Underneath many boundary conflicts is a quiet negotiation about access: who gets to make demands, who absorbs inconvenience, and whose needs are treated as optional. The quote implies that when you adjust that balance—by saying no, asking for respect, or limiting contact—you disrupt an unspoken agreement that may have been unequal.
Seen this way, the tantrum is not merely emotional; it is political in the small-scale sense of relationships. It is a bid to restore the old arrangement. By contrast, the boundary is a recalibration, insisting that access to you is conditional on basic regard rather than on guilt, pressure, or precedent. [...]
