There is a story people tell about boundaries, and in that story somebody crosses one. There is a line, and a person steps over it, and now there is a wrong that has to be addressed. It is a clean story with a clear shape and it is very satisfying to tell. In practice it is almost never what happens.
What happens is that nobody crosses anything. The line is moved, quietly, by the person who drew it, in very small increments, over a very long time, and always for a good reason. This time it matters to them. This time insisting would cause more trouble than it is worth. This time it is simply not the moment. Each of those is true, and none of them is a surrender, and ten years of them is.
Then one day a person looks for where they end and the other begins, and cannot find it. There was no moment. There was no offence. There is nobody at all to be angry with, which is one of the reasons this particular loss is so difficult to talk about, and one of the reasons those who have suffered it usually cannot explain what is wrong.
Why it happens most with love
It does not happen with people we are indifferent to. With them the line holds perfectly well, because there is never a reason to move it and the reason is what does all the work. It happens with the people we love most, and that is not an accident or a piece of bad luck. Love is what supplies the reason, every single time, and love supplies very good reasons.
The line moves for a child because it seems a small thing next to their need. It moves for a partner because the alternative is a difficult evening and everybody is tired. It moves for a parent because there may not be many years left and this is not the hill. Every one of these is a decent impulse, and that is exactly what makes the whole process invisible. If it felt like weakness it would be noticed immediately. It feels like generosity, so it is not.
And the other person is not taking anything, which is important to say. They are not testing or pushing or looking for advantage. They simply move into whatever space is available, as anybody would, as we would in their place, without ever knowing that the space was made rather than found.
What the missing line actually costs
The cost does not appear as anger, which would at least be legible to somebody. It appears as tiredness, and as a strange low resentment that has no object and therefore cannot be discussed with anybody. It is felt, and then there is guilt for feeling it, because these are the people they love and not one of them has done anything at all.
There is a second cost that is harder to see and worse in the long run. When there is no line at all between two people, the closeness itself begins to lose something. Closeness requires two people to be present. If one of them has gradually dissolved into the arrangement, then what remains is not intimacy, it is accommodation, and everybody can feel the difference even though nobody can name it.
People are praised for having no boundaries with their families, as though it were the highest available form of devotion. Sometimes it genuinely is. Very often it is a person who quietly disappeared some years ago and has been thanked for it ever since, and the thanks are sincere, and they are being given to somebody who is no longer there.
The reflex that shuts everything
Here is the part that is hardest to explain and can only really be described. When a person who has moved the line for years finally reaches the end of what they can move, they do not usually negotiate. They close. All at once, completely, without announcement or warning of any kind.
It is not a decision. It is much closer to a reflex, and by the time it is noticed it has already happened. Nothing is said and there is no confrontation. But an invisible barrier goes up, and afterwards, however much they want to, they cannot get it down again.
And the other person has no idea what happened, because from their side nothing did. They were not warned when the line was moving and they are not told when it has finally gone. All they know is that somebody who was warm has become distant, and that when they ask about it they are told it is nothing. So the boundary that was never drawn openly becomes a wall built overnight, which is a terrible way to arrange things, and nobody has yet found a better one.
