The law of boundaries. Law #1: The law of sowing and reaping.

Law #1: Sowing and reaping, cause and effect - same thing.

If you don't set the alarm clock, you sleep in, you're late for work and in trouble. You don't put oil in the car engine, it seizes up. You do everything for a child, they become helpless. A person treats their partner badly, the partner leaves.
The majority of people know these rules and they know from experience or fable that by and large, these laws are true...for most people.
Narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths are not most people. They are a law unto themselves.
Often, they do not reap what they sow. We, their partners step in for them and interrupt this law. The law is not broken, it is still working. We are reaping. As such, we are unwittingly enabling what hurts us so much too. We become the narcissist's ally, perhaps even co-dependent in the sense that our lives are organised around the behaviours and needs of the narcissist and priority is given to the avoidance of upsetting them.


What has this to do with boundaries? As abused, controlled, dominated or just plain exhausted partners of narcissists we may have weak boundaries or none at all. We get what we tolerate (quote) and tolerate what we get.
When a narcissist or psychopath behaves badly or steps over a boundary (treats a partner badly), there are consequences. There just are. It's the law. Who gets the consequences though? The narcissist or their partner? Usually the partner. They step in and interrupt the law. They do it either to rescue the narcissist or rescue the situation - not make it worse or avoid anything bad happening. However, doing this means that we, the rescuer, has the consequences. Feeling angry, bad, weak, frustrated, abused, de-valued, controlled, afraid, ashamed or just hopeless and incredibly sad, deep down, soul level sad. This enables the narcissist to continue the behaviour because to him, there have been no consequences. There may have even been the reward of a compliant partner, peaceful life and getting what they want - loved and pampered. People who continually rescue others are known as co-dependents1 - this link).
Boundaries then, can force the person doing the sowing to reap what they have sown. But how do we do this from inside an abusive relationship or in a situation where we don't feel safe enough to set boundaries or say "no"? If we complain about the behaviours without any action, we are just nagging and toothless. If we allow consequences to happen to the sower, the narcissist might just learn the hard way, or, we might just reap worse consequences. I have no answers. I did not know about boundaries when I was married to a narcissist. Even if I had known, I could not have set them (link: Boundaries). For some people it's not safe. For others, boundaries might just work. Knowing when you are being violated will work every time though. I learned towards the end of my marriage when and how I was being violated. I saw it and each new violation was an empowering nail in the coffin. Eventually, I put enough nails in the coffin to leave. I actually used to say out loud to myself "that's another nail in the coffin then". I would store it and grow from it. That worked for me. You are different, as is the circumstance you are in.
There is another way of looking at the law of sowing and reaping though. We could say that if we sow love within our relationship, we will reap it. We could sow more patience and reap more peace. We could sow fun and laughter and reap joy. We could sow more service and care to our partner and reap consideration, a tidy house and less chaos. If we just had sex whenever he wanted, he would be more loving towards us. If we were just nicer people and better wives, the marriage would be better. If we are more religious and forgiving, it would all be OK. We could just keep trying harder to overcome the shortcomings that we have been told we have, been allowed to believe we have or told ourselves that we have. If we stop judging our partner about the speck in his eye and take the log from our own eye, all the problems would go. If we stopped looking back and looked more positively to the future we could bring about the love and peace the relationship needs. We can just keep trying. However, narcissists and psychopaths are vortexes. Stuff goes in and does not come out. We can pour in all the positive things mentioned above, but we will not reap the good things we think we might. Narcissists are like black holes in that respect. In my experience, nothing ever came back out. I just became exhausted and drained. A kind of drained that I can not explain. A complete emptying of everything. Like a beat up old car always running on the vapour in the empty tank, never any actual fuel in it. Perhaps the odd injection of a few millimetres of fuel, but quickly down to vapour again. It might not be wise to use the law of reaping and sowing in this way with a narcissist. Well meaning friends found this worked for them with their normal husbands. It didn't work for me, I married a narcissist. An empty, emotionless narcissist.
I hope that you can consider co-dependency, being a rescuer, being an ally, being an enabler and interrupting the law. Awareness might be a good first step for you. It was when I became aware of what was really happening that I was able to be objective enough to get out. It was only after that, I really began to see what had happened.