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Healthy Friendships & Relationships

How to Introduce the Topic to Teens

INTRO

If you look back on your teen years, I'm sure you can identify friendships that just weren't that healthy, though it was hard to recognize at the time. Even as an adult it can take a lot of analysis, introspection, and sometimes distance from someone to understand which parts of your relationships are healthy and unhealthy, and which relationships are ultimately too toxic to continue.

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After a lot of research and many revisions (and years of analysis from my own life), I came up with some concrete ideas of  how to explain to teens what a healthy friendship/relationship looks like, as well as some tools to deal with toxic relationships. I also came up with a good way to explain why some people aren't able to function well in a relationship, and how to recognize that and protect yourself. I hope this outline can help others teach their own kids or students.

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HOW TO TEACH

1) Healthy friendships are BALANCED

A healthy friendship is balanced. Neither person has more control or power over the other.  At times one friend may need the other more, but overall both people respect each other equally and both people benefit from the relationship.

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In unhealthy friendships, one person has more control. They are the dominant one, and the friendship caters to their needs and neglects the other. One person gets all the benefits while the other suffers.

 

An unhealthy balance may look like:

 

  • One person taking advantage of the other

  • One person always trying to please and accommodate the other 

  • One person always getting their way with little or no compromising

  • One person using their control or power to turn people against the other

  • One person taking, but never giving

2) Healthy friendships have BOUNDARIES

There it is! The magic word–boundaries. We hear it all the time, but it's so difficult to explain what having boundaries really looks like, and why it is so important to any healthy relationship. Here is how I break it down and explain it to teens.

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Healthy boundaries place guidelines on how you feel you should be treated as well as defining what’s in your control and what’s in others’ control. Healthy friends share parts of their lives, but they still have clear, separate identities. The boundaries are like a little fence around you that says, "Here I am! This is me."

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I relate it to a fence with a gate that separates neighbors. You aren't completely walled off. You are allowed in each others yards if invited, but there is a clear distinction and recognition of whose yard is whose.

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You have a sort of fence that surrounds you and your life. These boundaries protect you, strengthen your self-respect, and help you have ownership and control over your life. They keep you in the driver’s seat of your life.

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I take the fence analogy further and define what different posts of a healthy boundary might represent, and what exactly breaking one of those boundaries looks like.

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Individuality Boundary: 

This boundary protects your right to be an individual, make your own decisions, and have your own personality, interests, and opinions.

What breaking this boundary looks like: 

Someone might break down your individuality boundary by making you feel you have to change all your opinions to match theirs and get rid of any part of you they don't like.

Privacy Boundary: 

This boundary protects your privacy and your right to decide what you keep personal and what you share with others.

What breaking this boundary looks like: 

Someone might break down your privacy boundary by sharing personal information to others that you wanted kept private.

Standards Boundary: 

This boundary protects your personal standards, values, and beliefs, and outlines what you personally are and aren’t comfortable with. They will vary from person to person.

What breaking this boundary looks like: 

Someone might try to break down your standards boundary by pressuring you do to something you don’t want to do.

Dignity Boundary: 

This boundary protects your sense of worth and sets out expectations that others should treat you with a basic level of respect as a human being.

What breaking this boundary looks like: 

Someone might break down your dignity boundary by saying cruel things to you or making you feel worthless.

Personal Limits Boundary: 

This boundary protects you from pushing yourself too far and recognizes you have limits and may need to say no to helping others at times.

What breaking this boundary looks like: 

Someone might break down your limit boundary by expecting you to do more for them than you have the strength to do.

Explaining boundaries by putting them into categories like this can help people recognize when the boundaries are being broken. In healthy friendships, each person respects the other's boundaries. This looks like:

healthy boundaries.png

In a friendship without boundaries, each person isn’t separate. An unhealthy friend may see you as an extension of themselves, rather than as your own person. With boundaries gone, they may take over some things in your life you want control of, like making decisions for you or speaking in your behalf without consulting you, dropping by unannounced, volunteering you for things- or anything else that takes over something that you should be in charge of.

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With boundaries broken, they also may drop their responsibilities on you. This might include simple things like getting you to do their work for them or asking for too many favors, or larger things like expecting you to manage their emotions, maintain their happiness, and fix all their problems.

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When boundaries get blurred, you aren't sure what you have control over anymore. You will feel powerless, used & manipulated, and disrespected, and like you don’t have a say in who you are, what you do, and what you believe and feel.

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3) Healthy friendships are stable

A healthy friendship is stable and predictable. This means you generally know what to expect from them and where your relationship stands.  It doesn’t change drastically from day to day.

 

An unhealthy friendship is unstable and unpredictable.You don’t know what to expect each day. In an unpredictable friendship, your friend might be very nice to you one day and then completely ignore you the next. You may feel like you are walking on eggshells with them, always afraid you’ll make one wrong step and they’ll be upset, but you can never quite predict what will make them mad. 

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If you notice you are always unsure about how your friend will treat you one day to the next, or you find you have to be very careful about what you say and do, this is a sure sign the friendship is unhealthy.

4) Healthy friendships are accepting

A healthy friendship is an accepting one. Both people accept each other as they are and they don’t try to change the other. They feel like they can be themselves around each other and neither person feels judged or like they have to change to win the other’s approval.

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An unhealthy friendship is not accepting. You are always trying to change yourself to please the other person. There may be an ever-present feeling that you just aren't good enough, that you just can't quite get that approval from them they are dangling in front of you.

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You might change yourself to meet their expectations, and then rather than finally getting their approval, you find they've changed the rules. In time, you will realize that nothing is going to win this person's approval. It will always be just out of reach.

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A good sign you are in this kind of unhealthy friendship is if you always feel like you need to justify, argue, explain, or defend yourself. If you find you have to explain many of your decisions and choices to them, and they never seem to approve, this is a sign of an unhealthy friendship.

A note...

Because no friendship is perfect, you won’t always have a balanced, stable, accepting, respectful friendship with everyone all the time. Every relationship will have times when there’s a problem in some areas. This is normal. Most people, including you, will have moments when they don’t compromise, aren’t accepting, push boundaries, and aren’t respectful. Even with some problems, in a healthy relationship both people are equals and benefit from the friendship. 

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Since some problems are normal, how can you tell when you’re in an unhealthy friendship that you need to protect yourself from? A good way to decide is to ask yourself how they make you feel.

  • Do they make you feel like you matter less than them?

  • Do they make you feel manipulated or used?

  • Do you feel like you need to win their approval or please them?

  • Do you feel drained after spending time with them?

  • Do you feel like they have too much control over your life?

  • Do you often feel you have to explain yourself around them?

  • Do they make you feel stupid or insecure?

  • Do you feel like you have to walk carefully around them?

  • Do they they make you feel like your feelings/wants/wishes don't matter?

  • Do you notice that your self-esteem is tied to how they feel about you?

If you answered yes to many of these, you may need to reconsider whether this friendship is good for you. It may be worth it to end a friendship if the friendship is breaking down your self-respect.

What do you do if you are in an unhealthy friendship or relationship?

My next post explores what to do once you realize you have an unhealthy relationship. It will explain in more detail why some friends behave the way they do, how to recognize when you need to distance yourself, and how to protect yourself from manipulation and other responses that might arise when you attempt to end an unhealthy friendship.

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Thanks!

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Eve

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