5 Boundaries to Set in Relationships & 3 Ways to Use Them Effectively

Today, I will be sharing about setting boundaries in our relationships. When we aren’t used to setting them, we may find it difficult to start setting one. Having one makes us value our self worth so much more and will help encourage others to treat us with respect. I start by talking about the consequences of breaking our boundaries, especially with the boundaries we had for our old self, how we should start becoming aware of them and build up new ones, and then start sharing these boundaries to our partner to let them understand where we stand. We also have the five types of boundaries we should start practicing. Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:12 Setting boundaries in relationships 00:06:42 What happens when we break our own boundaries 00:07:14 Become aware of all your boundaries 00:09:15 Set your past behind 00:10:07 Express your boundaries to your partner 00:16:40 Type #1: Friendship boundary 00:18:05 Type #2: Ideas boundary 00:19:29 Type #3: Financial boundary 00:21:18 Type #4: Alone time boundary 00:23:00 Type #5: Purpose boundary Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. The Vedas say when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you. Most of us don't protect our purpose. We give it away for a person.

• 3:22Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. I'm committed to those three things in my life and I'm so grateful that you're committed to them too. I have been loving the stories on Instagram, the posts on TikTok. So many of you are clipping the video episode off of YouTube. And I also want to thank you for all the incredible pre-orders we've had. We've had thousands of pre-orders for Eight Rules of Love, my new book, which is all about love and relationships and connection, about chemistry and compatibility.

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  And if you haven't ordered it already, it would mean the world to me. If you head to 8rulesoflove.com and preorder the book, because it makes a huge difference to authors, I would deeply, deeply appreciate it. And today's session is all about setting boundaries in relationships. Now, I just want to get a show of hands, how many of you struggle or have struggled in the past to set boundaries in relationships? Raise your hand right now, unless you're driving, nod wherever you are right now. Right? I'm guessing it's a lot of us.

• 4:45Jay Shetty?

  How many of you have said yes when you actually wanted to say no? You said yes to your partner, you're in people pleasing mode, you're in that phase where you just thought, oh, well, they'll like me more if I say yes. They'll keep me around, this won't end. This way, they'll really be attracted to me, I'll just say yes. Even when I really don't feel comfortable doing whatever it is, I'm going to say yes. I want to avoid tension, I want to avoid stress, pressure, or conflict. And so I will go against my natural inclination and intuition to do something I don't want to do.

• 5:29Jay Shetty?

  Now, the opposite can also be true as a sign of not setting a healthy boundary. How many of you have said no when you actually want to say yes? Now, this is an interesting one, because you're again, maybe, potentially acting out of a place of making the other person feel uncomfortable, making the other person work hard, making the other person feel like they're not ready yet, they're not valued yet, you're playing a game potentially. And again, remember, I'm saying it's you're saying no when you want to say yes. So there's a misalignment in where you are.

• 6:11Jay Shetty?

  Another way that we've all experienced or made the mistake of not setting boundaries is that we've expected our partners to know what we're thinking, to know what we want. We have not expressed what we would like, we have not been clear about what we would like, and we just expect them to know.

• 6:33Jay Shetty?

  Another way that I think a lot of people, my friend was just telling me this, that, uh, we're not one of her, her boyfriend right now, he doesn't like it if she's out with her friends instead of being with him. Even if he's out of town or traveling, he expects her to be on the phone with him or be connected to him at all times and doesn't let her have her own independence or have her own life. Now, she's struggling to set a boundary there, where the boundary is, well, this is my alone time, this is my friend time, this is what I wanna do as well, this is my personal space.

• 7:16Jay Shetty?

  And so we can start to see that we've caved on our boundaries for a long, long time. We've made mistakes at either not even being aware of our boundaries and not even setting our boundaries, let alone expressing them, right? So, this is a three-step process. First, we have to become aware of what boundaries we want to set. And you'll find that 50% of the boundaries you want to set are because of mistakes in past relationships. You crossed a boundary, you broke a boundary of yours that you didn't have awareness around. And now, what I'd like you to do is reflect

• 8:00Jay Shetty?

  on some of your past relationships, just like examples I shared a moment ago. What were the boundaries that you continue to cross, break, and not live up to because you weren't aware of them? I had an ex-girlfriend a long, long time ago, and I remember that after we'd go out, for some reason, even though we had a great night, she'd always be upset and she'd go quiet, and then she wouldn't talk to me all the way home. And I remember trying to figure it out and I'd be really understanding and be really loving. I'd be really supportive and I do this every night we went out. And I always thought it was me. I was very young at this time and I thought it was just completely me.

• 8:44Jay Shetty?

  And I gave up the boundary. I was just constantly being a supporting person. I was constantly being empathetic and I crossed my boundary where I wasn't having a good night anymore. But I was sacrificing having a good night when nothing had gone wrong because of how someone was behaving. Right. So now I'm aware of that, right? That's an awareness point. Okay Jay, that's a boundary that you've broken before. Let me think of another one. A boundary that I broke before was dating someone who always wanted me to travel up to them, but never wanted to come down to see me, right? They never wanted to make the effort to travel in a long distance relationship to come and see me. Always wanted me to see them. And at the time, because I was into them, I would do that.

• 9:29Jay Shetty?

  I would take that long journey. I would make the effort. I would spend the money. Only to realize that this didn't feel fair, right? Now, what happens in this scenario, and I want you to reflect on your past relationships, because I promise you it will save you a lot in your present relationship and if you have to, your future relationships. Now, how? Because what happens is when we're breaking our own boundaries, we often blame it on the other person. Now, we never got the opportunity to blame it on our ex. But now we blame our current partner. But really the challenge is we are not aware of our boundaries.

• 10:14Jay Shetty?

  And so we are shifting our responsibility of that feeling, that emotion, how we want to be treated onto the other person. So first, I want you to just become aware of all your boundaries from the past and maybe some new ones that you've developed recently. And I'll be telling you the different areas, but I just want you to become aware of the ones from the past for now. What were boundaries that you broke? Maybe in regards to how you were spoken to? Maybe in regards to how people talk to you and communicated with you? Maybe it was boundaries about what you were willing to do, your physical boundaries?

• 10:56Jay Shetty?

  What were things in the past that you know you've broken that need to be mended? So I want you to become aware first. Once you're aware of your boundaries, you then set them. What I mean by set them is that you clarify and articulate to yourself what your boundary is. For example, if I don't want to do something, I will say no and explain why. And I think this is a really important part to the boundary, that a boundary doesn't just stop at yes or no. It has a component to it, which is why? Or how? Or when? Or what?

• 11:40Jay Shetty?

  It doesn't just stop at, "No, I won't do that." "Yes, I'll do that." Right? Like, that's not a boundary. A boundary in a healthy relationship is setting a boundary that you know why it exists. So, for example, someone I know is aware that in the past, they have gone to their partner for everything. So now they've set a boundary for themselves, which says, "Hey, I know who I go to advise for this thing." Right? So that's a great boundary that's been set, where it's like, "Okay, I'm not going to overburden or overwhelm my partner, but I know who I go to for this. Let me be aware of that, and now let me set that boundary." Right?

• 12:24Jay Shetty?

  Another boundary that I know someone in my life has is their desire to say, "Well, this is what happened before you, and so my past, while I'm happy to share that with you, I'm not going to be made to feel bad about it, or I'm not going to be made to feel like I need to change it, or that I need to become better because of it. It's what my past was, and you either accept that, or you don't." Right? And now they are aware of that boundary, and they've set that boundary. So after you become aware of a boundary, we have to set it and articulate it to ourselves, and why it exists. So you may say, "I don't want my past put into question because I have left my past behind. I have changed my habits.

• 13:09Jay Shetty?

  I have grown, and I don't want to be reminded of it." Right? Knowing that reasoning is healthy. And then the third step is expressing it to your partner. Now, this is where a lot of mistakes are made also. Because often the way we express our boundaries is that it's done in one of two ways. It's either presented defensively, right? This is my boundary, this is just what I need, like this is just my, you know, way of taking care of myself. Like you don't know on that and you don't understand and, you know, you are always trying to get me to break my boundaries and this is my boundary. So there's a sense of defense.

• 13:51Jay Shetty?

  One way of expressing your boundary is through defense. And what that does is that it assumes that your partner is malicious, controlling, or has that energy, and it now makes them feel defensive. So if you communicate something through the method of defense, it makes them feel like they need to attack. Because now they say, "Well, I'm not like that at all. Why are you assuming that about me?", right? So you going on the defense in your expression of your boundary, even though you're just trying to communicate how you feel, has forced a sense of attack out of someone else. You see this in sport all the time. So, why am I raising this?

• 14:32Jay Shetty?

  Because your boundary may be perfectly important, it may be perfectly valuable, but if you express it incoherently... Notice how I use the word "incoherent" and not "incorrectly"? There's no incorrect way when you're expressing a boundary, but there is an incoherent way in the sense that the other person doesn't get the opportunity to truly digest it. You can have made the best food in the world, but if you force someone to eat it quickly, you force someone to eat it all at the same time, you force someone to eat it at a pace they're not comfortable with, what ends up happening? They can't digest the food. So, when you're expressing your boundary,

• 15:15Jay Shetty?

  I want you to do it in a very aligned way. Now, and I'll express what that is to you in a second. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day? Or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that big moment? Or difficult conversation? You should try meditation and I know what you're thinking. Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing. But really, all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice is seven minutes a day. With the Daily Jay, my daily guided meditations on the Calm app. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat. You can try it while you brush your teeth, do the dishes or walk your dog.

• 15:56Jay Shetty?

  My goal in seven minutes a day is to help you find calm and feel grounded in your busy world. Plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. Here's what one of the listeners of the Daily Jay had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my boss's comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily Jay, which related to my work issues. Opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm.com/jay to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. That's only $42 for the whole year for daily guided meditations.

• 16:40Jay Shetty?

  Experience the Daily Jay only on Calm.

• 16:45Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for. Like skills, certifications or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast.

• 17:28Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

• 18:11Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. The second method we often take is instead of being defenses, we attack. Right? We attack the other person. And we say, "You always make me break my boundaries.

• 18:54Jay Shetty?

  I've always had this boundary and you don't let me live up to it." Right? So there's that blame, there's that finger pointing, but you go on the sense of attack. Now, what does that do? It creates a sense of defense in that other person. The person now gets defensive. The person says, "Well, you don't understand me. I care about you. I just, I feel like you don't listen to me." And again, the point has been lost. How many times have you been in this situation where you have either communicated your boundaries based on defense or attack? So what I find here is so fascinating is that usually we go into attack or defense mode with our boundaries. But actually, what a boundary is,

• 19:36Jay Shetty?

  is a personal checking system of, is this aligned with me? So Gandhi said that harmony or peace is achieved when what we think, when what we say and what we do is aligned. And a boundary is a boundary that you get to check with yourself of, am I going or crossing this boundary? We think boundaries keep other people out. Boundaries keep us in check with ourselves. A boundary is not a barrier to keep someone far away. A boundary is a criteria that you check with yourself to not lose yourself, to not cross yourself.

• 20:18Jay Shetty?

  We think a boundary is a barrier that stops someone else from crossing. But it actually stops us from letting anyone cross it. It stops us from crossing it ourselves. That's what we're trying not to allow. So it's a safe space of reflection. That's what a boundary is. It provides a pause to reflect. It allows you to value who you currently are before you decide who you're ready to be or not becoming who someone wants you to be. So if someone's wanting you to become something, a boundary isn't a yes or a no. It's not accept or reject. It's a safe space where you get to ask the question, is this aligned for me? Is this right for me?

• 21:03Jay Shetty?

  And then we can make a healthy decision before we lose who we are or become who someone else wants us to be. We get to choose, right? We get to choose. And what I want to talk to you about now is I want to talk to you about the five types of boundaries that I really think it's healthy for each person to be aware of, to set and to express. So we talked about the types of boundaries we've all broken. We talked about becoming aware of boundaries. We talked about setting boundaries. We talked about expressing boundaries. And when we express, we don't want to be attack or defense. We actually want to make sure it's about us. And now I want to share with you the five types of boundaries that I genuinely believe you need to be aware of, set and express.

• 21:48Jay Shetty?

  And of course, there's more. So the first one is a friendship boundary. What I mean by this is often what happens in a relationship is we lose our friends as we move towards love, right? Everyone has that person in their group who gets so loved up that you never see them anymore. And you're like, well, yeah, I think they're dating. I think they're happy. Like, we just don't see them around anymore. And what we find is that often that happens because one of the- Partners may be uncomfortable about you spending time with your friends. I used to have a friend who, her boyfriend wasn't happy with her seeing other guy friends that she had from before she knew him. Now you have to ask yourself and reflect and have a genuine conversation with yourself around

• 22:32Jay Shetty?

  whether there needs to be a boundary set with certain friends, whether you are gonna set them and how you express them to both people, or whether you're actually gonna set a boundary for your newfound partner and say, "Well, these are friends that are important in my life and I have to see them and and I trust them and I respect them and I appreciate them and I'd love for you to get to know them too when it's the right time." And so friendship is really critical because often we find that people get envious, they get jealous, they get insecure, they feel uncertain about their position in your life. And if you've thought about this before, if you've become aware of it, you're more likely just going to avoid a lot of the issues that naturally come up in this area.

• 23:14Jay Shetty?

  The second one is what I call the ideas boundary. You may have certain ideas about life and when you start dating someone, it's natural for you to be introduced to their ideas. And I think we again make the mistake of attack and defense. We either think that life is all about defending our ideas or attacking someone else's. Again, what I find here is that you want to be able to be influenced, you want to be able to be open to someone else's ideas. But if there's an idea that you've reflected on of yours, you've checked with with yourself and you can't seem to change your mind about it, you want to make that other person aware. But this goes both ways. You may also be with a partner who has an idea

• 23:58Jay Shetty?

  or an intellectual perspective that you may not like and you have to respect their boundaries. So notice how boundaries work both ways. I think what we often want is a world where it's like, "Well, these are my boundaries. I hope we keep to them." But then when your partner subconsciously expresses their boundaries, we can't deal with them because we don't like them because they're not the same as ours. And chances are your boundaries are never gonna be the same as your partner's. And so we're trying to create an environment where they're allowed to have their ideas on certain things that are different to you. You're allowed to have your ideas that are different to theirs. But just as you want respect for your boundaries, there has to be a respect for theirs. Now, the third is a financial boundary.

• 24:41Jay Shetty?

  A financial boundary is how you choose to spend money, how you save. And this is where we actually have to lead to more open, healthy conversations when we get into a relationship, especially a committed relationship, about other people's relationship with money. So first of all, I'm going to say you should be aware of your relationship with money. And most people are not. We're not aware of how we want to save, invest, or spend, or waste. And knowing, and these are the four areas. How much do you save every month? How much do you spend every month? How much do you invest every month? And how much do you waste every month? It's really important to categorize that. Not to shame yourself, not to guilt yourself, but to gain awareness.

• 25:25Jay Shetty?

  So I want you to look at your bill this weekend, and I know it's going to be a painful activity. And I want you to audit, based on how much money you had coming in, how much did you save? How much did you spend? How much did you invest? And how much did you waste? Now, when you do this activity, it's not to make you feel bad, it's to make you go, okay, well, what do I want those numbers to look like next month? What do I want that to look like next year? If you do this activity by yourself, when you get into a relationship, you'll be able to show someone this. You'll be able to talk about it. Now, that person may not have a model, but they'll say, wow, that's amazing, I should be doing that too. So what I find often is that we have a financial boundary that isn't clear. And because it's not clear for us, it can't be clear to others.

• 26:10Jay Shetty?

  This is the same with ideas. If we don't have well-thought-through, deeply meaningful understandings of why we do what we do and why we made that choice, it's very hard for someone else to also be able to understand that idea. So setting financial boundaries. The fourth one is an alone time boundary.

• 26:32Jay Shetty?

  How much alone time do you need every week? Some of you will say none at all, right? You wanna be around the other person, but it's so important that you have a alone time boundary set up. I know for me and my wife, I know that every week, she loves spending time with her friends, I love spending time with my friends. She likes exercising with her friends. I like working out or playing sport with some of my friends. But recently, I was talking to a friend and he was saying how his partner doesn't want to spend time alone. And she doesn't want him to have the time to spend alone either. And we start to see how that becomes extremely unhealthy. And at the start of a relationship, we kinda like it sometimes, that people like when someone's obsessed with them, people like when someone's really into them.

• 27:15Jay Shetty?

  And then after time, they're like, oh, I need alone time, but that person got too used to it. And I think this is the biggest challenge I see is that we allow our partners at the beginning of our relationships to get used to us in an abnormal way. They get used to us in a way that's not true to us because we position ourselves that way, or we're more open, or we say yes more, or we're more available. And then as time goes on, I found this with me and Radhi, where when we first started dating, I was very available. And slowly, slowly, slowly, I got busier and she was like, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? Like, you know, and, and that was busy because I was starting to work and I had to build my life.

• 28:00Jay Shetty?

  It was all very natural, but if I now was switching in that way, I would make her aware that, hey, I'm gonna be really available this month, but then next month, I'm really busy with work. And the fifth and final boundary is what I call a purpose boundary. The more you're aware of your purpose, the more you can set it and the more you can express it to your partner, the healthier it is. Because what I find is that when you're moving in line with your purpose, it can be very unsettling for someone else because they feel second best, they don't feel as important, they maybe don't understand why it's so important to you. And when you don't set someone up with that insight early on, it just grates on them, like it just really takes away from them.

• 28:44Jay Shetty?

  And so, when you create your purpose to help them become aware and for you to protect your purpose. The Vedas say when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you. Most of us don't protect our purpose. We give it away for a person. It's really important to think about. I want to thank you for listening to today's episode. I appreciate you so deeply. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your ears. And right now, I am genuinely so grateful for all your amazing love for On Purpose. The guests have been incredible. These solos have been awesome. Thank you for your support and love. We're just getting started. Have an amazing day.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 29:48Speaker 02

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• 29:53Speaker 01

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• 29:56Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 29:57Speaker 01

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