Boundaries Aren’t Meant To Limit Your Pals

“You can’t do ____” isn’t a boundary!! “I will do ____ as a response to _____” is a boundary. For example: “you can’t text me too much” not a boundary because you can’t tell or control how other people interact with you. But “I will let you know if I’m unavailable to answer your text, and will get back to you when I can” is a boundary. It explains how you can plan to behave given a certain situation. A lot of us have it in mind that setting boundaries is a bad thing that we do to limit other people’s access to us. That’s simply not true. Whether you’ve taken the time to deliberately set them or not, boundaries exist to define any relationship. The goal isn’t to restrict your pals, but to elaborate on the conditions that make it possible for you to be fully present in a relationship in the healthiest and most supportive form possible for YOU! We all have different ways we prefer to interact with our pals and explaining that is not a bad thing, it’s a very fundamental part of being in a relationship with someone. Also please do me a favor and when you’re texting, incorporate things like “I gotta go” or “I’ll text you later” or “I can’t answer right now” into your language. We have this assumption that we always need to answer everyone immediately and that’s simply not true. Sending out a “hey I’m busy” reduces a lot of confusion and wondering why someone left you on read. It’s how we interact in all other parts of life, it makes sense to do it while texting too! 💜