Dear bunnies,
I have been thinking about friendship boundaries lately.
Not because I want to make anyone feel trapped.
Not because I believe friendship means choosing one person over everyone else.
But because I am learning that being understanding does not mean we have to accept being treated as an option.
I know people have other friends. I know plans change, and I know life can get full without anyone meaning to leave us out of it.
But there is a particular kind of hurt that comes when someone makes plans with you, then lets those plans go because something better came along.
Not because they had no choice.
Not because something serious happened.
Just because they assumed you would understand.
Maybe you would have.
Maybe you have before.
I have, too.
And maybe that is the hard part. Being understanding can make people believe they do not have to be careful with us.
We know people have other friends. We know a full life has room for different circles, different plans, different people who need us at different times. We do not need to be chosen over everyone else. We do not need to be the only person someone wants to spend time with.
But we do want our time to be treated with care.
We want a commitment to mean something.
Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. I used to read it as a rule about honesty. Now I think it is also about respect. If we say yes to someone, that yes should still be standing when the day comes. Not perfectly. Not without change. But it should still mean something.
When someone says they will be there, we are not expecting perfection. Things happen. Emergencies happen. Exhaustion happens. Sometimes a plan has to change, and there is no cruelty in that.
But there is a difference between something changing and someone deciding that our plans are just the easiest ones to break.
There is a difference between a real apology and an assumption that we will be fine because we are always the understanding ones.
As far as I know, that is where the hurt lives.
Not only in the cancelled plan.
In the assumption.
The assumption that we will wait.
The assumption that we will make room again. And again.
The assumption that we will not say anything because we care more about keeping the peace than about saying what it cost us.
For a long time, some of us thought being a good friend meant being endlessly flexible. We thought love meant understanding every reason, accepting every explanation, and making ourselves smaller so no one would feel guilty for disappointing us.
But we are learning that understanding someone does not require us to abandon ourselves.
We can understand that they were busy.
We can understand that another friend needed them.
We can understand that they never meant to hurt us.
And we can still say that they did.
From what I have learned, a friendship needs maintenance. Not grand gestures, not constant messages, not proof that we are each other’s whole world. Just care.
There is a verse that says a friend loves at all times. I used to think that meant we should stay endlessly available, no matter how we get treated. I do not read it that way anymore. I think it means love that stays honest, not love that stays silent. The same book says the wounds of a friend can be trusted. Maybe that is what this letter is. A wound meant to be trusted, not a complaint.
I think that is the part we forget. Care is small. It is a message sent honestly instead of a story sent late. A plan was kept because someone remembers we made space for it. An apology that is followed by different behavior next time.
A friendship cannot live on history alone. It cannot survive only because we have known each other a long time, laughed together before, or once understood each other easily.
It has to be cared for now. It has to be chosen now.
And I believe, friendship boundaries do not exist to punish people for being imperfect. They are not walls we build out of anger. They are just the place where we tell the truth about what we can no longer keep accepting.
We cannot keep making ourselves available for people who only remember our time when nothing else is happening.
We cannot keep pretending it does not matter when a commitment gets broken for a better option.
We cannot keep calling it kindness when we are the only ones doing the understanding.
That does not make us cold.
It makes us honest.
We can love someone and still notice how they treat us.
We can care about a friendship and still need it to feel mutual.
We can forgive someone and still stop giving them the same easy access to our time.
Because our time is part of our lives. It is made of mornings we will not get back, evenings we could have spent resting, small plans we looked forward to, energy we saved because we thought someone wanted to be with us.
It is not a waiting room.
It is not something to hold loosely just because we have been kind and understanding before.
We are learning that we can step back from people who keep showing us that their commitments to us are optional.
Not because we want to cage anyone.
I do not want to be caged either. I have always wanted freedom. The freedom to grow, to change, to make choices, to move through life without someone holding us too tightly.
But freedom does not mean we can make commitments carelessly.
It does not mean we get to give someone our time and then take it back the moment something better shows up.
It does not mean we get to expect people to stay understanding while we keep showing them that plans with us are easy to replace.
Most of us want freedom for ourselves, too. We understand that people change. Feelings change. Plans change. Life keeps moving, and sometimes we have to move with it.
But a commitment is still a responsibility.
And as far as I know, friendship boundaries were never about controlling another person. They just help us name our limits, protect mutual respect, and leave room for honest communication.
We can understand when something truly needs to change. We can understand exhaustion, an unexpected problem, a hard season, a day that did not go the way anyone planned.
What we do not have to keep accepting is being changed for a better option. A happier plan. Another person. Something that felt more exciting than the time we already agreed to share.
Maybe we used to accept that quietly. Maybe we told ourselves change is the only constant, and maybe it is.
But knowing that does not mean we have to make peace with every kind of change.
From where I am standing, knowing our value is not selfishness. It is knowing what we can accept with grace, what we should stop excusing, and what we need to let go of.
Maybe that is part of growing. Unlearning the habit of calling disappointment understanding simply because we are afraid to ask for more care.
We do not have to hate anyone to step back.
We can still wish them well and pray for them. We can still remember the good parts. We can still understand that they are human.
But we can also stop making room for a kind of hurt that keeps returning.
We can get more careful about what we let in, including the patterns that slowly teach us to doubt what we deserve.
We do not need every friendship to look the same.
We do not need every person to love the way we love.
But we do need respect.
We need care that does not depend on convenience.
We need friendships where we are not expected to accept less simply because we have accepted less before.
That is what I mean when I say I am learning to have boundaries.
I am not asking to be chosen above everyone else.
I am just asking not to be treated like I can always wait.
I do not know exactly why I am writing this, bunnies. But this is what has been in my heart lately.
If this letter felt familiar, maybe there is a friendship in your life asking for more honesty. You do not have to decide anything today. Just ask yourself: what have I made room for that no longer feels good to carry?
