Pro-Tip: Be willing to be someone else’s bad guy. I’ll explain, since I didn’t realize other people don’t do this (my parents did it for us growing up)
If you have a friend that has a hard time enforcing their boundaries when someone challenges them, you can offer to be their ‘bad guy.’ That way they can work on enforcing respect for their boundaries with less push back until they get the hang of it.
So if I didn’t want to do something when my friends asked if I could while growing up, I’d signal my parents and they would tell me I wasn’t allowed to go. Boom, instant fix that meant there was no backlash from enforcing my boundaries while I was still finding where I wanted those to land.
So now, if I’ve got a friend that says they don’t want to go/do XYZ but they don’t feel they can say no without an excuse....there is ME!
Who they suddenly promised to help move/drive because my car is broken/watch the cat I don’t have/go to dinner that we’ve already canceled once/ect on that day so even though they would like to do the thing they simply can’t because they promised me their help and can’t cancel.
It can be a two way street too, usually best used if there are no mutual friends and always with permission from your friendly villain.
So yea, just thought I’d throw this out there since I didn’t realize this wasn’t a common thing.
