Setting Friendship Boundaries

I want to let you in more. With the revamp of my website, I don’t only want it to be a space where you can get home decor and lifestyle inspo from me, but I also just want us to know each other better. Rashida’s Reflections is going to be a space where I can give myself the freedom to open up to you in a longer form than my Instagram. There’s much more to all of us than what we post online, so I just wanted to make an effort to open my door more!

I’m sure with each post the thoughts, experiences, and feelings that I share will be different. Some may be more lighthearted, others more deep, and others somewhere in between. Transparency is the main thing. I hope you find that you can be transparent with me as well!

To kick Rashida’s Reflections off, I wanted to share something that has been on my heart lately concerning boundaries. Specifically, boundaries in friendships. I know the idea of social boundaries has become somewhat of a popular topic online, but I want to express my personal thoughts about it so that it may help you.

I recently had an experience with someone close that left me feeling sad and disappointed. I got invited to an event, so I hit them up to see if they were available to come with me. They confirmed they wanted to come! We hadn’t hung together in ages, so I was super excited to spend time together. It turned out that the day before we were supposed to hang…they texted me and canceled. As soon as I read it, my mood was drained. I was no longer excited to go out. I ended up going by myself, which was fine, I had some much needed “me” time. I know that plans change and I know that giving people grace is the right thing to do, but I just felt like dang, really? I totally understood their reason for not being able to make it, but the disappointment still existed, and my feelings were compounded from past instances. Understanding and disappointment can coexist. 

As I was standing in the kitchen dealing with my thoughts and emotions, Jasen asked me if I was still going to the event with the person and I told him that they canceled. I started to express my frustration to him. I’m glad I did (so important to vent to people you trust!) because he told me that he also recently had to accept that friendship boundaries should be established with people. Here’s why making friendship boundaries can be a good thing:

• When we establish boundaries within our friendships, it can help to prevent ourselves and others from being disappointed or hurt
• Boundaries can help us to have a healthy expectation of our friendships, because each friendship has different dynamics and we should not expect the same things from each one.
• You spend less time recovering from the pain that can come from friendship dynamics

When we have relational boundaries, it enables us to have a confident and healthy expectation of what the outcomes of a friendship are. When our boundaries are set, we are able to better match our desires for that friendship with the truth. For instance, if you know that one of your friends is always late, and you’re always on time, one of the boundaries that you may establish for yourself is to not make plans with them that require y’all to be somewhere at a certain time, like the movies. That’s a simple type of example, but you get the idea. For me, a boundary that I may now establish with that friend is to never make spontaneous plans with them, because they just aren’t that friend. And that’s ok! It doesn’t take away from how deep our bond is. It just means that our bond requires some boundaries to protect it.

Some boundaries may be related to your ability to be vulnerable with someone, or vice versa. If you feel like you want to share delicate matters of the heart with a person, but you know that they are just way too busy or don’t return text/calls often, you may need to just establish a boundary for yourself to not engage that person on that level. Even though you may want to hear their perspective on something important to you, attempting to harness their attention may be impossible. Set up that boundary to protect yourself, and the friendship.

I hope this doesn’t come across as “sometimes you gotta cancel people” because that is NOT what I’m getting at! Lol. What I’m saying is that while we are working on our friendships, and allowing them to grow naturally, we may have to set up boundaries along the way to keep things on the right track. If you’re anything like me, you may even have categories of friendships: Work friendships, business friendships, “girlfriend” friendships, once-in-a-while friendships, travel buddy friendships, need advice friends, spiritual friendships and the list goes on. They’re all at a different point, some may overlap in nature, but they all can grow with the right attention to what makes them tick. So it may be time for you to analyze yourself and others and save yourself some heartache by setting up friendship boundaries!

Hope this helped you, love. Talk soon!