The Consent Doctrine: Why Tariffs Fail and Boundaries Hurt
We’ve turned boundaries into a moral ideal.
In therapy, in relationships, in politics—drawing a boundary has become shorthand for maturity. It signals clarity, self-protection, even virtue. We post about them. We praise people for holding them. We pathologize those who don’t.
But boundaries are not an endpoint. They’re a defense mechanism—useful, necessary, and ultimately insufficient.
Boundaries help us survive.
Consent helps us relate.
Consent is what comes after the boundary—if we’re brave enough to stay in conversation. It’s dynamic, mutual, voluntary. It requires negotiation. And unlike boundaries, it cannot be performed. It has to be practiced.
But the current cultural climate—both emotionally and politically—has made consent feel too risky. So instead, we retreat behind firm lines and call it healing.
In 2019, a mediator told me to cut off contact with my mother permanently.
She had crossed too many lines, they said. Threatened suicide to control a conversation. Weaponized her own pain.
Hold the boundary. That was the advice.
At the time, it felt like the right thing to do. Clean. Correct. Almost…righteous.
But holding a boundary long-term takes more energy than anyone tells you—especially if you’re the one who’s “in the right.” There’s the rigidity, the moral superiority, the constant internal policing of why you had to draw the line in the first place. It’s exhausting.
Eventually, I stopped trying to win the stalemate. Not to reconcile, not to forgive—but to renegotiate.
I began treating the relationship not as a place to defend, but as one I could enter or exit based on consent.
Conversation by conversation. If it stopped feeling consensual, I stopped engaging. If it felt possible again, I entered with conditions. No long-term promises. Just presence and permission.
I didn’t stop protecting myself. But I stopped pretending that protection was enough.
The logic of boundary culture isn’t confined to relationships. It shows up everywhere—especially in how countries assert control.
The U.S.–China tariff war is a boundary strategy, not a negotiation. It isn’t designed to foster understanding or cooperation. It’s designed to punish. Tariffs aren’t policies of engagement—they’re ultimatums: This is what happens when you cross the line.
It’s the same emotional strategy we use when we say, I’m not doing this anymore.
When we impose conditions not to rebuild trust, but to establish dominance.
It feels decisive. It feels powerful. But it rarely invites resolution.
That’s the irony of boundary-based policy—whether personal or geopolitical. It creates the illusion of stability while escalating tension. It replaces dialogue with defense. It punishes vulnerability with silence. And worst of all, it often rewards the very behavior it claims to reject.
Boundaries say: We don’t trust you.
Consent asks: Are we still choosing this—together?
One isolates. The other sustains.
Consent is harder. It’s slower. It’s riskier.
It requires us to show up without guarantees. To stay open without surrendering. To renegotiate instead of retreat.
But it’s also the only path to durable power.
Because power without consent is domination.
And domination always breeds resistance—internally, relationally, globally.
We’ve confused protection with maturity. Boundaries feel grown-up. But the deeper truth is: drawing a line is easier than staying in the room. Tariffs are easier than treaties. Silence is easier than complexity.
We praise the clean break because it spares us the mess.
But if there’s anything we need now—in our homes, in our discourse, in our politics—it’s the willingness to keep talking. Not forever. Not without terms. But with care, curiosity and the capacity to say yes or no and mean it.
Consent doesn’t mean agreement.
It means participation.
It means presence.
And presence is the only way anything real gets built.