Friendship can bring a lot of happiness and joy to our lives. Friends offer support in tough times and help create the most lifelong memories.
A lot of people can feel lonely and struggle to find friends, so they tend to make a double effort to please everybody. However, it’s impossible, you can’t give your time, attention, and energy to everybody, you should evaluate who your real friends are so that you can reorient more of your attention and energy toward them. This will help you to build real relationships that fulfill you and bring value to your life. You can choose to socialize with others, but you should prioritize your friends and close ones.
Benefits of setting boundaries
A request that would be completely appropriate toward a friend could be unsuitable for a neighbor or a colleague. Taking into consideration the context of a particular relationship builds trust and helps to progress toward intimacy.
Setting healthy boundaries will clarify things for you and your friend, it will help them to know more about you, your needs, what makes you happy, and what makes you uncomfortable.
Boundaries are not meant to make the bond rigid or cold. Setting clear and firm boundaries helps both friends to feel safe and comfortable in the relationship. The main value of boundaries is that you can be yourself in friendship.
“God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with” Billy Graham
Reciprocity:
A healthy relationship, regardless of the level of intimacy, is reciprocal. If you frequently give more in a relationship than you receive, you should be more aware and start asking the right questions. Maybe the friendship means more to you or maybe the other person is just using you for their benefit. You the one who calls the other or does most of the initiating? Are you often in the role of supporting?
Setting boundaries in practice
You can’t change the people around you, but you can fix clear limits that allow you to feel comfortable, and safe in interacting with others. Here are four steps I recommend for you when practicing boundaries in tough situations.
1. Be aware of what you’re feeling
When interacting with a colleague, family member, or a friend, put attention to your feelings, if you feel anxious or uncomfortable regularly with someone, notice your thoughts and ask yourself: Why is it that you feel troubled around this person but relaxed and calm with other friends?
2. Decide on how to respond to the situation
Once you’ve noticed the behavior, depending on how close you are to this person, you can decide on an action. If it’s someone you care about and want to keep in your life, you might let them know, with a calm tone, that you’re having an issue with this behavior and that you cannot accept it any longer. If it’s someone you don’t see regularly, just try taking your distance yourself and reduce contact with them.
If you feel that these actions are not enough, you can cut this person out of your life. While it can seem scary at first, but It’s your responsibility to spend your time and energy with people that make you feel gratified and peaceful.
3. Accept their reactions
You should know that a lot of people will not accept being told they’re acting inappropriately. And it’s ok, people may disagree with you, but you should keep your control over the situation and decide on how to respond, maybe you can work out some solutions that enable you both to move forward or to make compromises. In extreme cases, you can distance yourself from this person and let them know you will break off contact with them.
4. Stay firm
Setting healthy boundaries is always challenging and difficult at first, it’s not easy to change your behavioral patterns, but if you do, you’ll have better relationships and more self-esteem and respect for yourself.
Finally, start by taking a big breath and remind yourself that your emotions and needs matter, keep reminding others that they can just disrespect or neglect your needs and accept that you will do or say nothing about it. Sometimes just expressing your needs authentically and directly can entirely solve your problem.
