Boundaries Changed My Friendships - Here’s Why

2025 changed me. Not in the Instagram “I’m healing” type of way, but in a real, uncomfortable “I’m not tolerating certain things anymore” type of way. I’ve been learning how to set boundaries in my friendships and I’m not gonna lie… It’s been causing problems because people aren’t adjusting… and that’s when it hit me.

If someone doesn’t want to adjust when you’re trying to grow they’re not just “struggling”

they’re holding you back.

I’m not perfect, I’m in therapy and I have my own patterns too, the difference is I’m actually trying to recognize them and do something different. A huge part of developing a healthier relationship with myself and my friends has been learning to stop overextending myself. I used to be the friend who picked up every call instantly, stayed in 20+ group chats, and always made myself available. Now I’m the friend who doesn’t pick up every call, doesn’t respond immediately and understands that access is earned, not automatic… Here’s the part most people don’t want to hear: you don’t get to avoid your behavior, avoid hard conversations and avoid growth and still expect connection, emotional support and closeness… that logically does not make sense. You can’t say you want growth and then act like USPA when the situation requires Prada and YSL. Accountability is uncomfortable, but it’s literally the easiest way to growth… it’s free... and if you keep rejecting free then you’re choosing to stay broke and in the same spot emotionally, mentally, and spiritually… and yeah even physically too.



The truth is, the individual who is having a hard time adjusting to boundaries is actually avoiding the exact thing that would fix the their struggle… accountability and growth. Connection requires discomfort. Growth requires discomfort and vulnerability. You can’t have connection if you don’t want growth. Accountability is uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable. Honest conversations are uncomfortable… but the reality is avoidance doesn’t protect relationships, it actually makes you lose them… which is exactly what avoidance is for… to avoid the core boundary or issue. 

I had to learn that the hard way. You can’t want growth for your friends more than they want it for themselves… and that’s where resentment starts. That’s where one person starts doing all the emotional labor… and that’s when friendships slowly breaks. 

People think good moments are what hold friendships together… they’re not. What holds friendships are two people who can communicate, reflect and take accountability… not perfection for constant happiness…

Accountability.

One of my healthiest friendships works because of that. There’s respect, boundaries and accountability… we don’t avoid things, we address them… and that’s why we’re currently on year 22. 

The hard part to accept is growth can get lonely because not everyone around you is ready to grow with you. Some people want comfort, familiarity, or avoidance and thats their choice, but it doesn’t mean you have to stay there with them. 

Now I’m at a place where I can say “this doesn’t feel right”, “I’m not okay with this” “No.” “I need space” “this hurt my feelings” “I will not tolerate this” and I don’t feel guilty about it… because at the end of the day I deserve respect, communication and accountability… and the harsher truth is… if it makes a person uncomfortable then they were benefitting from the version of yourself that didn’t have boundaries. You don’t lose people when you set boundaries… you lose the people who only benefitted from you not having any.

Boundaries expose the real nature of relationships. When you give 24/7 access, calls, texts, emotional availability and overextend… people get used to easy access to you. When you start saying no, not right now, I’m not overextending, I deserve consistency, I will not tolerate disrespect, I will not engage with you until you acknowledge my nervous system the same way you’re asking me to acknowledge yours… what happens? 

Relationships change.


Some end… some get tense… and some slowly diffuse out… why? Because you actually didn’t change the relationship… you revealed it.

 People in relationships either have a secure, anxious, avoidant, or fearful-avoidant attachment, and those tell you exactly what each individual needs to feel safe, seen, validated and respected… but they also reveal deep wounds that have never been healed.

Boundaries aren’t hard to set, they’re hard when it comes to being consistent with the boundaries you placed.

 Friendships are family to me because I’m not close with my biological family. Now here’s the loophole most people don’t really notice… we tend to dismiss and set boundaries with our biological family members, but with friendships we overlook how important they actually really are. Friendships are a type of relationship. There are moments where I catch myself overextending and I have to remind myself that overextension is not sustainable long-term, and if connection is alive because of overextension, then the connection died a long time ago… you’re just waiting for your body to catch up with your mind.

I have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and a huge part of BPD is my struggles with interpersonal relationships… which means for a long time I was the one overextending.
 I picked up every call, made myself overly available, tried to keep the connections alive at all costs… even when it was costing me… and that’s the part people don’t talk about. 

When you have BPD, connections can feel intense, important, almost urgent… like if you don’t maintain it you’re going to lose it… so you overcompensate.



You give more.


You stay longer.


You tolerate more than you should.



Overextending doesn’t create secure connections… it creates imbalance… and imbalance turns into resentment… resentment turns into emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion turns into detachment… or conflict… it’s a chain reaction.


Learning boundaries for me wasn’t just “growth” it was necessary because without boundaries, I wasn’t actually in healthy friendships… I was in emotionally uneven ones where I was doing more, feeling more, and carrying more… and when I stopped doing that… that’s when everything shifted. It wasn’t because I changed into a different person, but because I stopped abandoning myself to keep others comfortable …

BPD means I have a fear of abandonment… and I’ve come to learn the thing you fear the most you actually end up sitting in because self abandoning is apart of that abandonment. You’re so scared to lose the other person that you lose yourself in the process… and if the other party doesn’t take accountability, acknowledge the imbalance, and work on their patterns, then that tells you all you need to know.

If you’re willing to abandon yourself in order to keep a person then that’s not friendship… it’s emotional abuse forming.

Quite frankly, what actually keeps people from shifting isn’t just one thing… it’s multiple. For some, they don’t care about the friendship or connection as much as you did. For others, they’re not willing to do the work… or they don’t have the emotional capacity to face it... and sometimes… it’s the discomfort. The reality they would have to sit in if they actually acknowledged what’s going on, but that’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me…

If you’re avoiding discomfort, what you’re actually doing is staying in it because without accountability or any direction for change, you don’t move… you stay exactly where you are. The very thing you’re trying to avoid - the discomfort, is exactly what you end up choosing.

Do I miss my friendships? I can’t even lie, I definitely do. There’s more good times than bad, but the good doesn’t outweigh the bad… it just keeps you gaslighting yourself because you stay to excuse the bad for all the good.

I think the biggest shift for me was I stopped excusing behavior and started looking at the reality of it. If someone refuses to take accountability or struggles with maintaining boundaries, that’s not someone who can hold real connection.

If the person can, it’s only surface-level. The kind that doesn’t require intimacy, vulnerability, or growth... and if that’s the case… that’s not even a friendship, it's just someone filling space so they don’t have to sit in their own loneliness.

Do I love my friends? Of course. I’m always gonna have love for them, but I also know I love myself more...

And that changed everything.

I had to ask myself… why am I staying in patterns that require the bare minimum - communication, time, energy - and still not getting that? Those things are free. So if someone isn’t willing to give that… why am I willing to stay? Why am I giving chance after chance… or allowing the same behavior to continue? At some point, it stops being about them… and it becomes about what you're allowing because if someone can’t respect your boundaries, it’s not just that they don’t respect the boundary… It’s that they don’t respect you enough to care how their behavior affects you.

I think 2025 is when it really hit me… there was something in myself I was avoiding, and I couldn’t avoid it anymore... and the more I avoided it, the more I realized I wasn’t protecting myself… I was hurting myself, and not just me… the people around me too, because if I’m abandoning myself, the people around me become a byproduct of that abandonment. If I’m disconnected from myself, I show up inconsistent. If I’m avoiding my own emotions, I avoid real connection. If I’m not taking accountability, I create confusion, imbalance, and distance in my relationships.

I had to think long-term… because if I’m emotionally abandoning and hurting myself, what am I actually doing to the people I say I care about That’s where the awareness comes in… the metacognition. Realizing it’s not just about how you feel… it’s about how you show up... and if you don’t face yourself, you repeat the same patterns… just with different people.

If I abandon myself, everyone connected to me feels it… and Unhealed patterns don’t stay internal… they show up in how you treat people.

Another thing I had to be real with myself about… I can’t be in therapy and still choose toxic patterns. At that point, what am I even doing there? Just talking about change without actually living it? That's the opposite of growth, avoidance with a thesaurus.

I say I want to be the cycle breaker. I say I want better for my future kids. I say I don’t want these patterns to continue… but then I have to look at my actual behavior because if I keep surrounding myself with people who don’t want to do the work… if I keep overextending, accepting less, and staying in dynamics that drain me… then what am I really teaching?

I’m teaching that this is okay... and it’s not.

I can’t say I want growth while choosing comfort in the same patterns that kept me stuck. I can’t say I deserve more while actively accepting less, and that was the hardest part for me because I’m the type of person who gives everything in a connection. I show up, I invest, I care deeply… but I had to learn that giving everything to the wrong dynamics isn’t love… it’s self-abandonment... and I’m not doing that to myself anymore.

I’m not the type that gets drained from friendships, but in 2025 I had a lot of personal stuff going on and it put a cap on my capacity to give… I ended four friendships… and it was the hardest thing for me to do because I fight until I can’t anymore, but I was no longer in a place to fight for friendships… I was in the place of reciprocity. I got tired of holding all of my friends hands and parentifying myself in my connections…

So I left.

Did I look back? Of course, but I also made sure I turned my head forward. Even though I made the decision to shrink my inner circle it was painful… but it became more painful erasing my needs for these connections. I reconnected with one of the four friends… and honestly, I’m halfway in, halfway out. Not because I don’t care, but because I love myself enough to walk away again and not look back again for good.

If you all want me to be honest… what’s working is setting a boundary and sticking to it… and when it’s disrespected or overridden? Remove access. Access is your time, energy, connection, nervous system… you. Access is the ability to reach you emotionally.

If a boundary is not respected you do not get access.

Setting a boundary and continuing to give access is reenforcing to the other party that their behavior doesn’t need to change.

The thing is… when people hear “you don’t get access to me anymore,” they automatically think it’s permanent. Like it’s just done, no conversation, no coming back... and don’t get me wrong… I am done, but I’m not the type of person that’s done forever. I’m the type of person that’s done with the version of the relationship that required me to abandon myself. If the other person in the dynamic shows there’s real change… real accountability, real growth, not just words… then yeah, connection continues, but I’m not in a place where I’m willing to go backwards. I’m not undoing all the work I’ve done in therapy just to keep a connection alive, because at that point, what am I even doing there?

Maturity is the removal of ego. It’s when being right stops mattering… and what benefits the both of you starts… and if that’s not possible?

You choose yourself.

Always.