The John Wick Guide to Not Letting Anyone Screw With Your Soul

There’s a moment in John Wick—the first film, the genesis myth, the Big Bang of Grief-Turned-Gunfire—when Viggo Tarasov, exasperated, terrified, and suddenly aware that his asshole son has kicked a hornet’s nest strapped with C4, says, “It’s not what you did, son… it’s who you did it to.” The whole franchise hinges on a boundary violated. A dog murdered. A car stolen. A sanctuary of mourning pissed on by a petulant, entitled brat. Every relationship, whether with a mob boss, a spouse, a boss who micromanages your oxygen intake, or that “friend” who uses you like a charging station, starts with this fundamental law: you don’t fuck with the dog. You don’t cross the line someone has drawn around what keeps them human. Boundaries aren’t fences, they’re soul perimeter. And every ruined relationship is a crime scene dusted with the fingerprints of someone who refused to respect them.

But we live in an era where boundaries are treated like parking suggestions: merely aspirational, open to interpretation, and definitely not enforced after 10pm. Everyone wants access to your time, your attention, your emotional labor, your weekends, your inbox, your sanity. The modern workplace has turned boundary erosion into a competitive sport. Romantic relationships treat boundaries as optional. Friendships slide into parasitism dressed as connection. And somewhere in the thicket of this bullshit cityscape, people start wondering why they feel like the hollow-eyed Wick staggering through the Continental lobby after being denied even the dignity of a safe house. It’s because we are socialized to apologize for the lines we draw. We are encouraged to treat every personal limit as a negotiation instead of a fact, and every defense of our own peace as an act of aggression.

Plato, bless the toga-wearing brainiac, warned us two and a half millennia ago. In The Republic, he crafts this allegory about people chained in a cave, mistaking shadows for truth. We nod like good students, smug in our classical literacy, but miss the punchline: most people live in relationships where they accept the shadow version of respect. They think what they’re seeing—the flickering, half-assed version of mutuality projected by emotionally lazy lovers, exploitative colleagues, or needy friends—is the real thing. They think being nice means letting people carve away pieces of their identity until the silhouette left on the cave wall looks cooperative, agreeable, endlessly available… and dead.

Setting boundaries is the act of hauling yourself out of that cave, blinking in the blinding sun, and realizing you don’t have to live chained to someone else’s expectations. But it’s also caustic, ugly, gritty work. It’s Wick on the floor of his house, smashing the concrete up to retrieve his cache of guns and gold coins—his insurance, his autonomy, the physical embodiment of “absolutely the fuck not.” That’s what boundaries are: the arsenal buried under your emotional floorboards. You dig them out when someone keeps banging on your door after you’ve explicitly said you’re not receiving visitors.

Let’s start with the workplace, that cheerful cult where the Kool-Aid is flavored with “collaboration” and “team culture,” and the high priest thinks your time belongs to her like feudal property. Work boundaries are simple in theory and a street fight in practice. A boundary at work is saying, “This is when I’m available. This is what I’m responsible for. This is where your authority ends.” But try telling that to the email that arrives at 10:53pm with the subject line “Quick thing.” Quick for whom? Quick for the sender who wants to dump a flaming bag of urgency on your porch? Or quick for you, who has to choose between being a human or a corporate accessory?

Here’s the real John Wick lesson: consequences enforce boundaries, not explanations. If Wick had simply written a strongly worded letter after Iosef killed the dog, we wouldn’t have a franchise. He enforced his boundary with measurable response. In work, this doesn’t mean lighting up your boss with a pencil—though the fantasy is pure serotonin. It means acting as if your boundary is real, even if others pretend they didn’t hear you.

Say you don’t answer work messages after 7pm. And then you don’t. No apology. No “Sorry, just saw this.” No blame. No shame. Just the cold efficiency of a professional assassin executing his code. You are the Continental of your own attention: neutral ground. Sacred. No business conducted after hours without a gold coin’s worth of respect. And when the office clown or task-dumping supervisor tries to force you past your limit, you channel Charon at the front desk, immaculate suit, calm voice: “Unfortunately, that request falls outside my operational hours.” That’s a boundary with teeth. If you’re constantly explaining your limits, it’s because you’re surrounded by people who benefit from pretending they don’t understand them.

Romantic relationships? Jesus. This is where boundary violations get dressed up as intimacy or “just caring.” Lovers who weaponize closeness to justify invading your privacy, your routines, your friendships, your sense of self. You can practically hear the Plato cave narration: “Behold, the prisoner believes codependency is love.”

Loving someone doesn’t mean surrendering the agency you had when you were single. The most seductive lie we tell ourselves is that merging lives means abandoning the map of ourselves. But look at Wick and Helen—before the violence, before the dog, before the myth. Wick’s whole origin story is that he left the criminal underworld for her, but he didn’t erase himself. He didn’t become less John to be more Helen. He made a choice, not a surrender. Boundaries in love are exactly that: choices, not capitulations.

The moment a partner treats your “I need alone time” as a threat rather than a truth, you’re in trouble. The moment you allow your values to be negotiable to keep the peace, the peace is already gone. “Compromise” in healthy relationships is collaboration. Compromise in toxic ones is slow-motion self-erasure.

Plato again: he wrote in Phaedrus about the charioteer trying to control two horses—the noble and the unruly—representing reason and desire. Relationships without boundaries are chariot crashes waiting to happen, driven by people who think love is the unruly horse dragging both of you into the ditch. But boundaries allow the charioteer to steer, to harness passion without being trampled by it. Without boundaries, love becomes chaos. With them, it becomes direction.

Every romantic implosion worth remembering started with one partner treating the other’s limit as an obstacle rather than a truth. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” “Why are you shutting me out?” “I need space.” “Why are you punishing me?” People who can’t distinguish boundaries from rejection are emotional toddlers swinging plastic swords in Wick’s basement armory. They’re dangerous simply because they don’t know the power of what they’re swinging at.

Friendships, though—they’re the sneakiest boundary violators because they come dressed in loyalty. Friends are the people you choose, the people you think “get you,” the ones who aren’t contractually obligated or romantically entangled. So the boundary-testing sneaks in sideways: the friend who monopolizes every conversation with their crises but vanishes when you’re on fire. The friend who borrows money like it’s air. The friend who assumes you’re always available because you’ve always been the “strong one.”

Picture the Bowery King in Chapter 2 and 3: Wick goes to him for help, but there’s always an exchange. Always a recognition of limits. Allies, not leeches. The Bowery King provides resources, Wick reciprocates with respect and honesty. That’s a boundary-based friendship. Compare that to people who treat your presence as a given, your time as community property, and your empathy as a self-serve soda fountain. They want Wick, but they offer Iosef Tarasov energy. They take, take, take, then pout when you dare to say no.

Here’s the hard truth: the first time someone crosses a boundary, it’s their fault. The second time, it’s yours. That’s not victim-blaming—that’s self-preservation. Boundaries without enforcement are just wishes. Wick didn’t just warn people not to mess with his dog—he razed the Russian mob. Plato didn’t just describe the cave—he insisted the enlightened philosopher return, stand his ground, and tell the chained masses the truth, even if they hated him for it. Boundaries are meaningless unless you’re willing to defend them.

People lose this because we confuse boundaries with ultimatums. Ultimatums are control—“If you don’t do X, I will do Y to punish you.” Boundaries are self-definition—“If you choose X, I will choose Y for myself because that’s who I am.” When Wick says, “People keep asking if I’m back… yeah, I’m thinking I’m back,” that’s not a threat. It’s an identity. A reclamation. A boundary drawn around the man he refuses not to be.

This is where the caustic truth hits: most people don’t fail to set boundaries because they’re weak. They fail because they’re addicted to being needed. They need the validation of being indispensable, the martyrdom of being overworked, the moral superiority of being the “good friend,” the caretaker, the fixer, the one who sacrifices. It’s the ego dressed in selflessness drag. Wick doesn’t fall for this. When someone calls him a demon, a boogeyman, a god of death, he doesn’t say, “Oh no, I’m actually a nice guy.” He just shrugs and keeps moving. He’s not trying to be understood. He’s trying to be consistent.

Boundaries require the exact same cold clarity: your worth isn’t measured by how much of yourself you give away.

People talk about “healthy boundaries” like it’s some gentle workshop exercise with scented candles and soft jazz. Bullshit. Setting boundaries feels like violence to people who have benefited from your lack of them. They will accuse you of being selfish, cold, distant, difficult. They will try to guilt you back into compliance. They will weaponize your history, your empathy, your habits. They will drag you toward the cave wall and demand you accept the shadows again.

Plato said that if a man who has seen the sun returns to the cave and tries to explain reality, the prisoners will kill him. That’s boundaries too. Your glow threatens their darkness. Your clarity threatens their chaos. Your refusal to play the same role threatens their comfort.

And Wick? The minute he tries to get out, everyone who thrived in his shadowed past pulls him back for one more job, one more obligation, one more marker. Boundaries make you a target to the people who need you pliable. Every relationship has a High Table—an authority figure, formal or informal, that sets the unspoken rules and punishes deviation. But the great trick is this: you don’t have to accept their jurisdiction. You can leave the table. You can carve your own code into the Table’s hardwood. You can say, “My life, my rules,” and mean it.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable: setting boundaries will cost you relationships. That’s the point. Boundaries are a sieve. The people who can respect them stay. The people who can’t fall away. What remains is the Continental—a refuge of mutual respect where the rules protect everyone equally. A relationship with boundaries is a sanctuary: no bloodshed, no exploitation, no weapons drawn, no emotional assassinations.

If someone demands access to you that violates your code, they’re not a friend, a lover, or a colleague. They’re an intruder. And as Wick teaches us, you deal with intruders decisively.

But—and here’s a twist the movies don’t offer—most boundary intrusions aren’t malicious. They’re habitual. People push where there is no pushback. They take what they’ve been allowed to take. You taught them, consciously or not, what to expect. If you’ve spent years being the emotional cleanup crew, don’t be shocked that people keep calling you when they spill their mess. If you’ve been the guy who never says no at work, don’t clutch your pearls when a coworker hands you their fifth “urgent” task. If you’ve been the friend who always picks up the pieces, don’t cry betrayal when they show up with another broken thing expecting you to fix it.

This is where the Wick metaphor gets sharp: Wick’s past hunts him because he once operated without boundaries. He once said yes to the impossible task. He once worked without limits. And the world remembered. It used him. It dragged him back. Your relational history works the same way: the person you were teaches the world how to treat the person you are. Changing that means burning down the old contracts.

Plato again: identity is the soul’s form. Action shapes identity. When you act without boundaries, you distort your own form. You become whatever others need you to be. And nothing is more exhausting than living as a reflection of someone else’s desires.

Here’s the final and dirtiest truth: boundaries aren’t about protecting yourself from others. They’re about protecting the integrity of your own soul so that when you engage with others, you do it authentically, not resentfully. Resentment is the poison that accumulates when you say yes but mean no. It’s the emotional carbon monoxide that builds up when you pretend the cave shadows are enough. It’s the thing that turns good relationships into battlefields.

Wick doesn’t kill because he loves killing. He kills because he refuses to live a life where the world dictates his terms. Setting boundaries is a quieter—but equally defiant—act of self-respect. It’s saying, “I will not lose myself just to keep you comfortable.”

And that’s why most people avoid it. It’s easier to stay in the cave. It’s easier to let the High Table dictate the rules. It’s easier to be wanted for your compliance than respected for your clarity.

But boundaries are liberation. They are the sun outside the cave. They are the markers Wick carries—proof of past choices, evidence of debts paid, reminders that every obligation has an end.

A life without boundaries is a franchise of chaos. A life with them is—finally, mercifully—your own.