Should you cut bad friends out of your life or learn to manage personal boundaries better?

As you begin to grow and change over the years, you will inevitably encounter certain people who will be a negative influence on you. They have low self-esteem and, often without consciously realizing it, will try to keep you down. Not because they are bad people. It’s just an unconscious protection mechanism. If you become ‘too nice’, they fear you will put them down.

The typical type of friendship where this is likely to become a question for you is when the interaction is parasitic. They get so much more out of the friendship than you do. It seems logical to just ‘cut’ them, but doing so is not that simple. For starters, most people lack confidence in their ability to be assertive enough to simply tell the person they want to end the friendship. So they do it in useless ways. One way is to make the other person position themselves as a victim. That way you have an ‘excuse’ to be mad at them and you can use that as the reason instead of facing the truth. The other thing that many people do is simply stop answering calls or responding to messages and hope that the parasite gets the message and goes away.

Either way, however, there will be an underlying sense of guilt that will make this process difficult. And perhaps for good reason. The reality is that you probably toyed with the parasitic relationship at least a little bit. So that guilt comes from the fact that you know you are more responsible than you would like to admit. If you acknowledge your part, you risk coming across as the bad guy who just used their friendship when it suited you and now that you don’t need them anymore, you just dump them.

So the first step is to face the uncomfortable reality that there is some truth to some of this. But that doesn’t mean you’re all bad. It just makes you human. We all do this when we crave acceptance and connection from people without having the confidence in ourselves to do so in a way that creates healthy boundaries. So you can leave the parasite behind if you want, but it’s still important to learn healthier boundaries for future friendships. It’s okay to make mistakes, but repeating them doesn’t help.

The other uncomfortable reality you’ll need to face in order to grow from the experience is accepting that their parasitic interactions with you are only part of the reason you want to cut them off. The other is that there is a very real chance that you will be reminded of the parts you don’t like about yourself. Therefore, it is important to recognize that your decision to cut them is not to punish them but to help them grow. The lesson to learn, however, is that if you don’t work on building your own self-esteem, you’ll end up repeating the same cycle with other friends.

If you feel too guilty about cutting them out completely, there is another way. And that is changing the way you interact with them.

Let’s say you have a friend who, on the surface, pretends to have the best for you. But you start to realize that some of his offhand comments are actually subtle put-downs to put you off. You’re probably uncomfortable as hell, but there’s no real reason why you shouldn’t say words to the effect of:

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but when you say things like that, it feels like a subtle way of putting you down. I’m sure you don’t mean it, but I’m going to have to insist that you respect my wishes not to.” Don’t talk like that anymore. I don’t want to lose your friendship, but I need you to know that I will only continue to talk to you if you respect that.”

That sounds easy, but here’s the hard part.

It is very likely that they have gained the upper hand by being the more dominant player in the relationship. So confronting them in this way will inevitably create tension, and they’re not going to like that. However, the reality is that good relationships, including good friendships, will withstand this stress. This is how you create boundaries.

However, it is important to be prepared for the inevitable retaliation from them, which is likely to be “but you yourself are not holy.”

And there is a good chance that this is true. The main obstacle that prevents someone from insisting on a more respectful interaction with a friend is the fact that they know they are guilty of similar interactions. Either that or they kind of ‘invite’ them. That’s why it’s just easier to just cut them. Because if you’re going to stick with this new boundary, then you have to accept it when they respond by pointing out your own interpersonal failings. So in order to stay consistent, you need to step up and accept that if the criticisms of you are true, you may also need to change your interactions with them. In other words, you shouldn’t make excuses for them by changing your own behaviors as well. And that’s the hardest part.

However, if you do this, you acknowledge your own shortcomings to them. You work on changing your own behavior in exchange for hoping for an improvement in your own. So one of two things is inevitable;

The first is that they will simply isolate you, saving you the guilt of isolating yourself from them. It probably won’t happen easily, mind you. They will inevitably complain to your friends and try to turn them against you by telling you that they think you are ‘too good for them now’. Expect this and expect that you will inevitably have to lose them and other friends in the process.

This is the other difficult part. You will feel that your behavior is under scrutiny and you will be judged to be unfair if you impose standards on others that you are not willing to meet. They will also attack you for your inconsistency if you allow it or even invite it on some occasions when it suits you but reject it when it does not suit you. They will not take your limit seriously and you will inevitably end up looking like the bad guy.

But, if you take a step forward. If you are open and honest about it. If you are consistent. If you learn to exercise mutual respect. And more importantly, if you recognize your own shortcomings instead of trying to position yourself over the other person as superior to them. If you do these things, then there is a very real chance that you can take the relationship in a healthier direction.

This will be difficult at first and will feel like two people stumbling through the water trying to rescue each other without being tempted to grab the other person to keep them afloat without sinking their heads at the same time. However, if they both manage to do this, then this is by far the best result by far.

However, once you learn to master this process, you will not only have made leaps and bounds in your social skills, but you will also have learned to step up and develop your own limiting immaturity. So it’s a win-win.

Again, while this is the most ideal result, it is difficult to achieve, but the skills are worth learning. So if this sounds like a goal you’d like to accomplish in your own interpersonal relationships, just remind yourself of it.

At the end of the day, the quality of your relationships comes down to your communication dynamics. And the quality of communication you have with other people will be more strongly influenced by the quality of intrapersonal communication you have with yourself.