Buckets with Friends Part 1
Most of us are still making friends the way we did in first grade — we just don't realize it.
Sarah kicks off a new stretch of episodes focused on boundaries in specific relationships, starting with friendships. She traces how we pick friends at every age — siblings and family friends when we're little, whoever sits next to us in elementary school, shared values in middle and high school — and how college throws that whole system out the window, leaving most people with no real method for deciding who belongs in their life and how close.
The core message: boundaries in friendship protect both people, keep you in control of your own decisions, and only work if you actually know who you are first.
7 SIGNS OF UNHEALTHY BOUNDARIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS
7 SIGNS OF UNHEALTHY BOUNDARIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS
1.Telling all. Sharing your full life story with someone before you know whether they're safe to hold it.
2.Falling in love with a new acquaintance. Not romantic love — a platonic infatuation that skips past actually getting to know someone.
3.Acting on first sexual impulse. Letting physical intimacy come before the relationship has any real foundation.
4.Going against personal values to please others. Compromising what you actually believe just to keep someone around.
5.Not noticing when someone displays inappropriate boundaries. Making excuses for behavior you'd never accept from yourself.
6.Letting others define your reality. Morphing into who someone else wants you to be so they'll like you.
7.Spending more time meeting someone else's needs than your own. A pattern that shows up fast when infatuation is driving the relationship.
“The reality is, you belong in the center circle. And you've got to protect you with everything you've got.” — Sarah Bentz
THE TARGET EXERCISE
Sarah shares a tool she uses often in her counseling practice: draw a target, like an archery target, with a small, high-value center circle and larger, lower-value rings around it. List every important person in your life, then place them on the target based on how close they actually are — not how close you think they should be.
The pattern she sees almost every time: the center and the ring right around it are packed with names, there's barely room on the outer rings, and the person doing the exercise usually forgets to put themselves on the target at all. The center circle belongs to you. Everyone else earns their way closer over time — new people start on the outer edge, and only move inward as they prove themselves trustworthy.
• New acquaintances start on the outer rings, not the center, no matter how much you like them
• A close family member isn't automatically entitled to the center circle if the relationship isn't safe
• Daily contact (like a coworker) doesn't equal closeness — frequency and depth are different things
• The closer someone sits to the center, the more expectations come with that placement, so start slow
REFLECTION PROMPTS FROM THIS EPISODE
• If you drew your own target right now, is your center circle overcrowded?
• Did you remember to put yourself on the target at all?
• Is there someone close to your center who doesn't actually make you feel safe?
• Which of the 7 unhealthy patterns above sounds like how you've made friends in the past? Sarah ties this back to the glass bucket from the last episode: when your center circle is full of other people and there's no room for you, that's the sign you're standing outside your own bucket looking in.
COMING UP NEXT
This is the first of several episodes on friendship boundaries — Sarah continues the topic next time.
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Email: notinmybucket@hopeandgrowthcenter.com
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Sarah Bentz
Email: notinmybucket@hopeandgrowthcenter.com
Website: www.hopeandgrowthcenter.com (Navigate to the "Not In My Bucket" tab for journaling exercises)
Not In My Bucket Podcast
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This episode touches on exposure to rage and violence and other difficult family dynamics. If any of this feels heavy foryou personally, it may be worth talking it through with a counselor or therapist.
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