Let’s talk about friendships for a second.
Friendships and meaningful connections are a necessity in life. Human beings are made to build connections, to love, to care, and also love and be cared for. Though it is something we all need, we approach it in different ways and funny enough, it is also something we have found a way to categorize. We have “social” friends, acquaintances, mutual friends, close friends, and of course the best friends. Friendship brings both the good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly.
I am here to talk about the ugly. The parts of friendship that can trigger us, take us on a rollercoaster, and test different sides of our characters.
If you are a person who is a selfless lover, then you find it quite easy to pour your love, care and intentionality to the people who you love. For lovers like this, friendship can bring out the best in you, but can also test your limits.
Recently I have found myself disconnected from people in general, a level of dissociation that I myself I’m not used to. During this time, I have found myself more to myself and in turn forced to spend more time with myself. The more time I spent with myself, there’s a multitude of thoughts I tackled and one of them being friendship.
This took me for a ride, I surely was not prepared for.
In reflecting on these friendships, I not only looked at the people I considered friends, I was also forced to look at the way I uphold my boundaries. Sometimes we find ourselves complaining about how people treat us or get offended, but in certain cases, we must also look to ourselves and how we exercise our boundaries. Boundaries are there to protect our mental space and no one can take that, more than ourselves.
Being a selfless lover, there are times I sacrifice upholding my boundaries for the sake of saying, “But I care for this person,” or “I know they’d do the same for me.” The truth is, sacrificing our boundaries also has an impact on our mental space and especially how we pour love back into ourselves. It then becomes an equation of: them > me.
So I say this to say what,
When reassessing your friendships, don’t just look to the other person; a relationship with anyone is a two-way street. You also have to reassess how you approach the relationship and how you ensure your space and sanity within that relationship. Not only do you owe it to them, but most importantly you owe it to yourself.
You are as good as the energy you give off, to them and to yourself.
Love & Light,
Zuba
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