---
title: Boundaries Are Not Abandonment
description: Learn to set healthy boundaries to support loved ones with addiction without enabling their behavior. Discover the difference between helping and enabling.
image: https://marktwelverecovery.org/hubfs/Article25_blog_1600x900.png
---

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[Articles](https://marktwelverecovery.org/articles)

 Oct 16, 2026, 1:40:02 PM

# Boundaries Are Not Abandonment

[Kevin D. Flynn, RCP](https://marktwelverecovery.org/articles/author/kevin-d-flynn-rcp)

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*How to tell helping from enabling, and why loving someone does not mean paying for their addiction*

A boundary is a decision about what you will do. It is not a demand about what someone else must do. Enabling is anything that makes it easier for an addiction to keep going: the paid phone bill, the covered shift, the explanation you give the rest of the family. Helping is anything that makes it easier for the person to get well. You can love someone with everything you have and still refuse to fund, house, excuse, or hide their use.

That is not abandonment. Abandonment withdraws you. A boundary withdraws your part in the harm and leaves you, and the door, where they can find you.

## What is the difference between helping and enabling?

Ask one question about anything you are doing for the person you love: does this make the addiction easier to continue, or harder? Then ask a second: am I protecting them from a consequence, or from danger? Consequences teach. Danger kills. A family that keeps those two apart can usually see the next step.

**USUALLY ENABLING**

**Cash —** Money given freely, or bills paid so that their own money is free for something else.

**Cover —** Calling in sick for them, explaining away a missed holiday, or keeping the secret from the rest of the family.

**Rescue —** Paying the same fine, debt, or bail again and again with nothing changing in between.

**USUALLY HELPING**

**Paying the program directly —** A copay sent straight to a treatment program, not to the person.

**Showing up —** A ride to an assessment, a seat next to them while they call a helpline, groceries instead of cash.

**Staying safe —** Naloxone in the house, and knowing the signs of an overdose.

None of these lists is a rule. A ride can be enabling if it is a ride to buy. Cash can be helping if it pays a detox deposit. The question underneath always matters more than the item.

## Isn’t setting a boundary unloving for a Christian?

Many church families carry a quiet guilt here. We are told to forgive seventy times seven, to turn the other cheek, to bear one another’s burdens. Saying no can feel like failing all three.

But forgiveness is not the same as financing. You can forgive a debt and still decline to lend again. And Paul, in the same chapter where he tells the church to carry one another’s burdens, says that each person will carry his own load (Galatians 6:2, 5). Those two sentences do not contradict each other. The first is about a weight too heavy to lift alone. The second is about the ordinary pack every person is responsible for. Love takes up the first. It does not quietly take the second away from someone and call that mercy.

Think of the father in Luke 15. He did not follow his son into the far country with more money. He let him go. He also never stopped watching the road, and when the son turned home, the father ran.

| *“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. … For each will have to bear his own load.”* **GALATIANS 6:2, 5 (ESV)** |
| --- |

## What does a good boundary sound like?

A useful pattern has three parts: what you love, what you will no longer do, and what you will still do. Say it once, calmly, at a time when the person is sober and you are not in the middle of a fight.

**Money —** “I love you. I’m not going to give you cash anymore. I will buy groceries, and if you want treatment, I will pay the program directly.”

**The house —** “You can’t be here when you’ve been using. You can come back when you’re sober, and you can call me any time.”

**Work —** “I’m not going to call your boss for you again. If you want to get an assessment tomorrow, I’ll drive you.”

Only say what you will actually do. A boundary you do not keep teaches that your word bends, and the next one becomes harder to hold. A boundary is also not a punishment or a threat. It is not designed to force anyone into recovery. You cannot control another person’s choices, and a boundary does not promise any particular result. It keeps you honest, and it keeps you from becoming part of what is hurting them.

## What if a boundary puts them in danger?

A boundary about money or housing is not a boundary about safety, and it should never become one. Keep naloxone in the house even if you have asked someone to stop using there. In Massachusetts, it is available at pharmacies without a prescription, and Learn to Cope has worked with the state to give free naloxone kits to families. If you are asking someone to leave, think ahead about where they will go, and pair the boundary with an offer: a call to the Substance Use Helpline together, a ride to a detox bed.

If you are afraid of the person, or there are children in the home who are not safe, that is not a boundary conversation. Protect yourself and the children first. Call 911 in an emergency, or SafeLink, the statewide domestic violence line, at 877-785-2020.

## What if they get angry, or I give in?

Expect pushback. A new boundary is usually tested, sometimes with anger and sometimes with tears. That does not mean you were wrong to set it.

And if you give in, you have not failed for good. Say it again: “I gave you money last week, and I shouldn’t have. I’m not going to do that again.” A boundary restated is still a boundary.

## Who supports the family while this is happening?

You need help too, and it exists. Learn to Cope runs peer-led meetings for families across Massachusetts. Al-Anon and Nar-Anon offer twelve-step groups for family and friends. SMART Recovery Family & Friends teaches CRAFT, an approach built for families. A 2020 review in the journal Addiction found that families trained in CRAFT were about twice as likely as comparison groups to see a loved one enter treatment.

Talk to your pastor as well. You should not have to carry the secret alone in the pew.

*If you are still working out what to say in the first place, start with “What to Say When Someone Tells You They’re Struggling.”*

**IF YOU NEED HELP NOW**

**Emergency or overdose —** Call 911.

**Suicidal thoughts or emotional crisis —** Call or text 988. Free, 24/7.

**Substance use treatment and recovery —** Massachusetts Substance Use Helpline, 800-327-5050. Free, 24/7, no insurance required.

**Support for families —** Learn to Cope, learn2cope.org.

**Domestic violence —** SafeLink, 877-785-2020. Free, confidential, 24/7.

*This article is educational and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and it is not a substitute for crisis care. Sources: Archer et al., “Community reinforcement and family training and rates of treatment entry: a systematic review,” Addiction 115(6), 2020; the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services; Learn to Cope. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.*

## If this was useful

Mark Twelve Recovery Foundation equips churches in North Central Massachusetts with free recovery Bible studies and meeting materials, and connects them with independent Christian recovery coaches. If someone in your family has come through recovery and now feels called to walk with others, our scholarships help CCAR Recovery Coach Academy graduates add Christian coach training: [**marktwelverecovery.org/scholarships**](https://marktwelverecovery.org/scholarships). Call **(978) 947-7701**. A first conversation costs nothing.

[Christian Recovery Coaching](https://marktwelverecovery.org/articles/tag/christian-recovery-coaching), [Christian Principles](https://marktwelverecovery.org/articles/tag/christian-principles)

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