Friendships & Boundaries

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.

—Proverbs 5:15–17

No one sets out to have a relationship outside their marriage. No one, on their wedding day, says, Several years down the road, I might lie to you about where I’m going. I might text an old boyfriend while I’m sitting next to you on the couch. I might fall in love with someone else, little by little, and you might not even know. No one thinks that will happen to their marriage. But I’m learning, by watching people I adore live through so much heartbreak, that it happens all the time.

It doesn’t have to. The number one best way to keep your marriage from being vulnerable to an affair is to invest in it, and the number two way is to build boundaries to protect you from a relationship that could ruin your marriage.

I absolutely believe men and women can be friends. The men that I walk with—my friends, Aaron’s friends, our small group—they’re my brothers. They talk to me like I’m a sister. They want our marriage to win. I want theirs to win. I believe men and women can be friends. And I believe those friendships flourish within healthy boundaries.