Let's speak about men's boundaries

And the fear of hurting women

I recently had a conversation with my friend Gayatri Beegan for the newly launched Initiated Man Summit, and I was asked “What do women actually want from men?”

My answer might surprise you.

As someone who has the honour of speaking with many men in private sessions about their intimate relating, there is something I witness often, and which leads not infrequently to trouble in their personal lives: a fear of hurting women. I believe it's one of the main reasons men struggle to know - or express - where their own boundaries lie.

We speak a lot about women’s boundaries, but rarely men’s.

I think that many men feel a lack of permission to have boundaries in their relationships with women.

Why?

I imagine there are many threads to follow here, but one I've been sitting with, is what happens when we live in a culture in which many women identify as - and are seen as - the victims of a transgenerational gender war.

In this dynamic, a man’s boundary becomes a potential act of harm rather than an act of integrity, because they've been positioned as the ones with power and the capacity to hurt, while women have been positioned as the ones who need protecting.

None of this is to deny that many women have experienced real violence or intimidation at the hands of men. My interest is in what happens psychologically when this story becomes the primary lens through which men and women encounter one another, and when the story becomes so total that we lose sight of men's vulnerability too.

I see many men who identify as good men, who don't want to be the 'cause' of a woman's pain, and who - rather than risk being cast as the aggressor for expressing a boundary - fall into self-abandonment, sacrificing their agency, going silent and withdrawing.

The result is disconnection, resentment, suffering, and rupture to relationship.

As a woman, I confess that in the past I have not always made it easy for the men I have been intimately relating with. I know what it is to be loving until I stop getting what I want. How in response to my feeling unsafe, I withdraw my love in an act of unconscious control dressed up as self-protection. I have witnessed myself unable to tolerate my partner’s boundaries without reactivity or fear, reinforcing the very thing that makes him afraid to have one.

And I have compassion for myself and anyone else struggling with boundaries and admitting to the strategies we’ve developed through our nervous systems trying to protect themselves. It’s not like we have an abundance of examples of role modelling good boundaries in our relationally impoverished culture.

For so many of us, the first no's we ever offered as children weren't met with love and an open heart - they were met with aggression, punishment, or the withdrawal of love. Many of us were forced to sit still for hours each day, taught in schools in ways that did not feel natural to us, and tragically, spent our earliest years having our boundaries overridden again and again, until it started to feel normal.

Many of us have never experienced a boundary bringing us closer together: instead we associate them with the pain of disconnection.

Even the word “boundary” feels misleading, conjuring the image of a kind of wall between us.

Interestingly, the word comes from the Latin bodina - a legal and territorial term used specifically for a landmark or stone marker dividing one property from another. When it was borrowed for therapeutic and self-help language centuries later, it’s roots came with it. We inherited a word built for something you defend against trespass, when what we actually mean is closer to an internal compass - the felt result of being embodied, present, and in connection with ourselves; something sensed and adjusted to in real time, not fixed in stone at all.

I wonder if this also contributes towards the confusion we collectively have around what true boundaries are and what is control, punishment or armouring.

True boundaries - both expressing and receiving can be initiatory in nature.

They confront us with identities we've outgrown: the rescuer, the good girl, the good man, the pleaser, the victim, the controller. Every genuine boundary asks one of those identities to die.

Expressing a boundary requires courage and risk, especially if we’ve been conditioned to equate our worth with limitlessness. It asks us to meet the parts of us that are afraid or insecure, to risk being disliked, misread, or losing our belonging.

Receiving a boundary well requires that we recognise the other person is not an extension of us, but a separate, sovereign being with their own limits. It asks for a kind of ego-death in miniature - accepting “no” without collapsing it into “I am unloved,” and without reactivity. This is the shape of every true initiation: we leave an old identity behind, face the ordeal, and return changed, more mature for having crossed it.

Sometimes, boundaries do require us to walk away. But more often, they invite us to create something new together: a fresh imprint of holding both a boundary and a connection at once. Prentis Hemphill defines a boundary as “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” I would go as far as to say that this is what a relationship is: staying true to ourselves while staying in connection, and the infinite number of little deaths - of wishful thinking and our projections - we have to honour as a result.

The times I’ve been on the receiving end of a boundary from a man, and still felt him there - willing to stay in connection, to keep engaging with me - have been potent medicine: pivotal, transformational moments I remain deeply grateful for. They’ve taught me how to be in relationship and taught me respect. Something I had not learned growing up.

So, what do women want?

I obviously can’t speak for all of them, but if you’re a man reading this, I want you to know this:

We talk a lot about the lack of initiated men in the world, but what’s actually needed is that we keep initiating each other, through relationship itself.

Not the co-dependent kind, but real relationship, where we learn to sit in the fire of staying true to ourselves while remaining in connection.

This is what mature love asks of us. Not that one person learns to have boundaries while the other learns to tolerate them, but that we keep initiating one another into greater integrity. Every honest "no" that remains connected teaches us something new about love.

So, dear men, I want to share that your boundaries are needed. They are an expression of being unashamedly you: embodied, present, self-respecting, committed to integrity, courageous.

If you're asking what women want deep down:

I think it’s that.

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The Initiated Man Summit is a free, three-day online interview series exploring what it means to be a man in today’s world, running from 29th to 31st July.

Hosted by Gayatri Beegan, the summit brings together leading voices exploring masculinity, relationships, sexuality, leadership and personal growth.

In my conversation, we explore a Feminine perspective on men ‘beyond blame’, alongside practical insights and grounded perspectives to support men in living with greater authenticity, connection, integrity and aliveness.

Across the three days you’ll delve into topics including:

• conscious sexuality and erotic intelligence

• emotional depth and relational maturity

• healing shame, disconnection and performance conditioning

• power, integrity, leadership and responsibility

If you’re committed to your own growth - or know a man who would benefit from these conversations - I encourage you to join us.

Reserve your free place here