Hi Anita,

As always thank you for your thoughtful insights. You help me put things into perspective.

With the bossy friend, I am going to hold firm in my boundaries. And we will see what happens there. I feel people are put in our lives for a reason and maybe this is a person who is in my life to help me learn to speak up. I’ve been silenced for a lot of my life and it is a challenge to speak up. With this friend there is opportunity to push back. It feels like “butting heads” and maybe it is constructive in some ways. I know we both care about each other, we actually had stopped being friends for a few years and reconnected. So we both are trying to make it work, as we both missed each other. There are good things about the friendship, it is just this dynamic of her wanting me to do things her way where there is a sticking point.

For the flakey friend, you bring up a good point. To give a little more insight, I have actually adopted the stance of “She’s a grown woman and can figure this out for herself” a while back. When some of her other relationships were damaged by her actions, I stayed out of it, refrained from giving advice or judgment, as I have faith that she knows the right thing to do in the end. Her choices have not been good ones, but I am giving her the space to make those for herself. My husband thinks I am “enabling” her by staying her friend while she makes poor choices but I see it as: you don’t abandon someone when they are having a hard time. I have decided to stick it out, unless she does something truly hurtful and egregious toward me, where I need to draw the line. But I think giving that space and lowering my expectations is great advice that I can use with her going forward.