotional ones like I've just mentioned. There are also boundaries around time, materials, resources, maybe conversational boundaries where topics might go in a certain direction. We want to just protect ourselves and our mental well-being.

Now everyone has boundaries even if you haven't thought about it before. Think about the act of physical violence. Most people I believe go around expecting, hoping, maybe believing that other people will not hit them or physically assault them.

But we don't feel the need to walk around all day warning everyone that we meet of the consequences should they choose to assault you. Okay so what is it for? Well we've already touched on this slightly but it's ultimately there to protect you, to protect you emotionally. When our boundary is made known to the other person it's also to notify them that they're welcome to continue their behaviour but if they don't then this is what you will do to protect yourself.

It gives that person a choice. You're not forcing anything upon them. So how can we set healthy boundaries? Well there's a few steps.

The first one is for you to really define what your boundary is. What is the boundary that you have around this situation? The second step is to know that your boundary is only to be communicated if your boundary has been violated. So think back to the physical assault example.

You haven't gone around telling everybody that you have this boundary up until this point but if someone does violate it then that is the point where you can step in and take action to protect yourself. You don't need to tell them until this thing's happened. The third step is to make the request and then inform them of what you will do if they continue not to comply which is ultimately the consequence.

What you will do if they don't comply and then the final and most important step of setting a boundary is that you must follow through. If they don't comply you must follow through otherwise the boundary just falls flat. So what are some examples? Let's imagine that you're out having dinner with family and you and your partner's discussion has turned into a slight argument and they're really trying to get their point across and you're feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

You could enforce your boundary by saying I know this is important to you but not willing to discuss this topic right now in front of our children. Let's continue this when we get home. So another example in a similar situation might be I completely respect your opinion and I take it on board but if you continue to dictate and pressure me into seeing things your way then I'm just gonna have to change the subject.

So what have we done there? We've come from a place of love. We're saying that you respect and appreciate their opinion and it's valuable to you and then you made the request and the request is if you continue to dictate and pressure me into seeing things your way then you offer the consequence then I'm going to change the subject. So that person can still do those things.

They can still choose to talk that way but if they do then you're going to change the subject. Another example might be you've got a friend or family member that likes to come over and visit and often just shows up unannounced. This is regularly at times when it's not convenient and you just want to chill out and just want to you know do your own thing and really don't want to have to be catering for them in any way.

You just want your own time so a boundary that you could enforce for them might be I love that you're able to come and visit anytime but sometimes I have things planned and I might not have time or I might not even be here so to save both your time and mine could you call in advance in future so that we can plan things first? Again we're seeing that that's coming from a place of love. I really like seeing you so I'm not disputing that. I'm just asking if you could call in advance so that we can plan things because if you don't I might not have time for you or I might not even be here and so therefore that's the consequence.

Okay so that's the basics of both creating and setting boundaries but as you'd expect there are plenty of issues common challenges that come up so let's look at some of those. Part of setting a boundary is making the request but the thing is this can easily be confused with having an expectation. Think back to last week's episode and the rules that we have for how others should behave or how we think others should behave.

So let's think of an example. I would like my wife to be more romantic and you see that sounds like a reasonable request and in fact it can be but not if there's an expectation that she should be more romantic. You may be hinging your entire happiness on your wife's abilities or desire to fulfil your request.

You see if your wife doesn't fulfil that request, she isn't then more romantic, then this is not a boundary because no violation has taken place. A boundary is always about protecting yourself from the things that you don't want or are not healthy for you. Not the things that you do want but aren't currently getting.

You see the difference? A couple of other things that a boundary isn't, well it's definitely not an ultimatum. It's not a threat of any kind but most importantly it's just not a method of controlling the other person. It is not a tool to try and manipulate them.

It's also essential that you do follow through with the consequence because if you don't it then makes the one that you have set completely worthless and it only reinforces that future requests will likely be easy to forego as well or maybe not even pay attention to at all. When you are established at setting and committing to your boundaries the people around you know what to expect and may probably even increase their respect for you. So what happens if you don't set a boundary? Well the people in your life continue to do the things that they do.

They continue to do and show up the way that you don't like and then you get to keep feeling crappy about it. And once we felt that way then we start to build up a resentment, anger, frustration. We then want to try and avoid that person and not spend time with them which then damages the relationship and creates a bigger disconnect all because we weren't able to enforce a boundary in the first place.

It can sometimes look like we are people-pleasing so instead of enforcing a boundary or setting our own boundaries we just go along with the flow. We just do what they say, we just do what they ask, we don't say no. We allow them to make a request of us and we just keep saying yes when really what we actually want to do is say no.

But we're saying yes because we want to keep them happy because we're so afraid of the loss that might come from that. Well what happens if they've asked me to do something and I say no? What will they think of me? What will that mean for our relationship? Are they gonna want to leave me? Are they going to want to consider thinking about getting a divorce? You see the relationship would then just be built on a false truth. Because they're making a request, you're acting out that request against your own will, then they think that you're happy doing it because you haven't thrown in any objections.

You haven't set any boundary for yourself so all of a sudden you've got one person thinks one thing and the other person thinks the other thing, the other person is okay with it and therefore neither partner is really giving their own truth or receiving the truth of the other and then it happens on both sides and you've got both making requests, neither partner being genuine in a way that fulfils those requests, yet both people think that they are. You've just got this and it's oh my god it's chaotic and it gets chaotic quickly. Let's look at whether you are actually ready to set a boundary because this is important and as I know especially that many of you people listening might be in quite a challenging stage of your relationship in your recovery particularly after infidelity and you're working through that recovery and you have all these things going around in your head and you're looking all over the place to try and find the solution.

How can I fix this? How can I make this better? How can I stop this pain? How can I move through this? Now you're only ready to set a boundary if you're genuinely coming from a loving place. You also need to be calm, you need to be clear-headed and you really need to be prepared to follow through with the consequences should your boundary be violated. You're not ready to set a boundary however if you're still feeling a lot of resentment towards that person, you're still feeling very angry and bitter, if you're feeling reactive, anything that they say or do makes you want to lose your cool in the moment and you scream and shout.

If you're just generally in a negative place then now is not the time to set that boundary. You need to be sure that you're not coming from this place of resentment and anger. If so then there may also be an underlying desire to want to control and manipulate the other person's behaviour and in some cases let's say for example you have now separated and you are no longer together you might just want to remove that person from your life but that's not what boundaries are for.

If that's the case you're just not ready for it. However all is not lost if you're not ready yet and that's okay. In fact personally I've learned so much from being not ready.

In fact I probably learned more from being not ready than almost any other concept or mindset shift I've taught my clients or worked through myself. You see the people and things in our lives that bring out all the negative emotions and actions or reactions in us. They're nearly always our best teachers.

I find it absolutely fascinating when somebody says or does something that I don't like. My body immediately floods with this negative emotion, this negative feeling but now that's my signal. It's my signal to pause and just ask myself wow what's going on there? Why has that person annoyed me so much? Why do I feel this frustration, this anger? Why do I want to react? What can I learn about myself in this situation? And then I would give myself a moment and think.

Well that's really fascinating because often we get angry when other people do things. Then in some way that can be like a projection or even a reflection of how we are. Let me give you an example.

You might be really annoyed because someone's saying something behind your back. So what do you do? You get angry and annoyed and then from that feeling of being annoyed you then call up your best mate and start whinging and moaning about the person behind their back. So ultimately you're just doing the same thing.

You're reinforcing that exact same behaviour you were in fact criticising which was making you angry which is then getting you to do the same thing. You see what I mean? And the cycle just continues. Okay so some final thoughts before we finish.

Not everybody has to agree with your boundaries. In fact many people, maybe even most, won't. But that's okay because it's not for them.

The boundaries aren't for them. And this is where you get to choose the kind of person that you want to be within your relationships. Someone who is authentic, honest and trustworthy, in alignment with your own values.

Not somebody who is bitter, resentful and blames others for all their problems. And remember you might believe that setting a boundary will make other people judge you or your actions. But it might just highlight a characteristic in themselves that they genuinely weren't aware of.

And who knows they might even thank you for it. Okay that's everything I have for you today. Brilliant to be speaking with you again and hopefully that's cleared up a few things for any queries you might have had around boundaries.

If you do have any questions please I'd love to see them come in. Drop me an email, send me a message on social media. All the contact details are in the show notes.

Can't wait to speak to you again next week. Talk soon!