By Kendall Worth!
I have spoken to many people in my community about the support group I am proposing in this blog. People are asking for it because they have had experiences of friendships ending, because others decided to end the friendship. Often people are ghosted, or at least never have the reason for the termination explained, and often asked not to contact the person again. This causes pain and hurts the mental health of the person living in poverty. When this happens to someone ion Income Assistance or a person living in poverty for any reason, they do not have the resources to deal with the situation as might be the case with someone from the financially better off community.
The support group I am talking about here is a support group for those who have a history of friendships ending, and especially people ending their friendships because it is said “they are not respecting boundaries”. In this Blog, introducing Bob and Karen, what Bob does not talk about is his history of a total of 10 different friendships ending between 2006 and recently. All 10 of those friendships have ended because he was accused of “not respecting boundaries”.
The following is an outline of the boundaries we have to respect in a friendship. (From a program presented by the Dalhousie Social Work Clinic )
And the following offers some hints to work within boundaries.
Whether rich or poor, and without regard to our mental health or our situation, we all have to respect boundaries, in a realtionship. When I talk about the difficulties people living in poverty have, respecting those boundaries, I have had people question me asking: How is it different for people who live in poverty to respect those boundaries? I want to be clear that the general principal of respecting boundaries is not different within the community of people I advocate for. What is different, is how we recover/deal with it mentally.
I want to bring up a case study here… looking back at the November 21, 2022 blog post, one piece of the story that this BLOG post does not talk about is that the reason why Bob was originally excited to help Karen is because he thought that helping Karen with her situation, he had the opportunity to have new friend – just meaning a friend who he could meet for coffee, go for walks with, etc. However, as the blog points out, he did not end up becoming friends with Karen. There were several reasons but mostly there was no trust between them. Generally, Bob lives his life alone, isolated and is, he says, by himself 90% of the time. He has a part-time job with no opportunity to socialize at work, and many other welfare recipients who have part-time jobs are in the same boat.
I want to be clearthat Bob is just one example of welfare recipients who suffer from this lack of friends and who feel the need for a support group. Many welfare recipients tell me that this effects them as well. What is frustrating to people on income assistance is that if you ask people who are better off financially if they have had friendships end because of not respecting boundaries, and if so, what did they do about it?? One answer they give is that they occupy their time with distractions like sports teams, when not at work. However, they also pay registration fees to be part of these teams which people on welfare cannot afford. The point I am trying to get at here is that members of the financially better of community have resources to not let respecting boundaries be a problem, or let ended friendships, affect their mental health.
I want to end this BLOG post by going back in time once again to an article I wrote in the N.S. Advocate. - This article was posed in 2019. The main point of the story is that solutions to social isolation are needed. William's friendships have ended because he has been accused of not respecting boundaries.
I hope a support group for those with issues around respecting boundaries and making and keeping friends can happen, and soon!
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