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33girl,
Well, I relate very strongly to what you posted. I have always been a "caretaker" and I am good at it, if I do say so myself. I have been an "amateur" therapist for friends since I was 12. Well, I decided I had enough of it, I was feeling taken advantage of, carrying the weight of everyone's problems and not having it reciprocated. To change the way things were I had to take some actions that were not necessarily things I wanted to do. I had to admit that it takes two to tango, and that I had helped create the dynamic of these friendships by my own behaviors. I was consistently availabe, even when it wasn't convenient for me, I didn't properly express when I needed assistance, so I left people guessing, I never talked about myself, but would always ask and listen intently to all the details of my friends lives (well, I have to say this is what I was "taught" to do when I was a child).
So, understanding this I changed the way I dealt with friends.
For example, I decided that calls at work were interfering with my business, so I stopped talking to my friends at work. This caused some ruffled feathers, but nothing too bad. I also decide that I would email people only twice a day. Here again, this was not comfortable for all of my friends, I would recieve messages saying "WHERE ARE YOU, I'M IN A CRISIS??"...too bad, I had made a personal policy and I was sticking to it.
Finally, I had some confrontations with friends just becuase of these simple actions. Some were furious with me, and actually accused me of SELFISHNESS! That really made me see things even more clearly. I realized that I was not selfish that they were projecting onto me the very worst of their own characteristics. So, I have sympathy for them and their difficulties, but these are not people who are really capable of true friendships right now.
Finally, I really did pursue new friendships and reinvigorate older ones. This year has been the very best of my life because I decided to do this.
I do recommend that you set up "boundaries" for your friends. Decide what you will and will not put up with. Then definitely try and expand your circle. We all have people at work, at church, at the gym whom we always think we should ask to go for coffee, or to the movies, but we don't do it, well, ASK. Friends are an essential part of life, we would not all be so enamored of our greek experiences if we didn't know that to be true. 33girl, you deserve the best and you can have it.
violets
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