Even though I’m critical of the current vogue for stoicism, I do like the philosophy’s emphasis on cultivating grit to confront the difficulties in life instead of attempting to wall off potential unpleasantries. Montaigne, who also grew increasingly critical of stoicism across his project, raises one of the most appealing elements of ancient philosophies — the acceptance of life’s challenges and making a conscious effort to remain constant and rational despite how hard it can sometime be.

I am just as — and perhaps even more — critical of standard therapeutic approaches to confronting modern life. I think modern therapists make a mistake placing so much emphasis on creating boundaries. It’s reached a critical mass in our culture, leading an increasing number of young people to break off all contact with family members and to routinely sever relationships over disagreements. This has exacerbated loneliness in our culture as people cling only to those who they feel most safe with in every context.

Life sometimes demands that we expand our comfort zones a bit and learn enough resiliency to deal with people who create some discomfort and difficulties in our lives. Life also teaches us to see ourselves as unique in the world in important ways, not as much of a type as the culture would lead us to believe. Our experiences are more complicated and less fitting of universal patterns that we tend to think.

A good example of this is the fairly recent re-description of romantic crushes with the world “limerence.” The word was coined by Dr. Dorothy Tennov in the 1970s, who wrote an interesting and influential book on the topic “Love and Limerence.” In that book, Dr. Tennov noted some clinical similarities in the way patients described obsessive romantic fixations that didn’t fit cleanly into psychological categories at that time.

There has been some research to carry on Dr. Tennov’s work since the publication of her book, but it should be noted that none of her definitions have found their way into standard, accepted psychology diagnoses. The word is more of a literary reframing, a way for people raised with certain conceptions about love to reframe their feelings and rethink what they may be experiencing. I’ve read Dr. Tennov’s book and would recommend it.

What I do not recommend is the burgeoning subculture of extrapolations on limerence that has proliferated on the internet in recent years, most notably on the r/limerence subreddit. This has turned into a self-referencing cult of people that have transformed limerence from a definition of relationships and feeling into a personality category, with the limerent being a fixed type of human being with the same traits across the world, all experiencing human relationships the exact same way.

I mention limerence in this context because the end result of Reddit limerence theory is exactly the same as high boundary theory — people pulling away from close human contact. People who have self-diagnosed as limerents assume there is something inherent in them that leads to repetitive and inevitably self-destructive affective feelings.

What a sad and hopeless way to look at life. We’ve all experienced relationships that were disappointing in some respect — and it’s completely normal to feel some shame for getting into and holding onto relationships that inevitably went awry. But to stigmatize yourself as someone prone to this pattern is to develop a defeatist attitude towards one of the most important aspects of life.

How much better it would be to normalize heartbreak and disappointment and to make it a valuable part of life. One of my favorite movies is “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” an ultimately heartbreaking movie about a couple that was doomed to end up apart, despite their deep affection for one another that led to a child. I wonder if people of our current boundary obsessed culture could truly appreciate the film. I could see a young person watching it and concluding that the two main characters were delusional and the story proved the hopelessly naive danger of romantic love.

That is not the meaning of the film at all. Like many bittersweet romances, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” shows that even relationships that end (and in this case, for the better of everyone in the film) are essential to life and part of what make the experience of living worthwhile. If we aren’t hopeful and resilient enough to take a chance on relationships that could fail, we end up going through life protected, but just as free of bliss and possibly all alone.

As my old boss Gov. Doug Wilder liked to tell his young staff “life is hard.” We all face our challenges and losses, and can fall into despair from them. But there’s nothing more truly depressing that standing behind high walls never reaching out, always throwing people away, and clinging to communities of brokenness.