Any suggesting over releasing guilt over setting boundaries

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I'm trying to resolve this withing myself. I'm age 40, yet look 32ish. Still pushing friends away sometimes. Just recently created a stronger boundary with a friend after going to dinner with her and a local play.

The entire time at dinner she talked about herself the whole time, about her recent date. Seems people love how good I listen to them because I prefer not to talk a lot sometimes. When I would get a word in edgewise about my life she was in la la land. This has probably happened 5 or more times with this particular friend.

What friends don't seem to realize is that after a night like that where my brain is processing a lot of external stimuli it interfears with my work the next day and I need to rest my brain or meditate for a bit to restore myself and get in my own energies again.

How did I handle it? I told her via email and text 3 times that I needed time right now to focus on my business. I don't have time to socialize right now. Took telling her 3 times for her to finally stop calling and texting as she is a bit needy.

Oh boy, this experience really makes me question how much space and time I need to myself.

I can tell you this past week has been wonderful not listening to all the chitter chatter from her life events. Seems that I help people a lot when I listen to them and ask them questions, but my brain just doesn't like to do it that much.

Any suggestions on releasing my guilt over setting this boundary with this friend? I guess I'm struggling with the fact that I don't feel like talking to her any time soon as I've had enough of it feeling like a one sided relationship.

I don't think you should feel any guilt. She imposed her issues on to you, and you told her that you're busy right now. That's far more than is required to be socially accepted behavior right there.

In a similar boat. I actually had to warn a girl friend recently due to the fact she was interested in being with me, but didn't know if she wanted to go back to her ex boyfriend. She didn't seem to want to take responsibility for herself in that regard and told me to make a decision. The worst part is we had this talk on her birthday. Her ex took her out on her birthday and I told her the next day after hearing about how selfish I am and how I don't care for her (When in fact I came out the night before her birthday with her and drove her home and wished her a happy birthday) that I have decided that we should just be friends without all this stress and pressure because she clearly still loved someone else and I wasn't going to wait around for her. Her response to that was pretty ambiguous with "See you soon. Tc" Lesson learned was she defintely needed to hear my feelings about things, but the timing of it could have been a tad bit better.

Apparently, not being allowed to take care of me is considered narcissitic and extremely rude. I don't know if I will hear from her again, and right now I don't care either. That's the impression I get with people that want me to listen to their problems and be there for them, but don't want to be there for me. So I understand completely with your feelings about your situation.

I can so relate to what you are going through right now. I had friends like that, and I had to set boundaries with them. It actually helped me to read that your listening skills being so good may have set the whole situation in motion. I had one friend that I met at a support group. We used to spend hours on the phone. With my slow processing, it took me awhile to realize that she was draining my energy and that I needed a lot of down time after our conversations, so that I could wind down. When I tried to set a boundary with her, she got offended and accused me of all kinds of things. So I cut off the friendship. Although I had known her for nearly a year, I figured that if she wasn't comfortable respecting my boundaries, and saw any effort to do so as in invitation to pop-psychoanalyze me, she wasn't the stuff that good, healthy friendships are made of. But I felt guilty about it for a long time afterward, because I felt in the wrong even though I knew that I wasn't enjoying her company anymore.

Then I made another friend, who did not understand my boundaries even when I explained that I needed a couple days of downtime after we had hung out together, because she was a non stop chatterer, who also felt that she had to talk loudly. That friendship crashed and burned, too. Recently I started seeing a female chiropractor who just would not shut up. Worse, she would stop working on me and just stand there chattering away, while I watched the clock in dismay because I had other things I had been hoping to do. I had to stop seeing her because she would not stop talking even if you came right out and said, I have to get going, 'by now. I even had nightmares about her where she was suffocating me and I couldn't get away. Each time I ended the friendship or the professional relationship, I felt guilty. So I know how you feel, and all I can say is that you are doing the right thing for yourself by setting boundaries. If you don't set them, the friendship may end up crashing like mine did because I wasn't firm enough with these friends.

Have you ever read Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend? I'm far from good at them myself, but this book and companion books by at least one of those authors might help.

The series isn't perfect, but they get a lot of things right. A couple of notes though...

1. I don't know if you're Christian or not, but they do use Bible verses in their books. You can just skip them over if that bothers you.

2. A flaw that I keep finding however is that the authors are known to blame those who are mistreated by others like how some people make claims that those who were raped were asking for it. Again, just skip over those. Thankfully, that doesn't take up much of their material.