MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

OK. Let's talk about setting boundaries in relationships. If someone is hurting you maliciously, it can make sense to cut that person off. But what if it's not so clear? Life Kit host Marielle Segarra talked with licensed professional therapist KC Davis about this, and Davis explains what to ask yourself when you're trying to figure out the right kind of boundary to set.

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MARIELLE SEGARRA: All right, let's get into it, KC. Question one on the list is, why is this person's behavior objectionable to you?

KC DAVIS: So this is where we want to start because a lot of times, when we feel like something is bothering us about a person that we love, it can be bothering us for a lot of reasons. Sometimes something bothers you because it is impacting you negatively. It's causing distress. It's causing something hurtful.

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DAVIS: Is this person willing to take action to mitigate hurt or harm? If they don't seem willing and you think that they are, like, not willing at all, like, they're dismissive, then, like, that goes right to, like, hey, you have permission to disengage from a relationship if a person does not possess the basic desire to help you not hurt so badly.

SEGARRA: All right. The next question is, does staying in this relationship violate my values? What's an example of that?

DAVIS: When we look at our values, No. 1 is going to be my physical safety. In all circumstances, one of my highest values is the protection and care of my physical safety in a relationship. And the second one would be, like, the care and protection of my psychological safety. And then my third one is the physical and psychological safety of my minor children and other minor children.

Then we're going to go to this last question, which is, would leaving this relationship violate your values? And this is where it gets really, really unique to you and to the relationship. And that's when we're going to look at things like, OK, well, I have - how long have I known this person? And what is the interdependence of this relationship, right? Because if I was stood up by a first date, I'm not obligated to give that person a second chance. But, like, if my mom stood me up for lunch tomorrow, I think we would all agree that, like, it would probably be against my values to be like, that's it. I'm never speaking to you again.

SEGARRA: So we went through a list of questions to ask yourself if someone that you have a connection to is behaving in a way that bothers you. And at the end, you're left with basically two options. Option one, as you say in the book, is to give yourself permission to step back or disengage from the relationship. I asked KC, what might that mean, practically speaking?

DAVIS: If you decide to stay and have boundaries, a lot of boundaries are internal. Sometimes it's, I am going to continue to go and visit my dad with dementia, and it's going to be very hard for me. So the boundary that I enact is that I go on Sundays, and I have a person that I love and trust that I call when I'm done to kind of debrief. And then I go home and I read a book quietly and I have dinner with friends. And - so sometimes it's that, like, I'm going because I feel like I have a responsibility to this person. It's going to hurt. I'm not trying to get them to change, and I'm going to learn how to take care of myself on the back end.

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KELLY: Marielle Segarra, host of NPR's Life Kit, in conversation there with author and therapist, KC Davis.

(SOUNDBITE OF OHNO SONG "DROWSY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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