Why Is Setting Sexual Boundaries Important?

While we think of having regrets as an eventuality reserved for old age, some are having to face theirs well before reaching those mature years. Many women are facing their regrets even now in their twenties and thirties, as they deal with the fallout from their personal lives and acknowledge that they’ve unwittingly become the collateral damage of the sexual revolution. There is nothing worse than having regrets and wanting to make a different choice after you’ve made the wrong one, but for women, there is little that’s more heartbreaking than sexual regret. 

They say that with age comes maturity and with regret comes acceptance of choices. Our choices determine our lives, after all. But being saddled with these persistent thoughts and the weight of shame, embarrassment, humiliation, and sheer emotional pain is a tough pill to swallow day after day as we live with ourselves. While we can’t change the past, every day is an opportunity for us to start anew, and this is why setting sexual boundaries is so important.

The Benefits of Having Boundaries

The very word “boundary” conjures images of putting up walls or being tied to something. The Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, “We are bound by the law so that we may be free.” If we’re in bondage to a belief system, convictions, or a set of ideals though, how is it that we can “be free”?

Without boundaries, we become slaves to our desires, or even slaves to the desires of others. Without boundaries, we become easily vulnerable, and without protection, we can be taken advantage of. More than anything else, a boundary meant to keep others and their own motivations at bay is what can most effectively protect us.

Having boundaries is crucial to our formation of self and especially in how we interact with others. This not only applies to our romantic relationships but our other personal ones as well. It’s been said that the only people upset with you when you enforce boundaries are the people who were taking advantage of them, and with this in mind, we should pause for a moment to think about who really benefits from a lack of sexual boundaries.

Without boundaries, we become slaves to our desires and even to the desires of others.

We might believe that by having no boundaries at all, we’re truly free. We’re tied to nothing and no one, and free to behave however we desire and give ourselves meaninglessly to whomever we want. But the truth is, there are people out there who are waiting for this to happen, and when it comes to sex, many men are only too happy to use our lack of boundaries as a means to their own end.

Setting Boundaries with Yourself

Enforcing boundaries might be difficult for us, especially if we’re more prone to people-pleasing than rocking the boat. The simplest way to go about forming boundaries is by starting with ourselves, and this is especially effective when it comes to sex.

As women, we can do this by looking around us and inside ourselves for inspiration. Sex is everywhere, but 99% of the time, it’s a hideous misrepresentation of what healthy sex really is. This is due to the fact that true intimacy has been altogether removed from what our culture thinks about sex and what it promotes.

Women who are married or at the very least in long-term, committed relationships receive much more emotional satisfaction from sex than their single, no-strings-attached counterparts do. Women in dating or casual relationships report that they have sex more than married women do, but more doesn’t automatically mean better. Quality over quantity is the key here. Observing this in our own social circle is as simple as taking a quick poll among our friends and peer groups. Our single friends might be supposedly thriving from their friends-with-benefits situationship, but what about when they “catch” feelings and those feelings remain unrequited? With this in mind, we can glean that for the large majority of women, these situations are not as satisfying as they appear – but none of us want to talk about it.

The second way we set boundaries with ourselves (and by that action, with others) is careful, precise self-examination. Who am I as a person? What do I believe about sex and about relationships? What biases do I hold, or is my lack of boundaries driven by, say, rejection of religious faith, a traumatic incident, or by the desire to please others? Any woman can have meaningless flings and one-night stands, but if we’re fighting against our own nature, a time will come – as it has for many – where we’ll eventually have to confront our own folly. We can avoid this painful realization well ahead of time by being strict about who we spend our time with (friends versus a flirty coworker, for example), where we spend our time, what daily habits we adhere to, and holding to these convictions by knowing inherently that we’re worth more than just a few drinks and one night.

Pay Attention to Cautionary Tales

After decades of so-called empowerment and encouraging promiscuity while promoting “consequence-free” sex (which doesn’t exist, by the way), women are finally, finally speaking up about the realities of this kind of lifestyle.

Internet personality Trisha Paytas has faced her fair share of online controversy in years past, but the new mom is reshaping public perception about her brand following the recent birth of her daughter Malibu with her husband, artist Moses Hacmon. Trisha recently opened up to her 5 million YouTube subscribers about her regrets, especially in how she portrayed herself online following her career as an escort when she was younger. 

Boundaries are a form of self-preservation.

Paytas admits that her role models were sex symbols like Pamela Anderson and Anna-Nicole Smith, but points out that they and other similar figures might have believed that openly portraying their sexuality was empowering, but tragically, that misconception was used as a commodity by others who stood to gain from it. “If I could turn back the hands of time, I would be wholesome. I mean that wholeheartedly,” Paytas says. She candidly refers to herself as a cautionary tale, an example of what not to do or how not to behave, but fortunately, she got her happy ending with her marriage and the birth of her daughter.

Bridget Phetasy, an online commentator and podcast host, has also touched on the subject in her recent piece “I Regret Being a Slut,” which has now been read thousands of times by both men and women who were touched by its sincerity. Phetasy, a former columnist for Playboy, writes that it’s countercultural for a feminist to regret “meaningless or mediocre” sexual encounters, but like so many women before and after her, she subscribed to the false narrative that those encounters with men who didn’t care for her would be empowering. Phetasy says that her own inner turmoil was at such odds with the dominant cultural narrative that she eventually turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the pain.

She, too, now has a husband and child, and remarks that the birth of her daughter was a motivation in finally finishing this piece. “I want her to know better,” she said. 

Closing Thoughts

Sexual boundaries sound like a huge, weighty concept, and the ramifications of missteping these boundaries can indeed be severe, though they might not appear so at the time. But a boundary doesn’t have to be as complex or awkward as we think it might be. Sometimes it’s as simple as deleting an ex’s number from your phone, or not going to a bar where you know they always are. Setting sexual boundaries with a date or a boyfriend is as simple as one, knowing your worth, and two, ascertaining if the person you’re with is man enough to respect that worth. The right man will be and the wrong one won’t, though as any woman who enforces strict sexual boundaries in relationships knows, you might have to go through a lot of frogs to get to your prince.

Boundaries are important both for our health as individuals and our health when we’re part of a couple. If we’re always submitting to the other person, or any person for that matter, our self-esteem bears the brunt of those decisions, and we wear down over time, thinking that sex might be the only reason someone’s interested in us. Boundaries are a form of self-preservation, and if there’s anything that deserves preservation, it’s our emotional health and well-being.

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