Boundaries in Marriage

In addition to this, I went through Professor Christoph Kreitz notes on this. It's close to 300 page.

Professor Christoph Kreitz's Notes

I think, the notes are thorough, and gives the depth of boundaries.

Key Concepts:

-Own Responsibility for yourself, thoughts, feelings, values
-Take good care of yourself, so that you can take care of others
-Define: Who you are, Who you are not, What you like, dislike
-Out of Pure Heart: Love & Communicate to the other person
-Let people be themselves, we can’t control other’s will

Symptoms of Ignored boundaries:

-Enmeshment (feeling not clear, who you are in the relationship)
-Disassociation (out of touch with feeling, when violated boundaries)
-Detachment
-Victimhood
-Chip on Shoulder (carrying past hurt)
-Invisibility
-Smothering
-Lack of Privacy


My Problem with this:

I am not sure if this is for all cultures. If you are under Evangelical Culture, I respectfully ask you to expand your understanding of other cultures - Why? So, you don't mislead people into abyss.

People from Japan, China, Israel, Europe, Asia, India and South America might not even have these concepts in their culture.

Eg: In India, You will be asked by anyone:

1) How much money you make?
2) What does your family do?
3) People will reveal lot about themselves to you

Mr.Cloud, does that mean they don't have boundaries? I digress, probably, it looks differently.
It's part of the culture.

This is clearly written to Anglo-Saxons.

I would change the title to, "Boundaries for Anglo-Saxons."

Henry Cloud has a doctorate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t show understanding of anthropology (honor-shame, fear/power, guilt/law dynamics) Please read Jackson Wu's work. On doing so, one can integrate the missing gaps, and not mislead people.

I implore readers of this work and Dr.Cloud to raise their understanding.

He could write a better book with such a background.

I'd recommend this book regardless to everyone

Deus Vult,
Gottfried.
( )

A Christian self-help book about the importance of boundaries in a marriage relationship. The ideas in the section I read were decent but this was a case of writing style not working for this reader. The examples that the authors use of clients they've counseled include dialogue that just sounds stilted and obviously coming from a therapist and they just set my teeth on edge. I also found that the book was far more targeted at people already married (and potentially dealing with challenges) than those preparing for marriage. Definitely a case of YMMV.

Helpful, but there's a lot to wade through and reconcile with your own world view if you're not Christian and the type to count to three before you react rather than citing a verse at yourself. All in all a good read though, and an interesting perspective. ( )

A book applying the authors' "boundaries" philosophy to the realm of marriage.

There is much to commend the authors' concept of "boundaries" to marriage partners: if used properly, boundaries help each spouse recognize what they can and cannot control and to focus more inward and work to fix the self more than attempting to project on the spouse and to fix them. It can assist spouses who have difficulties in the areas of enabling, being walked over, or who constantly project all problems upon the other.

On the other hand, as the authors themselves make clear, the concept of boundaries has to be used properly. They cannot be immediate ultimatiums or boundaries enforced on others. The concept of consequences as elaborated in the book make some sense but can lead to all kinds of problems in and of themselves when abused. The idea of one consequence being the withholding of sex also runs contrary to 1 Corinthians 7, despite the authors' attempts to be otherwise rather Biblical.

In short, if the boundaries are established in the right way for the right reasons, things will go well. But if boundaries are established in the wrong way and/or for the wrong reasons, things could go from bad to worse. The book and concepts are worth considering, but it is even more important to check yourself at the door before establishing said boundaries. ( )

This is actually really helpful for all person-to-person interactions (read _Boundaries_ if you don't want to be distracted by the marriage examples). The idea is that you only have control over your own reactions to things; you can't change people's behavior, only your reactions to them. But you can let people know that their behavior has consequences and what those consequences are. You can permit people to suffer the consequences of their actions (which is not the same as inflicting them as a punishment). I've given this book to some people and been tempted to give it to others, but people often aren't really ready to set boundaries. Some assumptions about traditional gender roles are annoying (husband embarrassed because wife can't keep house? really? there's some problems besides 'boundaries' there) but I can read around them. ( )