It’s nearly impossible to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy the beginning of a relationship. It’s filled with moments that inspire romance novels. Everyone is capable of being swept up in the euphoric state and most of us have missed the lines we vowed not to cross. It only gets harder to spot those lines when we’ve been serious with our partners. That fuzzy feeling might be dissolving the parts of us that keep us from jumping whenever our partner says how high. It’s too easy to fall in love and forget about ourselves. That’s why the Universe gave us boundaries. They don’t disappear when we bind ourselves to another, no matter how many times we do it.

There are times when all we want is to be all over our partners. All our senses will be on high alert whenever we’re hopped up on their pheromones. It looks like us following them around a room at a party, cuddling on the couch for hours and holding their hands in every aisle in the grocery store. While this sounds very cute from a distance, watch your partner’s face when you’re that close. I mean really watch the expressions on their face while you move as they do. If they’re trying to create space between you two, you’ve crossed a couple boundaries.

First, our partners are not attached to us. Their personal space is just that, personal. They have the right to demand us to back up and stop hovering. While it’s understandable to have intense feelings for romantic partners, it’s not a good enough reason to be the human equivalent of a tattoo they want removed. Second, the line between our space and our partner’s space no longer exists. We traded in the bubble we’re born with for a seemingly much larger one that includes our lover. It’s not as big as we think. When we turn personal space into communal space, it’s no longer safe to be individual people. It’s too easy to neglect what our bodies may be telling us because we don’t want to be alone, even if for small amounts of time. We have to be alone and if we didn’t blow past our boundaries, we wouldn’t feel like a burden.

As much as we don’t want to be a burden, we want to have fun with our partners. Sex tends to be a large part of the fun in a relationship. Anyone who’s engaged in it can tell of the wonders that comes with it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with its own set of boundaries that various from person to person. Regardless of our sexual knowledge level, each of us has at least 1 rule surrounding our nether regions. Whether it’s about contraception, fluids or the order of sexual acts, the boundary is there. It’s not up to our partners to like the boundaries but rather to respect them. It doesn’t matter if it’s inconvenient or annoying. It’s our partners’ responsibility to not cross the lines. If they do, it’s our responsibility to stay steadfast to the lines in the sand.

Pleasure makes it difficult to keep a clear stance on where hands, lips and other body parts should be. That person we chose to be in our bed, car, couch or wherever we decided to bump uglies can fill our heads with enticing words that tip toe over our preset boundaries. We’ve all been in a moment when we’re ready, but something is nagging at us to slow down. To be fair it could be undue anxiety that comes up when a sexual opportunity presents itself. More often than not, it’s that boundary we set up to keep us from being in different situations down the line. That doctor’s office is not a fun place to think about our actions.

While we’re in that doctor’s office waiting for our turn, our minds can drift back to how our partners convinced us to not worry about the consequences in the moment. Maybe they focused on the pleasure or about how hard it would be to shift gears in the middle. There was a point before we shrugged when uncertainty almost won. That uncomfortable feeling can come around when our partners call us a pet name we don’t like or when we spend all our time trying to solve their problems. Being supportive is an amazing quality to have in a relationship but it can’t be the anchoring piece. When it is, differentiating between ourselves and our significant other gets much harder.

Though it’s not easy holding ourselves to our boundaries, it helps us when we’re up for a harsh consequence. Boundaries give us room to be who we need to be without worrying about anyone else. We have to make decisions based on what we need rather than what makes others happy. When we don’t, we’re telling our partners how little we care about ourselves.