Friendship Boundaries

Of course, we care about our friends. They’ve been there for us and we want to be there for them. But, have you ever felt guilty about not wanting to ALWAYS be there for them? Do you feel bad about feeling too drained to hang out with them or is the hanging out the thing that is draining you? If you have felt like this but are still trying to find a way to be a good friend, there is one word that could change everything and that word is Obligation. Today, we are continuing our series on one of our most popular topics, boundaries, as we focus in on setting healthy boundaries in our friendships.

Recognizing the role of obligation in how you operate in your friendships is going to help you to set healthy boundaries for your friendships and bring back a lot of the freedom and fun to your relationship, as well. Here’s how:

We choose our friends because they are the people around us that we enjoy life with. We have common interests, compatible worldviews and lifestyles and, most of all, we have fun being around each other. As time goes on and the relationship starts to grow deeper, there will be challenges that one or the other of us is facing in life and these friendships now start to become a support system as well. Support systems are designed to distribute stress from one point to many, and this is how we share the burdens and lighten the loads on our friends backs. Eventually, their stress and their burdens can start to become overwhelming, especially when they are taking up a lot of our time and energy, but we feel as though we have to continue on supporting in the exact same way or else we are not being a good friend. This is when obligation enters the equation. Obligation causes us to go further than we want to and sometimes even further than we should because we feel like we must. We’ve said before that love is about selflessness, so then why does this not feel very loving?

Love is love when it is chosen. Obligation makes you feel like you no longer have a choice and you simply have to do it. When we are giving support out of obligation, because we feel like we have to, we are no longer giving out of love and that will drain us and leave us resentful towards the person we are giving support to. If you feel like you have unknowingly waded into obligation towards your friends and lost the option to choose whether or not and how you can support them, how can you break out of that cycle and work back towards a support system based in love?

First, you’ll need to identify where the obligation started from. Was it something that you introduced? “I’m the only person they have.” “I’m the only one who can help them.” Or, was it something they put on you, “Thanks so much for being here for me. If I didn’t have you, I don’t know what I'd do.” Many times, it’s little off-hand phrases or thoughts like that that can start to push us into a place of obligation. When you or they begin to offload the responsibility for their mental, emotional or spiritual health and well-being as yours and not theirs, you will definitely start to feel obligated to continue that or else. The problem is, you can’t be responsible for theirs and your own. In order to set healthy boundaries, you’ll have to both recognize that your role is to support their healthy choices, not be responsible to make them or have all the answers.

Once you have reestablished those healthy boundaries, you’ll both need to stick to them. You are only able to support them well as long as you are choosing to do so out of love. When you feel like the choice is being taken away from you and obligation is creeping in, you’ll start to fall back into unhealthy patterns. When you both know that you could be anywhere else but you have chosen to be there, at that time, for them, it will be given and received as an act of love which is exactly what you want and they need.

Next week, we’ll continue talking about setting healthy boundaries in our relationships as we move on to the tricky topic of balancing work and life. If you found this blog helpful, be sure to give it a like and share it with the people you love. Remember, you can find all of our healthy relationship content in the videos tab!