At some point the constant hustle and bustle of life becomes lonely if you have no one to spend your free time with. When you’re constantly on the go and you finally get a free moment to sit and catch your breath it’s hard to not wish there were people to spend time with. But it’s in these moments when you catch yourself reaching out to whoever is available that it’s difficult to slow down and ask yourself if you’re only spending time with people to not feel alone and not spending time with them because they ‘fill your bucket.’
Ah yes, the metaphorical question of who and how do you ‘fill your bucket.’ It’s a question that I carry around with me through my day to day life. Each interaction that you have with another person can either fill your bucket or take from your bucket. When you spend time with someone who makes you happy and builds you up you’re filling your bucket and when you spend time with someone who drains you they’re taking from your bucket.
At some point in every relationship you have one of your will pull out of the other person’s bucket a little bit too much. This kind of relationships is fine for a short period of time, you’ll pull out of their bucket and then the reaction will go back to being about 50-50, and they will eventually pull a bit more from you. This is what happens when you’re friends with someone; you’ll need to give and take a little. And someone is going to need to be there for the other person at some point.
But at what point is this taking from your bucket too much? At what point do you need to tell your friend that they are relying on you too much? That’s the real question… How much is too much? When do you need to tell the other person that they rely on you more than you would be willing to rely on them?
And that is the answer to the question… when the friend decides that they can rely on you more than you feel comfortable relying on you need to tell them that the score is not even.
Confrontation is hard, it’s even harder when you have to confront your friends. But if you ever want a friendship to succeed you will need to be able to confront your friends. If it’s a true friendship then you should be able to tell the other person how you feel without them getting their feelings hurt. Feelings are difficult to combat, especially when you’re a young woman also trying to combat the whole entire world.
Yet, if you’re willing to tell someone how you feel you could build an amazing, life-long friendship!