We all have that one friend who doesn’t know how to stop talking about themselves when you are going through something personal. Or what about that one friend that radiates negative energy and dims even your brightest of days? Do you ever feel like the boundaries you’ve set are being ignored? Well, you’ve been heard. Here is a three-step system to communicate and set boundaries with the friend who doesn’t know they exist.
- Call Them Out
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When you are trying to take a self-care day and are in your zone, meditating, and your phone buzzes for the third time in five minutes, you may think it is important and urgent because why would someone text you that many times when you’ve told them you are taking a self-care moment? You look at your phone and there’s the contact name that you didn’t want to see because you thought you had said today was for yourself. Now that your boundaries have been shattered what do you do now? Call that friend out. I would respond with something like, “I’m taking a self-care day, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” When you turn that chill music back on and hear buzzing again, it’s a response saying, “Ok, sure! Talk to you tomorrow!”, your boundaries have been reset. If this doesn’t work, however, try this next step.
- Create Some Space
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So, you’ve set a boundary and then reinforced it by calling out your friend and she still texts you about her break up. What now? Create space! Shut off the notifications or select the mute button on that message chain so you don’t have to see what she is saying because you have to remember the rules of self-care: her problems are not your problems and it is not your responsibility to fix them. You go about your day, have a shopping spree, meal prep for the week, watch some Netflix, and finally you look at your phone only to realize you have ten missed calls, having put your phone on mute. You go through your calls and see you have six voicemails from her, and they are each two minutes long. You listen to all of them and as you go on, they get more and more aggressive: they go from updates on her current situation to accusations about you not caring about her because you didn’t pick up. It is at this moment that you realize she didn’t get the memo that you didn’t want to talk during your self-care day.You not answering her texts or phone calls just meant that you wanted some space. That’s when you consult step three.
- Cut Off Contact
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At this point, you feel like your wants and needs are not being validated and that your friend is putting her own needs before yours. You now see that this hasn’t been a one-time thing, buta repeat offense. You love your friend, you have been friends with her since high school, but it seems as though you are in different places in your lives. You are working, going to school, and doing the single life thing, thriving in your own light. You are no longer that girl in high school who would gossip about the cutest guy on the sports teams or spending every moment obsessing over Channing Tatum. You have grown and evolved, but it seems as though your friend has not. What are you to do? Keep the friendship because you have a history ? Or do you let your friend go because she is no longer your lifeline, but her anchor that is taking you down with her? I think you know what you have to do even though it may emotionally feel like a Sophie’s Choice, where neither outcome is desirable. So, you text your friend to meet up for coffee because you aren’t shady and won’t dump her via text. You respect her far more than that. You are at Starbucks and you are drinking your Pumpkin Spice Latte’s and going over in your head what you are going to say, but you know it must be done. You look your friend in the eye, you know things are going to be awkward already, so you just go for it and tell your friend that you can’t be there for her anymore but that you wish her well and hope she is successful in her future endeavors. At that moment, you pick up your coffee and you start to head home. On the way home, you block her on everything, knowing that it is hard enough to walk out of the friendship but that the reminder might make you regret the situation. But ending things was for the best.
There is not a one size fits all solution for when you realize you are growing apart from your friend. However, it is important that you put yourself first. Your friend can find someone else to talk to about her problems, a therapist perhaps, but there is only one you. If you devote all of your energy to something that is dragging you down, you can’t be awesome for others. You deserve to be awesome for others, including yourself, so setting boundaries and communicating your needs is important…Sometimes for the greater good!