Chris and Sherry have been close friends since their childhood. They share everything from sharing secrets, food, and adventures to sharing each other social media passwords. Suddenly, Rosey comes into Chris’ life and they start to date each other.
Everything is fine until Rosey feels insecure and jealous of Sherry when she notices Chris spends lots of time with Sherry. In every topic the couple discusses, Chris brings Sherry into the conversation and Rosey feels very insecure.
One day Rosey complains that Chris is very intimate with Sherry and she feels very insecure and nervous when she finds Chris and Sherry together. The friendship between Chris and Sherry is pure and honest but being a girlfriend, Rosey always feels Chris gave more importance to Sherry than her.
Is Rosey a bad girlfriend because she doubts her boyfriend or is she just mentally insecure? Whatever the reason is, Chris forgets to create a boundary with his closest opposite-sex friend Sherry and it creates a huge mess in Chris’ life.
Having an opposite-sex friend is like a blessing for multiple reasons. At the same time, it is also important to create a boundary with your opposite-sex friend to avoid many misunderstandings and messes in life.
Why Having an Opposite-sex friend is important in life?
There are several benefits to having an opposite-sex friend in your circle.
Bringing Diverse Insights:
People from the opposite sex often view things from different perspectives. If you have a close friend from the opposite sex, he/she will bring new perspectives, opinions, and insights into our lives that will enrich our understanding of the world.
Emotional Support:
Friends from the opposite sex provide enormous emotional support if necessary. Friends from the opposite sex often understand each other emotionally better than friends of the same sex. They offer a safe space to share their experience, thoughts, and feelings without any romantic liabilities.
Fostering Growth:
Interacting with an opposite-sex friend helps you to explore different horizons of ideas, interests, lifestyles, and emotions. It not only fosters your growth as a person but also teaches you how to interact with different people.
Avoiding Gender Stereotypes:
It is one of the most important benefits of having opposite-sex friends as they help to break gender stereotypes. Talking to them, understanding, and respecting friends from the other gender help you overcome gender stereotypes.
Network Building:
Friendship with opposite-sex friends helps you to connect with more people from opposite-sex and thus a strong and robust network you can build. Such a network often lasts for a long time and will help in various circumstances at various stages of your life.
Understanding the Relationship Better:
Friends from opposite genders help you to understand other people of that gender better. It helps individuals to understand their partners better and find solutions easily during conflicts.
The above benefits individuals if they have a close friend from the opposite sex. But it is also important to create a boundary between them to avoid troubles in the future.
is it important to create a boundary with your opposite-sex friend?
It is very important to create an invisible but effective boundary with your opposite-sex friends despite sharing a strong bond with them. Here’s why:
1. Protect Your romantic life:
It is very important to create a boundary between friends of the opposite sex to prioritize romantic life over friendship. The boundary ensures your partner that you are committed to him/her and also prevents any kind of jealousy and misunderstanding.
2. Maintaining Emotional Limits:
Boundary ensures the limitation of your relationship with opposite-sex friends and also prohibits inappropriate intimacy with him/her. Emotional attachments can be formed at any time without our knowledge. However, having certain limitations in the relationship helps us to restrict ourselves from doing something wrong with our opposite-sex friends.
3. Respecting Partner’s emotions:
Almost 40% of couples suffer from a third person or love triangle in that relationship. Hence, your partners might feel insecure or unsafe if he/she finds you with your best opposite-sex friends in a close relationship. You need to understand your partner’s concern, demonstrate to him the boundary with your friends, and prioritize him over your friendship with your opposite-sex friends.
4. Fostering Trust and Respect:
Setting up a boundary between you and your closest opposite-sex friends not only builds trust between you and your partner but also creates a sense of security and respect between you and your friend. This practice will also help you to become respectable to others.
5. Enhance Communication:
Creating the boundary also helps you to enhance quality conversation and resolve misunderstandings with your partner. Enhanced communication will bring more intimacy and more quality time together.
6. Avoid Conflicts:
A boundary between you and your closer opposite-sex friends also avoids unnecessary conflicts not only with your partner but also with your friends. The boundary prohibits everyone from stepping into others’ private matters which leads to a strong but limited relationship between them.
7. Maintain the Sanctity of friendship:
It also helps maintain the sanctity of friendship by eliminating the idea of romanticism. A friendship is different from a romantic relationship because friendship is often unconditional whereas a romantic relationship has some kind of expectation from that relationship.
Friends from the opposite sex are vital for character development, and personal, emotional, and mental growth but at the same time, creating a boundary with your friends from the opposite gender is also necessary to avoid many issues.
Also Read: “Scorching Earth” Approach in a Relationship: 7 Tips to Avoid It
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