The Ego Boundary is a conception unique to Romantic Dynamics in that the traditional view of a personal boundary is not very developed out in visual pictorial form to start with, although many in the literature reference some of its general properties pertaining to relating to the outside world, beyond our inner experience. This concept certainly has use in our social and romantic lives.

In Romantic Dynamics, we lay out the various working "anatomical parts" of a personal boundary and view it as an interface with the social and romantic surrounds, not unlike the functions of the border of a country. Customs and immigration, trade deals that need to be fair and of mutual value, and permission must be given to enter. One can visualize all these functions very easily.

However, when Freud laid out the Ego model of the mind as composed of two parts originally - the conscious and unconscious - and then later as the Ego, Superego and Id, we started seeing visualizations and models of the mind that contained physics terms like "drives" and "pressures," as well as "conflict," between these working parts.

Rather than a 2D model of the mind in pictures, why not imagine a 3D model where the "Id" of Freud (today we call the Reptilian Brain) responsible for instincts, reflexes, habits, buried beliefs and memories as well as imprinted behaviors all at the core of a person's psychology - the unconscious. Yet we don't have awarenes of most of our own unconscious, because it's not conscious. So then, what is the dividing line between unconscious and subconscious, or unconscious and conscious? We propose an interior boundary within the personal boundary, called the Ego Boundary.

This inner sphere is a surface or interface dividing the conscious from the unconscious in us, still separated from the outside social world by the personal boundary that surrounds it. As such it also makes a useful divider between the functions of the instincts of the Reptilian Brain, and the emotions and conscious ideas of the Mammalian Brain and Higher Brain, respectively.

In our diagrams below you can see the example of masculine instincts, represented by the Greek gods and their pure symbolic tendencies, while outside the Ego Boundary (and within the personal boundary) are the emotions and thoughts.

When the Ego Boundary is strong, we tend to be integrated and more mature, honest with ourselves than when we were children. When it is weak, we tend to do more immature behaviors and employ primitive and immature Ego Defenses or Defense Mechanisms.  We are of lower character and more exhibiting vices than virtues then - not a good fit for intellectual attraction and a committed relationship of partners.