Who Deserves Your Love: How to Create Boundaries to Start, Strengthen, or End Any Relationship

by KC Davis LPC

Overview

A practical and gentle guide to navigating the difficult relationships that shape your life, from KC Davis, beloved therapist and bestselling author of How to Keep House While Drowning.

Just as her bestseller How to Keep House While Drowning helped readers rethink their relationship with their home, so Who Deserves Your Love offers a framework for relationships—designed especially for those who feel overwhelmed, sensitive, or stuck.

Navigating family dynamics, friendships, or romantic relationships, can feel impossible. In Who Deserves Your Love, KC Davis guides you with clarity and practicality. This is not a book about cutting people off. Rather, it’s about choosing connection and self-respect.

Inside you’ll find:

- The Relationship Decision Tree—KC’s step-by-step tool.
- Why love can be unconditional, but relationships shouldn’t be.
- Scripts for setting boundaries without guilt.
- Diagrams, and short chapters designed with ADHD and mental health in mind.

Who Deserves Your Love is for anyone who needs to repair a bond, build stronger connections, or let go with grace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668056486
Publisher:	S&S/Simon Element
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

KC Davis is the bestselling author of How to Keep House While Drowning. A licensed therapist, she is the creator of the popular Struggle Care website, Instagram, and the Domestic Blisters TikTok. KC has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Well + Good, Good Inside with Dr. Becky, Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris, among dozens of other media. KC Davis lives in Houston with her husband and daughters.

Editorial Reviews

Bringing therapeutic insight to life with lighthearted illustrations and straightforward guidance, KC Davis’s Who Deserves Your Love is a refreshingly compassionate guide for anyone struggling to manage—or make sense of—their most complicated relationships. In a world that too often treats boundaries as walls, [Davis] shows us how to use them instead as tools for creating more emotionally balanced, meaningful connections.”—Balanced Achievement

A Next Big Idea Club Must Read Pick

"Who Deserves Your Love will change how you navigate the push and pull of relationships—and how you treat yourself in the process. KC Davis writes with such kindness and no hint of blame, offering a gentle way to step back from exhaustion and into what truly matters to you. It’s a must-read guide to reclaim your agency.” – Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play

“KC Davis brings her wisdom, warmth, and practicality to Who Deserves Your Love, which will guide anyone to recognize both the causes and the solutions to relationship struggles. KC knows both from her own experience and her clinical practice that even the most valuable relationships stymie us, and her accessible writing gives us a new framework for thinking clearly about them.” - Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and New York Times "Ask The Therapist" columnist

“As a psychiatrist who is often skeptical of self-help books, this book won me over! Not only does KC approach the often-difficult conversation about boundaries with just the right degree of authenticity, but she also brings humor to the topic. With great thought-provoking questions, takeaways, and shareable images, this book is for anyone who wants to work on their relationships, and not just the romantic ones.”—Jessi Gold, author of How Do You Feel?

Praise for KC Davis’s first book, How to Keep House While Drowning:

"Currently, I am reading KC Davis’s How to Keep House While Drowning, and I love it, so my wind-down routine is a little bit more successful these days because her book is so compelling.” –Dr. Becky Kennedy for The Cut

“How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing covers topics such as building momentum by cleaning in short bursts and calming rituals that can help you deal with feeling overwhelmed. Her solutions encourage people to let go of perfectionism and help those with mental or physical illness, or who are going through a hard time, have a healthier relationship with their homes.” –The Washington Post, Jura Koncius



“If keeping up with chores feels like a full-time job, licensed therapist and How to Keep House While Drowning author KC Davis has a subtle, but radical, approach to help you manage the demands of housekeeping... In fact, she says homes do not have to look like the cover of an interior design magazine to serve their function—so embrace the mess.”—Oprah Daily

“Davis encourages her followers to see their chores not as moral obligations but rather as care tasks they deserve. As you get started, she suggests asking yourself, ‘How can I make my home serve me better?’” —Los Angeles Times, Jacqueline Pinedo


“...Davis’s work is honest and funny. But most notably, it is kind...She handles conversations around relationships, mental health, addiction, food, and body image with care and vulnerability.” —Romper, Sarah Wheeler

“The funny hacks Davis has come up with along the way to make her own life work better—veggies in the fridge door, a rack for dirty dishes as well as clean, a family closet to cut down on trips to put away clean clothes—are not meant as prescriptions, but as inspiration.” —Slate, Rebecca Onion

"This is the kindest, gentlest guide to the Sisyphean tasks of cleaning, grooming and generally keeping oneself alive. Part pep talk, part guidebook, KC Davis’ tips are aloe vera for a burned-out brain."—NPR.org, Lauren Migaki

"An honest and compassionate exploration of the many traps that leave us feeling like we've failed, How to Keep House While Drowning is filled with hard-won advice that will change the way you view your space, your habits, and (most importantly) yourself." —Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, authors of No Hard Feelings and Big Feelings

"How to Keep House While Drowning" acknowledges the less-frequently addressed challenges many people face that keep us from easily keeping up home care such as depression, ADHD, postpartum, or simply a lack of support. This short guide introduces six realistic principles from a professional counselor on how to approach home care without trying to conquer countless to-do lists.” —Business Insider

“We all struggle to balance the many demands on our time, energy and sanity from time to time. This short, easily-read volume has solid tips for coping... In the context of this book, making your housekeeping more manageable can enhance the functionality of your life.” –Jamie Gold, CKD, CAPS, MCCWC

“In her book, "How to Keep House While Drowning," Davis explains how to be gentle with yourself while also caring for yourself and your home in a way that works best for you. Her gentle approach to care tasks is what keeps people coming back. It’s the validation that we all need.” –Jacalyn Wetzel, Upworthy

From the Publisher