Friendship Standards & Boundaries ALL High-Achieving Women MUST Have

A few months ago, I went over to one of my friends’ houses to just sit with her.

It was kinda last minute, which was unusual for me because my plans with friends are usually scheduled at least a week in advance. She was going through a hard time, so I offered to come over for an hour or so just to check on her and be there for her.

I showed up in my Lululemon Define jacket, flare leggings, sneakers, and a Nike hat. No gift. No bottle of wine. No food. Just me.

She welcomed me into her “messy” home that she profusely apologized for, even though, all things considered, it really wasn’t that bad. We sat at her kitchen counter and talked for a few hours.

Two accomplished high achievers and eldest daughters who had both been humbled by seasons of life we couldn’t control no matter how hard we tried. (And believe me, we tried!) Life had reminded us of how fragile it is and how the control we thought we had was actually just an illusion.

And at one point during our conversation, I remember feeling my body exhale in a way I never had before. Because for the first time in my life, I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t trying to be insightful, have the answers, keep it together, or be the strong one. I was just talking to someone who understood me because she’d lived enough of a similar life to understand the weight I was carrying without me having to explain it.

I remember thinking to myself, “I need more of this.” It felt like getting something my soul had secretly longed for that I wasn’t even aware I needed until I experienced it.

Especially because, at the time, life had been beating me up, and I also had former friends texting me to tell me I wasn’t showing up enough, wasn’t doing enough, or wasn’t my old self anymore. And the truth was... I wasn’t. I felt like I was going through an identity and ego death and barely knew who I was anymore. But because I wasn’t “clocking in” and being the version of me everyone had grown accustomed to, it felt like I was being punished for it.

So even though I came over to be there for her, I realized that that check-in had been exactly what I needed too. A moment to be open about the things I was carrying to someone who understood what it was like to carry them. Someone who didn’t dismiss my humanity by wrapping everything in a pretty bow and reminding me how strong I was. Someone who didn’t judge me for struggling because “someone like me” shouldn’t be struggling. Someone who didn’t treat my vulnerability like juicy gossip to collect before disappearing the moment I actually needed support in return.

For a few hours, I got to just exist. No expectations. No pressure to have it all together. No pretending. No fixing. No solution. Just two eldest daughters being honest about what we were dealing with.

I remember leaving her house feeling lighter than I had in months. Like I was a new person having had that experience. I kept thinking of how freeing it felt and knew I had to cultivate more of that in my friendships.

But I also had the painful awareness of what it would require to make that my new norm. Because not only would I have to do the inner work to give myself permission to be vulnerable, but I’d also have to be more intentional and STRICT (confrontational, even) about who I give access to.

I knew that once I was surrounded by the right people, I wouldn’t have to force my new standards and boundaries, and the relationships I wanted would happen organically.

Because on the flip side, I also knew what it was like to have imbalances and problems in your friendships that take a toll on you when you try to make it work with people who simply aren’t meant for the next chapter of your life.

Before we go further, I need to give this important disclaimer — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a high achiever. I love being ambitious, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. When I talk about the downsides of being a high achiever, I’m specifically referring to the performance.

The performance is the version of yourself you feel pressured to be to meet the expectations people placed on you, and build the life you’re expected to have, all at the expense of your authentic self. In relationships, this looks like constantly managing how you’re perceived, hiding your struggles, and prioritizing being impressive, dependable, or easy to love over allowing yourself to just be who you actually are.

I believe being a high achiever is a calling. When you think about all of the experiences you’ve had that instilled that level of grit, resilience, and ambition in you, you realize that it was a vital part of your story that made you who you are. Sadly, though, most times, it stems from a lot of trauma and emotional pain. But when that pain is properly alchemized into a resolve to win, you become unstoppable. Losing or failing doesn’t even feel like it’s in your nature. When you have a goal, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before you achieve it. And the heights you can soar to feel limitless when you’re determined enough.

But if we’re being honest, some of those very experiences that birthed your ambition also created wounds that lead to imbalances in your relationships.

Your drive and resilience become an expectation that overshadows your humanity, causing people to expect that level of output from you 24/7 with no room for hiccups. Your competence, which likely formed from a lack of support, made you appear like the friend who “has it all together.” And with that perception came the expectation that you’d be the problem solver, crisis manager, or therapist for everyone else.

And your “emotional resilience,” which is really just an aversion to vulnerability because you never had the space, safety, or even time to process your feelings while you were in survival mode, has made you “the strong friend.” The one people don’t have to worry about because you’ll figure it out on your own.

The one who secretly wishes someone would notice the weight you’ve been carrying and help you with it. Because truth be told, you can’t bring yourself to ask for help when that has always been a source of pain and disappointment for you for so long.

So you quietly carry the burden of your competence and perform as you’re expected to, and no one notices. And those who do notice often remain complicit, either because it benefits them when you overextend yourself or because acknowledging it would require them to show up for you in ways they aren’t willing to.

In addition to these roles that we subconsciously carry, I’ve also noticed several other negative patterns in our friendships, including but not limited to jealousy, secret competition, humbling, and various forms of manipulation that can arise from our people-pleasing and fawning tendencies.

Fawning is a stress response where you prioritize keeping others happy, comfortable, or pleased with you in order to avoid conflict, rejection, or disappointment. In relationships, this can look like constantly accommodating others, suppressing your own needs, taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, and abandoning your own boundaries to maintain peace.

But I’ve also noticed where we tend to fall short as well:

• Filtering our vulnerability by limiting access to the most tender and imperfect parts of ourselves, especially when we’re in a tough season, and things aren’t going the way we (or others) would expect them to for us.

• Overextending ourselves, fawning, and rushing to be someone’s savior because we subconsciously believe we need to be “useful” to be loved… then resenting people when they don’t reciprocate.

• Struggling to build and enforce healthy boundaries by over-empathizing with people and explaining away their shortcomings because we “understand” what caused them.

• Giving people the benefit of the doubt, then feeling deeply resentful when they don’t extend us the same grace. And the truth is, that frustration often comes from knowing we gave TOO DAMN MUCH of ourselves and TOO MUCH grace to the point where our own self-respect could be questioned.

In Part 4 of the Unravelling Series, I talked about the sobering realizations I had around how my high-achiever conditioning impacted my friendships and ultimately led to the end of some of them. I also shared how I realized I had been placed on a pedestal by many people in my life, where my humanity was replaced with the expectation that I would always be who they needed me to be.

In hindsight, it was as if a veil was being lifted from my eyes last year and I was finally seeing how the performance was affecting every area of my life. It was as if its time had expired, and everything (and everyone) connected to it had to fall.

So after learning about all of these things following the end of those friendships, I did the inner work to heal the parts of me that were attracting unhealthy friendships and tolerating unsavory behavior within them. I realized that if I actually wanted things to change going forward, now that life had cleared out the friendships that weren’t aligned, I had to first change myself.

I had to address the parts of me that accepted those things and insisted on shrinking myself at my expense to preserve relationships that needed to fall apart.

Once I did that, I created this new manifesto, if you will, for my friendships moving forward. That’s how I got to that point in my friend’s kitchen, finally experiencing the kind of connection my soul had secretly been craving all this time. And it’s the same standard I use to build friendships now.

Paid members get full access to the rest of the article. Upgrade to unlock Part 2:

• The 9 non-negotiable friendship standards every high-achieving woman needs if you're ever going to build friendships that don't leave you feeling like being alone is easier than opening up, like you're always giving more than you're getting, or like you're constantly dealing with secret competition, jealousy, and passive-aggressive behavior.

• The non-negotiable boundaries that protect you from fawning, overextending yourself, and becoming everyone's therapist, crisis manager, or emotional support human, so your relationships stop costing you more than they give you.

• The Friendship Audit — 9 questions that will put every friendship in your life to the test and help you figure out who's genuinely in your corner, who's benefiting from the version of you that over-gives, and which friendships probably won't survive your next chapter as you do the inner work to stop performing.

⚠️ Fair warning: Part 2 is going to hold up a painful mirror, not just to your friendships, but to you. It'll force you to confront what you've been tolerating, excusing, and explaining away for far too long. And if I'm being honest, some of your friendships probably won't do very well in the audit. You likely already know which ones I'm talking about. You’re just probably not ready to admit it yet.

Either way, once you get through Part 2, you won’t be able to look at some of your friendships the same way again.