Boundaries

Friendships tend to have their limits. A friend can only act so badly before you lose it with them and cause a fuss and there are limits to how badly you can act with them too, right?

With girls, it's often harder because we're not the easiest of people to handle and we often say things we don't mean but that can have massive impacts on existing friendships. With boys, it's often easier because arguments are forgotten within a few hours and nobody bears a grudge. The problem seems to occur when there isn't an actual argument - when friends start to get very irritated with other friends in secret and don't act on their feelings.

I'm incredibly guilty of this as I always do it. I don't like causing a fuss and I don't like my other friends to be affected by my mess. I suppose this makes a lot of sense, but things start to make less sense when everybody in a friendship circle starts getting annoyed with one or two people in secret and don't act on their feelings...

But what do you do? You can't exactly all act on it and just be brutally honest (and equally harsh) to this person or people because then they'll effectively end up with no friends and the friendship circle will be in complete turmoil. But then of course there are limits, and if certain people aren't observing these limits fairly then something should be done, shouldn't it? I know I'd want my friends to tell me if I was acting out of character or compromising our friendship, so why do I find it so hard to do the same to my friends?

I suppose part of it is that I've learnt by now that some people don't change, no matter how many times you tell them that they're making you feel unhappy or uncomfortable and that you need to talk to them and work things out. This is a lesson I keep learning over and over again, unfortunately. Tonight though, I've realised that I actually don't care anymore. I don't care how ridiculously certain people act around me or my friends because they're not going to change and if they don't care about my opinions, why should I care so much about what they do? If they valued the friendship then surely they'd listen and have faith that when they get advice - it's because we care, not just because we want to interfere.

I suddenly feel very prioritised. Since coming back from Croatia, my life seems to be straightening out and things are making sense by themselves - without me having to search and search for the answers. At the end of the day, there are way too many amazing moments in life that can be missed out on by letting others drag you down, so why not just live them and forget about the stuff that could be ruining things? People will always be walking in and out of our lives and as much as it hurts, it's for the best. For every bad person leaving, there's always a good person waiting to be let in...

Besos ♥
Rachel