I’m in the process of reevaluating my boundaries. Along that journey I’ve been getting strict about who I trust and give my time to. Without any frame of reference, I’ve been struggling to decide for myself when enough is enough. My whole life I’ve been pretty open to forgiving and forgetting. Now, I’m beginning to see the value in forgiving and letting go. What do you use to develop the standard for who has access to you, how someone can lose that access, and what it takes for them to regain it?
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I wouldn’t completely “cut someone off” unless they were straight-up malicious towards me.
If they are just kind of thoughtless, I just adjust my behavior to match theirs–the more they have let me down, the less attention I devote to them. I might not reach out and make plans with them, but simple stuff like responding to occasional texts or keeping them on my Christmas card list doesn’t require much effort on my part. It’s good to show people some kindness without the expectation of anything in return; I just try to keep my guard up and protect myself against getting hurt or wasting too much time on them.
Really depends on which line they cross.
Some lines, zero chances. You cross it, I’m done.
Other lines, I’ll give a second chance.
I usually don’t give third chances. But I’m also really hard to offend/annoy. So if you’ve pissed me off you’ve definitely earned it by most standards.
Yep, it depends on the line crossed. I have no problem disowning friends or so called family or certain lines.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me
As everyone else said it depends on the specific boundary, and those boundaries can change over time and vary from person to person. Someone who has been there for me for decades might have some “money in the bank” that might give them more leeway for occasional screw ups vs someone I haven’t known very long or have no real relationship with yet.
I also find it valuable to regularly examine my own expectations around friendships and relationships to make sure I’m not expecting too much or too little from others or trying to control other people.
Same as football. Yellow card – tolerable that day. Red card – you’re off for that day and serve a time period ban. Multiple yellows in different games/settings and you’ll serve a mini ban. Multiple reds and we’re on thin ice. Off the pitch scandal – may never play again.
My approach is: i try to really think through/calculate, if my time and effort is “worth it”.
In other words: if you let me down a second time, you’d have to make it up to me or have an excellent excuse that i would believe/that you can prove.
I am quite strict, which means that i would count now maybe 2 persons in my life as real friends. Others are not in this circle.
So it really depends also how much company and friends you need. I don’t need much and am happy with it but also other people might get depressed if they only had 2 real friends.
I used to believe that everyone deserved a second chance. I was young & naive. Now it all depends in what they’ve done. Why give someone a second bullet just because they missed you with the first.
Two times, one for the friendship, the second goes with a warning, and that’s it.
I don’t have hard rules, I don’t even worry anymore whether or not I can trust someone. You can’t ever read another their mind anyway. So I simply remain aware of how I feel in contact with them. If it feels good, continue. If it feels bad, mention that and see how they respond. If their response doesn’t feel good I’ll naturally eventually stop feeling good interacting with them and thus cease doing so. Problem solved. No need for thinking. Just trust your body and its signals. It can be a long journey there if you’ve never listened to your emotions to this degree. Enter therapy!
>what it takes for them to regain it?
No – never.
>standard for who has access to you
Honestly only the people I love and the ppl I HAVE TO work with. Everyone else can F the F off
>how someone can lose that access
BS. Any BS – more than 3 times usually. I forgive my brothers. I forgive my wife.
I learned the hard way not to forgive or forget in relationships that are less than 100% committed. If you are dating and they fuck around – they should be dead to you. If they waste your time and apologize but do it again – they should be dead to you.
Same with “friends” – anyone who doesn’t respect that you a) have a life and b) have other things to do with time than tag along and just be there for them as a cheerleader all the time is a waste of *your* life.
I always knew this as a kid. But somewhere around 14 I forgot and it took me till I was 34 to reimplement it. It is judgemental but Fuck it, it’s supposed to be. It’s my life after all.
The problem area with all this is work – and anyone you can’t fire. They are a problem that needs to be managed into a corner. If they waste your time, bully you or whatever – they do it to others too. Find strategies to ignore them, contain them or force them out of your space/contact etc. Don’t let them take up your headspace, time or energy. I’ve met maybe 3 people with bone fide psychiatric disorders in my personal life. I’ve met about 10 in work. Work is a fucking problem for actual psychopathic behaviour.
I kept someone in my life for 10 years who did this and eventually just had to give up. it would’ve been so bad had he not been a pathological liar. i dont like to let my vet buddies go but his self destruction was only going to continue if i kept “helping”.
It’s a case by case thing. Any long friendship requires ongoing mutual forgiveness. And you can’t make a new old friend.
I don’t think of in terms of a specific number of transgressions.
Instead, for me, it’s mostly a question of “Does having this person in my life make my life overall better?” If the answer is “no” over a significant period of time, I try to remove them from my life.
Even if they do a lot of nice stuff for me, the answer can still be “no” if they don’t respect my boundaries in ways that leaves me feeling shitty, so this rule incorporates that level of respect. But it also acknowledges that there is give and take in relationships.
It depends on the kind and caliber of infraction but generally I am not extremely forgiving. Anything that I understand to be intentionally malicious is a no-go and will get you cut off for good in a hurry but a “let down” could be as simple as being forgetful. That stuff I don’t take personally. If they were punctual elsewhere it’d be another issue entirely so context matters a lot.
Ultimately, I would rather have a small circle than to have friends or acquaintances on the periphery that I don’t trust and that has served me well so far. I think I have a very solid, trustworthy group of friends and I would be shocked if any of them let me down beyond maybe showing up late to an event or something.
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I don’t know if my situation is similar to yours, but I left a job about a year ago. And a coworker and I had talked about doing lunch once in awhile.
I still kept in touch with him via Google Chat. We’d maybe have a short conversation every 1-2 months. Just talked about family and how the my old company and coworkers were doing. I would usually end with “hey want to do lunch in the next week or two”. And he would say it wasn’t a good time or work was busy.
Another two more conversations over the next 2-4 months, with him making excuses about too busy for lunch. I get the hint. I’m not going to keep asking, and in fact, I’ve stopped messaging him too (going on 6+ months). And he hasn’t bothered to reach out.
My situation might be different, because we weren’t really good friends outside work. So I don’t consider it that I’m losing or giving up on a friend.
How do you feel after spending time with them? Feel better, worse or meh? Also do you look forward to spending time with them?
Respond in kind, then kill them with kindness.
I’d say life is short so don’t waste time on people who aren’t worth it. The longer/better the relationship, the more chances I might give them. I’m probably a “fool me twice, shame on me still” kind of person. Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence but three times is pattern.
It really depends on if you’re desperate or not. Beggars can’t be choosers, so if I just moved to a new town I’m looking for people who are merely available to hang out, not people who will be my best friends off the bat. Equally, if you are desperate to not be alone, then you’ll let things slide perhaps more often than you would otherwise want to tolerate.
Not sure I understand the issue. At this stage in life you should know exactly who and what the people are who are around you. You should be able to predict outcomes fairly well and set reasonable expectations and have that as a guide to how you interact with them. People for the most part do not change. Expecting something different is not going to be realistic. Anything you do or plan should keep these things in mind. And cutting people out is a valid response. We grow up and grow away. that is fine.
here’s something that helped me: [https://www.amazon.com/Should-I-Stay-or-Should-I-Go-audiobook/dp/B018EVAVP0/](https://www.amazon.com/Should-I-Stay-or-Should-I-Go-audiobook/dp/B018EVAVP0/)
It all depends on the collection of brownie points they have collected before. If they have collected a lot, they get a lot of leeway. If they have not, they get very little leeway. If they have taking brownies from me and keep taking, they get dropped.
I wish I had swallowed my pride and forgiven more when I was in my late 20s. It bothered me that I would plan social outings or invite people over and they wouldn’t reciprocate. I implemented a three strikes heuristic. If I initiated a hangout 3 times and the other person didn’t do so during that time, I’d not reach out to them again. If they reached out to me at any point, it reset. The result was that a lot of the good friends of my youth disappeared. I realize now that my small social circle could today be richer and more varied if I’d just found a way past people’s lack of initiative, to include actually talking to them about how I felt.