In any relationship, intimate or platonic, there are lines that should never be crossed. These lines exist to guide the relationship in a healthy direction. Some lines are obvious, like physical or sexual abuse, stealing, or lying. However, there are so many more boundaries that should be upheld in order to have a healthy relationship. 

When it comes to friendships, boundaries are just as important as they are in romantic relationships. Friendships can get missed when establishing boundaries because they don’t always impact us like romantic relationships do. Usually less is invested in a friendship than a romantic relationship. People don’t often make big life decisions based on their friends. They don’t usually think about “settling down” with their friends. 

Because of this, certain standards aren’t upheld in friendships like they are in romantic relationships. Questionable behaviors are excused, resources are taken advantage of, and time is wasted in friendships when boundaries aren’t established. Friendships can quickly unravel and become a negative impact in your day to day life.

In my previous article, I shared my story of being in an abusive friendship in high school. This friendship had a detrimental influence on my life and development. It took me years to recover from the damage this friendship caused, and the effects still linger to this day. Much of my experience was due to a toxic person deflecting their pain onto me. However, I believe many of our problems could have been avoided had healthy boundaries been set and upheld. 

So, why are healthy boundaries so important in friendships? Continue reading to find out!

1. Friendships affect your health

According to the Mayo Clinic, friendships can have a massive impact on your overall physical health. Rates of high blood pressure, depression, and high BMI’s are lower in adults with healthy friendships. In addition, those with healthy friendships are more likely to have a longer lifespan than those with weak social connections. 

Because the quality of our friendships affects our physical health, it is more important than ever to establish healthy boundaries. A friend who continuously stimulates anxiety within you is taking away your right to a healthy body. According to Harvard Health, anxiety can induce physical ailments like GI disorders, heart disease, and respiratory disorders. Unnecessary anxiety can also induce somatic symptoms like dizziness and nausea without any underlying medical problems being present. 

Therapist Kailee Place says that it is important to keep your emotions and well-being separate when it comes to our friends. It is okay to empathize and support our friends. However, when your emotional state is dependent on your friends’, then you have a problem. 

Being so invested in a friend and their problems that you experience constant anxiety is not a sign of a healthy friendship. It could lead to things like resentment and burn out, which will ultimately destroy a friendship if left untreated. This kind of friendship could be transformed into a healthy one with the right boundaries. 

Draw a line that limits the amount of emotional energy they are allowed to take from you. Recognize when you are in too deep. Have have a plan to communicate when you are needing to pull away. Your physical health is just as important as your friends’ emotional well being. You deserve friendships that do not put your health in jeopardy. 

2. Boundaries establish mutual respect between friends

We all know that one friend. The one who:

• always has problems, but doesn’t make time for yours
• calls you at odd hours and want your undivided attention.
• expects expert level advice from you and gets upset when the advice doesn’t align with their agenda
• clings to you like a lifeline, but is MIA when you need them to reciprocate. 

It can be difficult to set boundaries with this kind of friend. You may fear their reaction to your boundary, or that you may hurt their feelings. However, your needs are just as important as your friend’s. You must establish respect as a boundary. This is so that one person does not take advantage of another person’s empathy. 

Friendship’s are not always a perfect 50/50 when it comes to support and respect at every moment, and that is okay. Sometimes people in different stages of life need more support than others. However, the amount of effort put into a friendship should be somewhat equal over a span of time. The friendship can easily become one sided if respect is not established. 

Don’t be afraid to speak up when a friend is not respecting your time and energy. It is possible to be firm in your boundaries while remaining empathetic to your friend’s situation. Respect and empathy go both ways, and a true friend will recognize that. If you can be respectful of your friend’s energy and time, and then they can do the same for you. 

3. Friendships impact the way you see yourself in the world

According to Pew Research Center, friendships are integral in teaching us our place in society. They teach us how to interact with others and form strong relationships. Besides a parental/child relationship, a friendship is the first kind of relationship that we form with other people.

Considering how important this is for our development, it is just as important to set boundaries that protect our sense of self from outside influences.

When I was in my abusive friendship, the way this person treated me translated to how I treated myself. They did not respect me, so I did not respect myself. This bled into some of my other relationships as well. I allowed other people to treat me badly, lie, and disrespect me often. I thought that these toxic behaviors were the norm. 

Even when this friendship ended, I struggled forming friendships with people in the aftermath. I had to completely relearn what having a good friend looked like and felt like. I had to relearn how and how much to trust people. Many friendships ended that formed immediately after the abusive one because of problems I had acquired. 

All of this is to say that when someone is treating you badly, you need to speak up and set a boundary. The impact that bad friendships have on our sense of self is enormous. This means that the boundaries that we make also have a huge impact. Make it clear what does fly and what doesn’t. When a friend hurts your feelings, communicate with them why it hurts you. Set a boundary and employ consequences for overstepping. You should be consistent in enforcing healthy boundaries to be taken seriously. 

Conclusion

The biggest mistake I made in my abusive friendship was not upholding my own boundaries. I allowed someone to repeatedly cross my lines because of how much I cared about them. Because of this, I suffered physically, mentally, and emotionally. It was hard for me to form relationships after this one because of the damage it caused. 

My lack of boundaries does not excuse this person’s behavior. Also, I don’t believe that boundaries would have saved this friendship. However, healthy boundaries would have slowed down the damage this person was causing. I would have been able to recognize this friendship as abusive had I had strong boundaries. I could have ended it before it wreaked havoc on my self-esteem. 

Everyone deserves to have people beside them that have their best interests at heart. Friendships with healthy boundaries thrive without being one sided or causing long lasting damage to one or both parties.

Written by Bethany Fischer, blogger at Safe Harbor International Ministries. For more articles, please visit our blog page at https://www.safeharborim.com/articles/

Sources:

https://www.bustle.com/p/9-boundaries-you-should-have-in-your-friendships-according-to-experts-9345200
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/28/teens-friendships-and-online-groups/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/anxiety_and_physical_illness
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/friendships/art-20044860