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This is the accidentally intentional podcast. I'm your host, Joe. I hate small talk, and I'm ready to have meaningful conversations that build us. Let's go. Welcome back to another accidentally intentional podcast episode. And hopefully you listened to the last one because this is actually part two to give a little bit of a recap. So you know what happened. Last time on the podcast, we talked about the concept of help. I feel like my friendships are growing apart. What do I do? And in that episode, I discuss what I think could be one of the main contributors to that situation, and how to identify it at first. And so after recording that episode, someone DM to me and said, Okay, awesome. I understand what the main issue is, I've identified it being the problem in my friendship. Now what? So this is a part two to explain. Okay, now that you've identified the main issue, where do I go from here, a big part of last week's episode had to do with the concept of energy vampires, which I also discuss, and elaborate on. So be sure to check that episode out if you have not yet and then meet us back here. And before I go any further in today's episode, I want to once again address that there is a nuance here. And that this is not a one size fits all fix, or cookie cutter solution to a problem. Of course, there is context that is necessary. But I want to share with you steps that have helped me that you can at least incorporate into the situation that you may find yourself in. So we talked about energy vampires last week, how to identify them, and how to actually self identify if you are one. And I was looking online to find what people were talking about out there. And a lot of them had to do with toxic friendships, which I don't really want to label it as such, at least for today. But it said how to end a friendship, basically, is where all these articles were going. There seem to be no wiggle room for how to work through the situation you find yourself in in a current friendship, if you in fact, do not want the friendship to end. So what I'm going to partner with you in today, in this episode, is figuring out how to discover if this is a friendship that you want to keep alive, that you want to put a pause on, or these questions may help you identify whether this is ultimately a friendship that you want to put a close on to and is not serving you currently. And also I want to share that these are the conversations I want to be having. Because we don't talk about friendships enough and the importance of them. And I feel like if they often do get talked about, it's usually just venting instead of how can I make a friendship better. And so I really want to be that person that can walk alongside you in this. And so because of that, I actually am going to start coaching calls, although I have very limited availability at the moment. But please DM me on Instagram at XO Asher, if you're interested in learning more about that, and what that would look like, etc. Because I want to help you not just in a broad sweeping overview in the way that I'm able to do with the podcast but, but really partner with you individually, and help figure out how we can make friendships thrive in your life. Okay, so back to this DM I got last week from one of my friends. messages me says listen to the episode, it was great. It really helped me understand a lot of things that I had never thought about before. I've identified that I have an energy vampire in my life. What do I do? And the very first question I asked was, well, what is the goal of your friendship? And she was surprised by that? Because she said, You know, I've never been asked that question before. And I'm not surprised to hear that because most of us haven't. Most of us don't think of creating goals. For our friendships. We only think of romantic, relational goals. But I think it's equally important that we're coming up with goals and motivations that drive our friendships. And here's why. Because if your goal is, well, I just want companionship, then that's great for a time, but anything can take your aim off course. So if you're able to articulate upfront what your actual aim is specifically in a friendship and having those goals, then you're going to be more aligned and be able to run together in that with your friends. And then once you can articulate those goals, you can realistically discern and determine what you want in those friendships. So if the goal is I want to feel supported in all my endeavors, then what you want is someone to tangibly and visibly show their support to you, right? I'm going to use this support example, later on, I'm going to come back, I'm going to come back to the support example in a couple of minutes. Okay? So we want to figure out what the friendship goal is, and then figure out what the actions look like to make that happen. If you have determined I have an energy vampire in my life, then a conversation needs to happen about what things are going to look like, moving forward. And I think in this conversation, it's safe to assume a couple things. Last week, we talked about assuming the best intentions of the other person. And I think coming into this conversation with a potential energy vampire in your life, it is also good to assume that they may not know what they're doing, and the harm, it's causing you. Because if we assume they don't know, then we're going to be more understanding and take a more teaching approach to them. Another important caveat to this, we have to come into this conversation with one a posture of curiosity, is to try and figure out what is actually going on here. And also, we have to come in with a posture of humility, recognizing I may be doing a lot of things wrong myself in this friendship, that I honestly wasn't aware of those elements are going to give you a really strong foundation to ultimately have a conversation to determine do I want this friendship to continue? What can it look like moving forward? If so? Or is there some dissonance in which this friendship is no longer serving either of us in the ways that we want anymore? So I said, it's important to have a posture of curiosity, right? And you can absolutely blame this podcast episode, as the reason that you want to have this conversation with somebody. So I want you to write a couple things down. These are the questions that you want to ask this potential energy vampire in your life, especially if you're trying to figure out what do I want to do with this friendship? Do I want it to continue sucking the life out of me as is? Or can I have the courage to figure out how we can reframe it, how we can regroup and become better friends for each other moving forward? Or is it time to close it? And here are some questions that I would have in this conversation? After you blame the podcast and being the reason that it's made you think about things. One of the first questions you can ask is, what are your goals for our friendship? Or have you ever thought about it? And you could say, I haven't even thought about it before until I listened to this episode. But it's really made me rethink what I want friendships to be about. And I would love to hear what that is for you as well. Now, you may very well catch them off guard with that question. As we talked about earlier, most people don't think about what their friendship goals are. And that's okay, give them time, and then come back to it. When you listen to what their friendship goal is, then I think a great second question would be the following. What are your expectations of me as a friend? And how am I meeting those? And what are some ways I'm not meeting those? Now, ultimately, this is a question you're asking if you really don't want this friendship to end. And you really want to remain in this person's life because you care about them. And you care about what their needs are. And their expectations are as well. And ultimately, by asking this question, first, this is going to open up the floor for you to communicate what your expectations are. So it is important that you know what those realistic expectations are going to be and what you have for your friendships. Okay, so one, ask what their friendship goals are to ask them what their unmet expectations are, but also hear about ways that you are meeting those expectations. And then three, have the courage to share what those expectations are for you. Within this conversation, you should pretty easily be able to figure out what the future of this friendship will look like. And I also want to shout out Dr. Andrea Mata as we had a brief conversation last week, and she helped me refine it and articulate what should be said in these conversations. So shout out to you Dr. Dre for caring about everybody's relationships. So I said that I was gonna come back to the support example, in a couple minutes. And that time is now and just last week, a conversation was had with me about how they didn't feel supported by me. And that was crushing to hear. And it's crushing to hear because How did I miss that? Right? Because I love and care about this person deeply. So what was going on here? And you know, what was great about this conversation is they actually asked me and truly cared. It wasn't like, do you even care? They genuinely asked, Do you want to support me? To which I said absolutely, yes. And they were so graceful. Hold on how they went about it. And they said, Thank you, because I don't actually feel supported right now. And here are some ways in which that can look like. And I would feel supported. And I was so grateful that they had the courage to tell me that. And it showed how much they cared about me, as well. And so I am such a firm believer in everything should be communicated. And a lot of this comes down to unmet expectations on either side. But most oftentimes, we aren't communicating what our expectations are. So then we're getting upset, then we're getting frustrated, we're getting angry, we're getting all the negative emotions towards someone who literally had no idea what you were expecting from them to begin with, and vice versa. So this is an important conversation to have. And I also want to give this hyper specific example to help you as well, because oftentimes, when the term energy vampire is used, people say, Oh, my gosh, it feels like someone is sucking the life out of me. And I was listening last week to research that has actually been done that has to do with body language cues, and how it legitimately drains your body, when you start giving cues of like, Oh, hi, oh, are you when you really feel like you are exerting extra energy, and almost putting on a mask putting on a facade, because you feel so drained, even in that person's presence. So this actually impacts your body, not just your mind, which I think is a very important thing for us to know. So whenever you wake up and you feel exhausted, or drained or smothered or anything by a certain person, there's something that's physiologically going on in your body. And so many years ago, I was an absolute energy vampire, to someone. And it started off with the best of intention, but the friendship ended up getting pretty unhealthy. And it was unhealthy because of me, and coming on the other side of it. And through a lot of counseling and therapy, I found out that I had a proclivity to becoming codependent in certain relationships that I found myself in in life, I'm definitely not going to advise you be like, Oh, someone's codependent. That's why we should not put labels on them. I'm telling you that I genuinely was. And so I knew what to do moving forward coming out of that, and what boundaries I needed to set to ensure that I never became that way again. And the reason that it stung so hard is prior to learning that I was codependent a conversation was had with me, and this friend, and this friend had the courage to share what they felt by how I was treating them. And ultimately, it came down to this, I got a text from this person that said, I just want to let you know that I know that you really care about me, that has never been a question in my mind. And in fact, in our friendship, I feel really smothered. And I know that at the end of the day, you don't want that to be the case for either of us. And they were right. It certainly didn't, that's an awful thing to hear that you're doing to another person is making them feel smothered, and the text closed with. As a result, I'm going to create some space between us in our communication. But I also want you to know, that doesn't mean I'm cutting you off, because you're much too important to me, for me to do that. But I think that healthy space will enable both of us to create better rhythms of independence, so that we can both show up as the healthiest versions of ourselves in our friendship. Now, getting this text is never fun. And of course, I felt a ton of emotions when I received it first. And honestly, the primary emotion was embarrassment of how did I do this to somebody, and what an awful feeling. But the second emotion I felt was while they really do care about me, because it's clear in a message like that, that they really took the time. And they went to seek out counsel on how to best articulate this to me in order to protect my heart and preserve our friendship. And let me tell you that all these years later, we are still friends. And we still communicate and are in touch with one another. So this actually did preserve the friendship. And I share this specific example because this is something that was done really well in my life. And I was on the receiving end of it. And so I also want to encourage you that if you are fighting for someone's heart, there is a right way that it can be done and a way that it is actually received. It might not be received well in the immediate moment. But there is hope. And I just want to encourage you with that that there is a way that it can be done. If you feel like someone is currently sucking the life out of you. But you believe that there is more and you believe that the friendship is worth having in preserving long term. Now on the other side of that If you get into a conversation with someone where you ask those two questions, right of what are your friendship goals? What are ways that I'm not meeting your expectations or meeting your expectations, and then you share your expectations moving forward, and you are not connecting whatsoever in someone's saying something like, I expect you to always be there for me, I want you to respond to my text immediately, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum bum bum. Like, I don't know what it is, right? But if it is just, if it is just an amount of expectation where the person doesn't want you to be a friend, they want you to be everything to them, then it's time to self reflect, say, Okay, thank you, I want to think about that, come back to it and determine whether I actually can meet those expectations for you. Because I think it's important, I think your expectations are important. And if I can't meet those for you, then that needs to be discussed, because we're both not the greatest choice of friends for each other. If that's the case, something like that. Now, again, I know that I'm speaking very broadly to certain and specific topics. But my hope is that you can take a little bit of everything that I discussed, to figure out your own way of communicating this, but at the end of the day, I just want to hit on it one more time. The most important thing, when going into this conversation with somebody is to assume the best of intentions, assume that they may have no idea what they're doing and how it's impacting you. And that you also have no idea how what you're doing is impacting them. And also take that posture of curiosity and really wanting to figure out what is actually going on, not a posture of blame, not a posture of I need you to hear what I'm saying right now, because this is what you're doing to me. Ultimately, you want to be able to have that conversation in a very tactful, peace filled way. And by being curious, that's going to ease you into that without it being pointed fingers, direct escalation, etc. So of course, my hope is always that this episode has provided immense value to you. And along with that, I also want to hear from you. So please DM me at XO, Asher, or at accidentally intentional on Instagram and share with me how this episode has impacted you personally, what you intend to do with it, what you may have done with it as a result of listening. I want to walk alongside you with this because relationships are worth fighting for period. And as you know, I believe that building relational wealth and being rich and friendships rich in relationships that are meaningful and life giving is the most important currency of the future. Guys, I love you so much. We will chat next time on The accidentally intentional podcast. Was there someone that came to mind as you were listening to this episode? Because if so, please share it with them. We're so passionate about this message. And we want to give value to the people that would benefit from it. We drop a new episode every other Thursday, so be sure to subscribe to get the latest conversations. Oh, and one more thing. If you enjoy this episode and this podcast, I would be so honored. If you would leave a review. It helps us to better connect with the intended audience of this podcast by doing so. And I truly am so grateful for any amount of time that you choose to spend with me because trust me, I know how many options are out there and I do not take it for granted. Seriously, I just wow I just really appreciate you and take I may not know your name yet, but let's change that connect with me on Instagram at XO Asher, or on Twitter at combos with xo. But hey, even if I don't know your name yet, what I do know for certain is that you're amazing. I love you. You have something that the world needs and you are always more than enough. So hey, we'll see you next time on The accidentally intentional podcast.