If America is in the throes of a loneliness epidemic, why do we keep casting aside established friendships for minor infractions? Vox senior reporter Allie Volpe joins host Krys Boyd to discuss a new trend toward cutting out “toxic” friends —even if the toxicity is easily overcome with dialog — and why we’re shying away from the hard work of interpersonal relationships in the digital age. Her article is “‘Protecting your peace’ can kill your friendships.”
Is it possible to ‘protect your peace’ too hard?
By Madelyn Walton, Think Intern
The phrase “protecting your peace” took off when influencers and creators started to joke about having no friends and cutting out “toxic” relationships, but is this the cure to a better well-being?
Allie Volpe is a senior reporter at Vox. She joined host Krys Boyd to discuss how this mindset works and why new generations may be hesitant to share and communicate with their peers.
“We are in a world that feels increasingly chaotic,” Volpe says. “A lot of people might not feel they have a lot of agency in certain areas of their life.”
Social media has allowed for instant access into another person’s life but if someone sees a message that rubbed them the wrong way, the user can be blocked in just one click. And the trend is to say this is the best solution for mental health—which can be seen as a narrow-minded approach.
“We need to take a step back and think, is this really uncalled for behavior or is this something that maybe makes [us] uncomfortable in this moment?” Volpe says.
Blocking someone may seem easier, but it can also be harmful to existing friendships.
“I’ve heard from so many people about how friends maybe have cut them out of their lives and weren’t willing to have a conversation about it,” she says.
Volpe mentions how important it is to get together with friends beyond the fun times.
“I get that people are feeling very burnt out and spread thin, but we need people around us, and we need to support them in any way we can,” Volpe says.
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] I don’t love conflict, especially over minor things. All things being equal, I’m usually happy to go along with a friend’s choice of restaurant rather than arguing for a place I like better. But when a disagreement is over something more substantial and the person I disagree with is somebody I really care about. I have learned that it is usually worth the trouble and even the discomfort to hash things out. An argument might be about, say, the choice to live in a house or a condo with my husband now that our kids are grown. But the resolution of that argument is not just about housing options. It is about taking care of our relationship. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. If you spend much time on social media, you may start to wonder if my way of looking at this is hopelessly outdated. There seem to be many, many people plagued by toxic friends and family they are eager to jettison from their lives, sometimes for infractions as minor as like missing a birthday dinner or regularly leaving your house a mess. I get that these things can be deeply frustrating, even hurtful. And I get that truly bad people are out there who might threaten our well-being. But if we have multiple people in our lives who we’ve deemed unworthy of our time and energy and even our company, because being with them sometimes feels less than amazing. Is it possible the problem is us? Allie Volpe is a senior reporter at Vox, where you can read her story “‘Protecting your peace’ can kill your friendships.” Allie, welcome to Think.
Allie Volpe [00:01:28] Thanks so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:01:29] What exactly is “protecting your peace? ”
Allie Volpe [00:01:32] Rig it’s a sort of prevailing notion that if anything has inconvenienced you, been annoying to you in any minor way, like cut it out of your life. We are supposedly in pursuit of a frictionless existence. Like nothing should be hard. Nothing should be difficult when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And so it’s just sort of like knee jerk reaction to get rid of that thing that is making you uncomfortable.
Krys Boyd [00:01:58] This sounds facetious, and I don’t mean it in this way. If lots of people think this way, it’s understandable that many younger people don’t even want to imagine having children because there is no frictionless relationship when you are raising kids.
Allie Volpe [00:02:10] Right. Exactly. Yeah. I think there there is a shortsightedness to it. You know, there are no relationships in this world that don’t have a little bit of conflict or there are no people. If you truly love them, you’re going to want to argue with them. There’s no relationship that is actually made better by walking away from it at the first sign of struggle. We actually can get closer to people if we take the time to really understand where they’re coming from, why the thing they did hurt us and we can always move past it, usually.
Krys Boyd [00:02:42] Before we get very far into this. I do want to reiterate this is a totally separate phenomenon from the need for people to get out of like an abusive relationship. Right.
Allie Volpe [00:02:51] Correct? Yes. Yes, absolutely. If you are in a dangerous, unhealthy, truly toxic situation that anyone should feel empowered to leave that like you mentioned at the top, this could be for sort of minor infractions like missing a birthday party or maybe this friend wants to just hang out with you more than you feel like you have energy for. Maybe they made a snide remark and it rubbed you the wrong way. This is the sort of impulse to just be done with that person because it pissed you off one time.
Krys Boyd [00:03:20] How did you start to notice that this advice to protect your peace was becoming something of a trend on social media?
Allie Volpe [00:03:29] Yeah, I mean, I just feel like across social platforms you have these sort of sentiments of people speaking about the benefits of being like a one man island. And I think that really speaks to the individualism that is within our culture now, and it has been for decades. But I think we’re on overdrive now. I’ve seen the posts on X about how someone is quote unquote de centering friendship because things are too complicated, too messy. And it really is a little bit alarming to me, like this sort of notion about like, I don’t need other people to survive. I’m perfectly fine all on my own and other people really are an inconvenience to me is something that is a little bit concerning because when you think about relationships, you know, we give and we take. That’s the whole point of being in a relationship with someone is you want to support them. And so, yeah, this whole notion of protecting your piece sort of speaks to this notion of like, well, I don’t want to help these people, which I totally get because we also live in a world that demands a lot of our time and our energy. And I get that people are feeling very burnt out and spread thin, but we need people around us and we need to support them in any way we can.
Krys Boyd [00:04:45] It sounds like many people, rather than trying to work these relationships out or express their needs so that the relationship can feel better for all parties, they’re just bailing.
Allie Volpe [00:04:56] Right. And it’s sort of this self protection, you know, like and when a lot of things are out of a person’s control, this is something that is within their control. We are in a world that feels increasingly chaotic. A lot of people, you know, might not feel they have a lot of agency in certain areas of their life. And this is something that’s really easy to be like, well, this thing is making me feel bad. I can do something about it, but it’s oftentimes the wrong reaction.
Krys Boyd [00:05:26] It’s really interesting to me, Allie, that some people talk about this decision to sort of cut others out of their lives for being imperfect or annoying or, you know, having hurt their feelings. They talk about it in ways that not only justify the decision, but almost imply there is no decision at all like keeping someone in your circle when that person sometimes makes things hard is endangering your own well-being.
Allie Volpe [00:05:49] Yeah, it is really interesting. Like it’s become this very like binary thing. Either like this person is good for me or this person is bad for me, and the world unfortunately doesn’t work that way. People are multifaceted and, you know, someone might be really great and fun to hang out with in a certain context, but maybe they’re not super validating to you when you’re coming to them to set about something emotional that doesn’t make them a bad person or a bad person to have in your life. We just maybe need to be a little bit more discerning about how they fit within their lives. And this is a lot of work to sort of like mine, all of our relationships. But I think the important thing to remember is that no one person is going to be wholly good or wholly bad. We just have to take the good with the bad.
Krys Boyd [00:06:31] So lots of people are talking about cutting other people off for their mental well-being. Is it mental health professionals who are driving these moves or is it self-proclaimed experts?
Allie Volpe [00:06:43] I think you would find few mental health professionals who would be as black and white as being like, yes, totally cut this person out of your life. Like, I think the experts would try to encourage people to find nuance, try to salvage the relationship in any way possible. Again, this is for more minor things. This is not abuse. This is not a terrible, terrible relationship. These are for more minor things. So I think it’s more so driven by this pop psychology that’s proliferated online. I see a lot of videos on TikTok about like, I’m not here for drama. So if you bring any trauma, I’m cutting you out of my life. And again, like this is without a lot of context of me doing things. So I’m not privy to, you know, what trauma means to this person. But it could be that, you know, a friend is just expressing their needs and people are taking it as drama or a friend is asking a favor and that is asking too much of somebody. So I think, you know, maybe we need to take a step back and think about like, is this really uncalled for behavior or is this something that, like maybe makes me uncomfortable in this moment?
Krys Boyd [00:07:49] You mentioned black and white thinking. I kept thinking, reading your piece about the fact that there are two sides to this, right. And how baffling and deeply painful it can be to find ourselves on the other side. To have someone in our life cut us off can be agonizing.
Allie Volpe [00:08:05] Absolutely. It’s incredibly painful. I’ve heard from so many people about how friends maybe have cut them out of their lives and weren’t willing to have a conversation about it. I was talking to a woman at a party a couple of weeks ago and she told me this really heart wrenching story about like a very good friend that she had, that she felt like she in there a lot for emotionally and then she was completely iced out. They ran into each other at a bar and she suggested like, hey, let’s catch up. And the friend just like totally ghosted her over time until eventually she said like, you know, you’re not a good friend to me. I can’t be in this friendship anymore. And so this woman was completely caught off guard because this has never been brought to her attention before. She didn’t know what she did wrong. And so I think that’s the risk we run right by not telling our friends the problems we have. These things build and resentment grows. And so we feel like, okay, I have no other choice but to cut this person out. Whereas if we take the time to address problems as they come, this is an opportunity for us to get closer, to get the other side of the story, because a lot of times that other person wasn’t meaning to hurt you. Sometimes. Absolutely. But, you know, we’re all in our own little worlds. We only live with ourselves. And so, you know, if I say a joke that I think is funny, but actually, my friend, you know, takes effects, too. I don’t know that until they bring it up. And oftentimes the person on the other end will want to apologize and mend the relationship. But we can’t get to that point if we’re just bottling everything in and cutting people off.
Krys Boyd [00:09:45] Yeah. To the best of my recollection, this is only happened to me once to be on the receiving end of this. And it, you know, I was blindsided and I never quite figured out what I had done. And the overwhelming feeling I felt about this person was I wish I knew because I would like to if I can’t, you know, restore the friendship, I would like to at least apologize. It’s hard to be left without even that much resolution.
Allie Volpe [00:10:08] Yeah, exactly. Like, I think people want to preserve their relationship like I and certainly there are people who would double down and be like, I’m not I didn’t do anything wrong. But I think if you truly care about that person, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to mend the relationship. And so, yeah, that does involve some vulnerability to share how you feel and owning up to the potential harm that you’ve caused. Like it’s definitely not an easy thing and it makes everyone uncomfortable. But on the other side, I think you’re way closer.
Krys Boyd [00:10:39] Mental health is very, very important. We understand this maybe more now in modern times than we ever did before. We should note, though, Allie, it is possible to be fully mentally healthy and also be annoyed or disappointed or inconvenienced by another person. I mean, do those negative emotional experiences caused by someone else always put our well-being at risk in some way?
Allie Volpe [00:11:06] I don’t think they always put our well-being at risk. Again, you don’t know the other person’s side of the story. They can be having a bad day and doing something that upset you unintentionally. Yeah, we we we need to get out of our own heads a little bit in our own experience and think about what the other person might be experiencing as well. But, you know, having minor inconveniences, that isn’t something that is going to completely ruin your mental health. Everybody has bad days. Everybody has inconveniences, and our resilience shows we can brush things off and have a better time on the other side.
Krys Boyd [00:11:46] What do you know from experts about the extent to which this phenomenon of estrangement, especially among families, has increased in recent years?
Allie Volpe [00:11:56] Yeah. Among families, you know, estrangement has certainly been growing. A YouGov poll found that more than 1 in 4 Americans were estranged from an immediate family member. And I talked to an expert who, you know, specifically focuses on adult children and parent estrangement. And, you know, that’s a lot of his clientele. So he’s finding that a lot of children are growing up and taking a look back on their relationships from childhood and maybe reevaluating some moments from their past as an adult and considering, okay, that person maybe wronged me and I don’t think I can have a relationship with them in the future. But he’s trying to encourage people to take less of a punitive approach with it. But again, while completely understanding like there are some situations where, you know, maybe your parent has put you in danger and it truly was not a good place to grow up where some of those situations are warranted.
Krys Boyd [00:13:03] Is there some reason anyone has identified why young Americans today might be less tolerant of family members who have let them down than their parents or grandparents generations might have been?
Allie Volpe [00:13:14] So one expert I talked to talked about the rise of individualism. If you think that you are the only person who matters in the world or you can survive on your own, you don’t really see the value in having a community of people around you. So I think that’s where a lot of this is coming from, especially now. Like if you can see yourself as this self thriving entity, who cares if you have other people around you.
Krys Boyd [00:13:46] Allie, why didn’t people really have the option of cutting ties? For most of human history.
Allie Volpe [00:13:52] Yeah. This is super interesting to me. I talked to an evolutionary psychologist who theorized that, you know, because we lived in smaller groups in the past, estrangement from either from even one person could have profound effects. Like if that person was well liked, you know, they might convince five other people not to talk to you. And when you’re in a hunter gatherer society, depending on other people for food, for protection, this inherently puts you at risk. So this is a fairly recent phenomenon. We live in a very different world now where we have comforts at our beck and call. So we don’t need to rely on people that much for our own safety. When people are focused on their own needs, you know, you might see the need to mend a conflict as being like not as important.
Krys Boyd [00:14:51] And I suppose in small communities, which most people might have lived in for much of history, they couldn’t. People couldn’t avoid one another. Even if they had beef, right? They had to figure out ways to at the very least, coexist.
Allie Volpe [00:15:05] Right? Exactly. Like if your neighbor you can’t move away from them. I guess you could, but it would be a lot of work. So you’d want to just sort of bury the hatchet in some way so you don’t have the most awkward living experience trying to avoid one another.
Krys Boyd [00:15:19] Have we somehow lost those skills in the modern era? Is it is it more, though, or is it more like we’ve lost the motivation to work on imperfect relationships? Like we could fix them if we wanted to, but we don’t feel like it?
Allie Volpe [00:15:32] Yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both. I think we don’t feel like it. And then as a result, when you don’t do it, you lose those skills, you know, because when something does arise, it’s like you don’t know how to do it. And one expert I talked to pointed to the rise of, like, these very public outbursts, like people freaking out on airplanes and having to get escorted off because they just don’t know how to deal with their emotions like something is bothering them and they don’t know how to, like, decompress or talk about it in a way that is normal. They just freak out.
Krys Boyd [00:16:06] Or just, yeah, just sit on their frustration for a while and then vent later on after everything is resolved.
Allie Volpe [00:16:14] Right? Right. Yeah. There’s a time and a place for venting. And oftentimes, if you just wait a little bit, that emotion won’t be as red hot. And you probably won’t feel the same way that you did in the moment.
Krys Boyd [00:16:27] Culling our social media feeds is a pretty simple and bloodless process. Often we can unfriend somebody without them even realizing it, at least not right away. What are some of the reasons we do this? Why do we clean out our social media feeds now and then?
Allie Volpe [00:16:42] Yeah. I mean, it’s a very easy way to get rid of something that you don’t agree with. Increasingly, more and more people are curating their feeds to like, accurately showcase the points of view that they agree with. You know, there is a term echo chamber. So I think any time there’s someone that you don’t agree with, it’s really easy to unfriend them, to block them, to mute them. And unfortunately, the same can’t be said about real relationships. So I think it’s totally fine to cull your social media profiles because, you know, oftentimes these platforms are kind of toxic to begin with. So you want to have a pleasurable experience if you are going to use them. But yeah, that’s just not the way the world works. We have to cooperate with people. Again, people always talk about how marriages are work, and I think we need to apply that to all relationships. All relationships are work. Like why would you not want to put in the same amount of effort with your friends as you would with your romantic partner? And I think that goes all the way down to your neighbors. We want to have a cooperative, thriving society, and we can’t do that if we’re pushing people away.
Krys Boyd [00:17:57] So I have removed people now and then from my social media feeds. But I have wondered if it sort of primes us to cut people out of our lives in the real world if we decide we can never stand to see this person’s posts on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Maybe it becomes a little easier to imagine doing that in the real world.
Allie Volpe [00:18:18] Yeah, I think that it’s totally on the mark. We realize how easy it is to do it other domains of our lives. So why wouldn’t we want to do it in real life?
Krys Boyd [00:18:28] Did you find evidence that some people at least really are eliminating like many of their one time friends from their lives without big reasons?
Allie Volpe [00:18:38] I don’t know if there’s very good data about it. So this is all kind of anecdotal. This just is something that’s in the water supply. Yeah. So I really can’t speak to, you know, the the amount that people are doing this yet.
Krys Boyd [00:18:54] The data thing is really interesting because it’s relatively easy to keep good statistics on whether people are cohabitating or married or dating or whatever. But, you know, we might have three good friends or we might have 30 people that we think we could call in the middle of the night. It’s a little hard to sort of track friendships over time, isn’t it?
Allie Volpe [00:19:14] Yeah. Yeah. And what every person considers a friend might be different. You know, people might just only consider those people who are very, very close to them a friend. Whereas other people might feel like, anyone who I’ve talked to in the last year, they’re a friend. Yeah. So I think it makes it hard to measure. And yeah, every kind of piece of data might have a different result based on how people classify the people in their lives.
Krys Boyd [00:19:41] You mentioned that some people feel like they don’t really need other people. And I think about the kinds of things that you used to have to call a friend for that. Now you can call a paid service for, you know, if you’re stuck somewhere and you need a ride. It’s great if you can call a friend, but you can also call like a Lyft, right? Or, you know, just lots of things. It’s almost like like markets have tried to convince us that they can take the place of our friends doing us favors.
Allie Volpe [00:20:10] Absolutely. An anthropologist named James Richardson published a book last year called “Our Worst Strength.” It’s all about American individualism. And he made a really good point that in the past, we relied on our friends for that support, you know, to drive them to the airport to help watch the kids while I run out real quick to just hang around and maybe gardened together. But now we look to our friends for entertainment purposes because we have these services like Lyft. We have movies in our house. We have so many different services that fulfill the needs that friends once did. And so now we consider our friends to be the source of fun in our life. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it can’t be fun all the time. Like every time you hang out with a person, it can’t be like bachelorette party fun. There needs to be some moments of downtime, of conflicts, boring times. And so, yeah, I think it’s really skewed the way we think about what we do with our friends.
Krys Boyd [00:21:15] Well, and to your point, every bachelorette party that I’ve ever attended or even heard of involves at least a little bit of drama, you know, with someone who gets too drunk and says the wrong thing.
Allie Volpe [00:21:25] Right? Exactly. Yeah. So if this whole protecting your peace thing holds true, then maybe more people would avoid bachelorette party.
Krys Boyd [00:21:34] So I think about relationships between parents and children and many parents of the current generation raising kids really think carefully about the emotional and social needs of their children in a way that parents and the generation that raised my generation were maybe not quite so sensitive. I it’s it’s ironic to me that maybe today’s parents are about as as careful about their kids emotional needs as any generation has ever been. And yet a lot of times when those young people grow up, they turn around and see their parents is still not enough.
Allie Volpe [00:22:15] Yeah. In reporting for another story, experts told me that parents are often trying to protect their children from any uncomfortable experience. So if you’re being sheltered from a very young age to not have any negative experiences and again, I think that goes for like even playground spats, like that’s how we learn how to interact with other kids and learn about consequences or learn how to apologize or, you know, learn what you are willing to tolerate from other friends. But if there’s constantly an adult stepping in to sort of shield you from all of that, you don’t learn those skills. And so experts were very clear about letting your kids sort of experience minor emotional pain. Again, you don’t want them to suffer, but you want them to learn how to figure it out for themselves. And I think that can only benefit us as we grow up, because that’s how we learn how to navigate our adult relationships, because there won’t be somebody stepping in to shield you, to protect you. And maybe that’s where the impulse to cut people off comes from.
Krys Boyd [00:23:17] Yeah, that’s a really interesting insight. We not only learn how to handle these situations, we learn that we can handle them, that we will survive having our feelings hurt by a friend.
Allie Volpe [00:23:27] Right, Right. There have been so many times where I’ve just felt terrible about friends situations growing up and like it was, you know, you’re crying and you don’t know what to do or you’re like, All my friends hate me. And then you grow up and you realize, okay, I got through that and maybe this thing worked and maybe that thing didn’t work. And you take all of the wisdom and things you’ve learned and you apply it to your other relationships. But if we’re not doing those things, we truly have no idea how to navigate these relationships.
Krys Boyd [00:24:00] How could all of this family estrangement affect our sense of obligation to family members?
Allie Volpe [00:24:08] Right. Right. Yeah. If you are just thinking like this person has harmed me, I don’t owe them anything. We don’t feel an obligation to them. One of the experts I interviewed for this story did a study in 2019 and found that those with a high number of estrangement, like including from family, friends, exes, coworkers, found that these people were more depressed. They tended to have an anxious attachment style. So that means that they’re constantly afraid of being rejected and less social support. So you take all these things together and you have, you know, sad, anxious people who feel like they have nobody around them. And so if you feel that way, you feel like, well, what do I owe to these people in the first place?
Krys Boyd [00:24:55] It is pretty fascinating, Allie, to read your article about these many, many people deliberately cutting ties. And also here, a lot of experts talking about the hazards of loneliness are people who cut others out of their lives more inclined to be lonely in the aftermath? Or maybe are they just relieved?
Allie Volpe [00:25:17] Yeah. I mean, so social isolation doesn’t automatically mean that a person is lonely. But the more time you spend by yourself, the more likely you are to feel lonely. So I don’t think these people are maybe feeling inherently more lonely. A great Atlantic article pointed out that we are spending much more time alone than we ever have in the past, but we’re not necessarily feeling alone. We have all of the comforts, like when your house is the perfect place to be and you have everything you could ever want, why would you leave? And people are feeling very satisfied with that. And I think that’s another complication here. You know, why would you put yourself in a potentially vulnerable situation to interact with somebody? You know, when you have TikTokl, you have your podcast, you have these parasocial relationships where it feels like maybe you’re getting that social itch met, but you’re actually not. You’re by yourself.
Krys Boyd [00:26:10] I suppose there’s no way to know this, but I’m curious as to whether you sense that any of the people talking on social media about cutting people out of their lives for these minor infractions or maybe just exaggerating exactly how much they want to isolate themselves?
Allie Volpe [00:26:29] 100%. Yeah. TikTok is for entertainment purposes. People are doing things to get a rise out of audience to, you know, form engagement. So I think taking all of this with a grain of salt is is definitely smart because we’re people are just battling for other people’s attention. But like another trend that had born out of the protecting your peace stuff. I saw a lot of videos of people posting about one, you protect your piece too hard and now you have no friends and nowhere to go on a Friday night. So again, I think people are like coming back around to the idea of like sort of poking fun at it and realizing like, yeah, I’ve walled myself off from the rest of the world. And again, like, that could be totally injust, too. So we have to take everything we say online with a grain of salt.
Krys Boyd [00:27:17] It is a reminder, too, that, you know, we might see someone online and hear the tiniest bit of their story and think, yes, they are so right. This was the right move. But that is only one side of the story. I always love, you know, movies and TV series where you think you have the perspective on, say, a crime that was committed. And then, you know, three episodes later, you learn a very different way of looking at this same thing.
Allie Volpe [00:27:40] Right, Exactly. It’s all entertainment. It’s all perspective. And that’s why, like media literacy is so important because, again, when you’re just being fed this information and this person maybe looks authority and they look like an expert, but we have to actually be more discerning about who is us that’s telling me to do this thing. They’re just a regular person. I don’t know if I should trust them because, again, they are trying to get my attention. They’re trying to get me to buy something. So I think we should be very skeptical of the advice we are consuming online or how we’re applying it to our life.
Krys Boyd [00:28:13] But you and I are grown women and we are media literates. I can say that at least for myself. And I know that about you. It you know, we worry so much about the effect of social media on young people in terms of like how they feel about themselves and their appearance and, you know, material possessions they want. This kind of influence is interesting, too. Like if I had heard this influence in like the absolute natur of seventh and eighth grade when every friend relationship seemed hard and fraught, I might have taken this as like a good strategy for getting by rather than, as we’ve discussed, learning the skills to repair those relationships and adjust my behavior in ways that, you know, made people want to be around me.
Allie Volpe [00:28:57] Same. Yeah. I think back on all of those, like awkward middle school, high school friendships and feeling terrible. And if someone told me like, Yep, you don’t need those people, you actually don’t need anyone at all, I probably would have been very interested in that advice.
Krys Boyd [00:29:12] Did you hear from people defending the choice to cut others off?
Allie Volpe [00:29:19] I do not hear directly. But again, every now and then I will log on to whatever social platform it is. And there are a lot of people defending this idea. You know, when everything else in life is so hard, why would I add another hard thing to my plate? Like life is too short to do anything that brings you joy. I’ve seen it a lot with that Kim Cattrall quote from the interview that she did. Like, I don’t want to be doing anything that isn’t fun for more than one second. I’m totally botching that quote, but I see that screenshot a lot, you know, especially when it comes to relationships. People just think like, you know, life is short. I want to do things that fill my cup. This person at this moment is not filling my cup and I think it comes from a good place. Like, I don’t think that’s necessarily bad advice. But again, it comes down to the binary of thinking like that person will never change. They will just continue to drain you and. If something beautiful can happen. If you do talk to your friends about the ways that you feel hurt by them.
Krys Boyd [00:30:24] I want to talk about, you know, getting our needs met within a relationship because, again, you are not arguing here that we don’t have the right to complain if something is not working for us within a particular relationship. In choosing to exercise people who don’t respect whatever boundaries we have. What do you know, Allie, about how people decide what constitutes reasonable boundaries?
Allie Volpe [00:30:48] Yeah. One expert I talked to found that people really are weaponizing boundaries. And she made a good point that boundaries are something that you do, not something that you can enforce on other people. Therefore, like, if you’re telling people, you know, don’t call me at this time, like that’s a boundary. The boundary is you say, I won’t pick up my phone after 9 p.m.. It’s the thing that you do. So she’s definitely observed people weaponizing that term to try to police other people’s behavior, which is not great. And another expert found that the way that we describe who is a supposedly toxic person really runs the gamut. Like people in a study found that they described a toxic person as a friend who was depressed. They also considered someone toxic if they stole money from you. So this is like a wide range of things. Like simply because a person is depressed doesn’t make them toxic or a bad friend to you. But that’s what she found in her study. And that was sort of alarming to me that people have this wide range of what they consider like unacceptable behavior. Like, again, I would say if a friend stole money from me, like that is probably pretty bad. But again, I haven’t really talked to them about it. But if they’re depressed and they’re coming to me for help and social support, I would not want to turn my back on them. But the fact that this is all getting lumped in together and people are creating these quote unquote boundaries around that is making friendship feel almost punitive, like I want my friends to come to me if they need help. I’m happy to give it to them. But if you’re saying like, that’s too much work, I can’t do that for you, then I think it sort of negates the idea of what a friendship is.
Krys Boyd [00:32:37] And I want to talk about conflict avoidance. I mean, it is it is a way to keep interactions consistently pleasant. But I wonder if it also keeps any given relationship at a pretty surface level if we decide to never engage in conflict with someone.
Allie Volpe [00:32:55] Yeah. yeah, absolutely. Because again, that’s not how reality is. And you might find yourself like walking on eggshells to say the right thing to please this person in order to make them not be mad at you. And then they’re inherently not acting very authentically. And this is a very sort of like people pleasing kind of relationship you’re having. And so I think we always want to feel authentic with our friends and not feel afraid to ask too much of them or that they’re going to get mad at you. Yeah.
Krys Boyd [00:33:24] Did you learn anything about what can work when estranged friends or family members want to reestablish ties?
Allie Volpe [00:33:33] So one of the biggest bits of advice I got from experts is to just have empathy with the other side. Like you mentioned before, we only know our experience and so it can be helpful to think about what might be going on in their lives, why they acted the way that they did. And again, you can ask them these things and get their perspective. So instead of shutting down, you can broach your concerns again with empathy. Not to blame them for anything, but to ask a question of like, Hey, you had said this joke, and I’m just wondering where that came from because it really hurt me. And again, to avoid labeling that person as like toxic or a narcissist, like, you know, that that comment you made was so toxic. Let’s use more words experts have told me. So explain, like how you are impacted instead of just throwing a label on it.
Krys Boyd [00:34:24] The thing about toxic and narcissistic is that they’re often applied not just to a thing someone said or did, but to the individual, as if this is like a like a blanket attribute of this person as opposed to a reflection of of one action.
Allie Volpe [00:34:40] Right? Totally. And oftentimes we’re getting the application or the definition of these words wrong. You know, narcissist applies to a very specific diagnosis for a person and not someone who is self centered. You know, I think it would be totally appropriate to you know, I wouldn’t tell someone they’re being self-centered, but to feel like someone is being self-centered, I think is valid. But you wouldn’t want to call them a narcissist. The same thing with toxic. Like, again, it’s not really like a mental health term, but it’s become one and it’s become really easy to label someone as toxic. But again, we’re not all good. We’re not all bad. There’s a lot of gray area. And so it’d be like, yup, your toxic really seems to signify like you are a bad person. There’s no redeeming you. And I think if I was on the receiving end of that, I would feel really bad and I would have a lot of trouble thinking about all of maybe the good things I’d done for my friends. Instead, just thinking like, yeah, I’m a bad person to everyone I know.
Krys Boyd [00:35:42] There’s also something between, you know, having a friend who is so close that they can come over and say anything at any time and someone that you occasionally see socially like that. There’s not necessarily a need to to be entirely done with someone for the rest of your life. Maybe you just don’t hang out so often.
Allie Volpe [00:35:59] Right, Exactly. Like we have a lot more agency in our relationships than I think we believe. Like, you can totally control the context in which you see someone again, because it might not be the best thing to bring up, you know, something that made you annoyed with them. You might just think like, Yep, I’m going to put that in my back pocket. I’m not going to bring it up, but I’m also not going to turn to this person for, you know, to vent about my work problems because they were really dismissive about it or I’m not going to tell this person my deep, dark secrets because they’re going to turn around and tell other people like, you just learned the context of which this relationship really thrives. And that might sound like too calculating, but I think it helps us protect our peace in a way that is not alienating.
Krys Boyd [00:36:53] I also think it’s good for us to have people in our lives who don’t protect our peace for our own good. I think about my close relationships with my sisters. They are supportive and wonderful and nurturing, but they don’t always tell me precisely what I want to hear. And although in the moment sometimes I don’t love that it’s good for me.
Allie Volpe [00:37:13] Right, Right. You want to have that objective person telling you something that maybe you didn’t consider yourself? Yeah. Like families, super close friends are often really good at that because, like, they know you really well and they know your shortcomings. And, you know, we’re all very biased to like, think, you know, like, yes, I am smarter and better at things than other people, but really, you just need someone to, like, bring you back down to earth and tell you the the path that maybe you’re not considering.
Krys Boyd [00:37:43] Are there ways that we can get better at talking through challenging situations or hurt feelings?
Allie Volpe [00:37:51] Yeah, I think we just need to practice them. We need to try to not get reactive and start a fight and, you know, maybe take accountability if someone is telling us the ways that we’ve hurt them. Sometimes, you know, you might have to take the lead in the conversation. Especially like in adult child of parent estrangement, That therapist said, like children might need to take the lead here if their parents, like, have never had a conversation like this before. And so just to not write off people who don’t know how to have those conversations, you might need to lead them a little bit. And another expert talked about, like the importance of emotional regulation, like to be really specific with what you’re feeling. And this is sort of like an internal process, like what is it that I’m feeling right now? Is it disappointment? Is it frustration? Is it confusion? And to validate the fact that, like you do feel let down by that other person and we need to practice this stuff regularly? Like how am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? Why do I want to have this reaction? And it could sort of talk us away from this very emotional, heightened state and sort of ground us in like, okay, well, what is the actual problem here? What is the outcome I want?
Krys Boyd [00:39:18] Yeah, it’s interesting to think about the value of just maybe taking a break before we react.
Allie Volpe [00:39:23] Totally. And like, if you take a long enough break, you might realize like, okay, I actually am not that upset about this thing anymore and like, I can brush it off.
Krys Boyd [00:39:33] Allie, you mentioned, you know, we can have these conversations without necessarily starting a fight. Of course we can. Another thing, though, that is model modeled for us on social media and even traditional media is that the most compelling conversations that we find, there are often like high conflict people who who go in guns blazing. What we’re seeing in these spaces doesn’t necessarily work for like the intimacy of your living room or drinks with a friend.
Allie Volpe [00:40:04] Right. Right. You want to do this in a context that feels safe for the other person? Like, so, yeah, you don’t want to bombard them over drinks where other people are. And, you know, like a crowded bar is probably not the place to have this sort of conversation, nor is it after your partner has worked like a 12 hour shift. Now, what we do want to take into consideration, like the context of which we’re doing this stuff to make sure everybody’s like in a good place and can hear what you’re saying. Because I think most people, again, do react positively. Like no one is really going to, you know, double down and say like, Nope, I’m totally in the right here. I think most people are very receptive to it. You just have to pick the time and the place. That’s right.
Krys Boyd [00:40:47] There are people who have cut off multiple allegedly toxic people in their lives. If we are this person and cutting off others has been a pattern for us over a long period of time. Is there a way to determine whether the problem is that we have set impossible expectations for our relationships?
Allie Volpe [00:41:07] Yeah, I think it’s important to kind of take stock of the relationships that you have. Again, like pointing back, that takes out trend of like when you protect your peace so hard, you realize you have no friends. I think that’s an important realization to come to. I think if people are realizing like, yeah, I do have nobody around me, maybe I have set the standards a little too high. Like, what can I do to course correct here? But again, some people might think like, I don’t have any problem with this. Like, I feel very comfortable. I think when people realize it’s a problem is when they feel like they are lacking in some way. But I don’t think it’s irredeemable. I think if a friend came to me and said like, hey, maybe I was being a little too hard, like I’d love to patch things up, I would certainly want to reignite that friendship. Yeah, I just think people need to, like, take stock. It’s the simplest, like, best advice for a reason. But like, just think about if someone treated you that way, how would you feel?
Krys Boyd [00:42:06] Your article also made me think more deeply about these parasocial relationships that we have, which is like this sense that we really know influencers or celebrities. We might follow people who we’ve never met, but but we follow their content online. I mean, these people, you know, they provide us with interesting content. They never ask anything of us, but they also don’t do anything for us. And yet we might think this is the model of how friendship should be someone who is always entertaining and, you know, never says anything directly to us that we don’t care for.
Allie Volpe [00:42:41] Right. Right. We walk around with these people in our headphones all day and it feels like we know them, but you’re not actually engaging in a dialog with them. You’re the fly on the wall on their conversations. And that can be very comforting and it could be entertaining. But again, like you are not actively engaging in that relationship. And I think, again, it all comes down to the agency we have in our relationships. We have much more power and control than we think. And I’m not saying, again, to use that to weaponize boundaries against people or to force people to act the way you want them to, but to reach out to people. If you’re feeling lonely, like we have the power to do that, and it’s really easy to do that and to, yeah, not feel so punitive with people to have empathy, to maybe just take a beat and not be as reactive. We all have the power to do those things and I think it’s up to us to take agency and to not blame other people like we are ultimately the ones in control of our relationships, of our happiness.
Krys Boyd [00:43:46] What have you learned about what it takes to love someone or at least stay connected to them even though they are not exactly as we wish them to be? As I think no one in our lives is probably exactly as we wish them to be.
Allie Volpe [00:43:59] Yeah, exactly. I’ve definitely become less scared of having conversations, especially with my partner. Again, I am probably more conflict avoidant than most people. I’m always afraid that the conversation is not going to go well, but every single time it goes way better than I think it’s going to go. And so over time, you just you start to learn that like, I don’t need to be scared of this anymore because it always goes well. And that goes back to the point of needing to practice this stuff because when you realize like, okay, it’s not the end of the world to have this conversation, that things do feel better on the other side, you’ll be less hesitant to do it.
Krys Boyd [00:44:39] Allie Volpe is a senior reporter at Vox, where you can read her story “‘Protecting your peace’ can kill your friendships.” Allie, this has been really interesting. Thank you for making time to talk.
Allie Volpe [00:44:49] Of course. Thanks for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:44:51] Think is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and anywhere you like to get podcasts by searching for KERA Think. Our website is think.kera.org You can learn about upcoming shows and sign up for our free weekly newsletter. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
