Boundaries, bitch

When you spend much of your time with the same person, things happen. You get used to the ways you act around them. You speak with the inside jokes and the expressions that you use with those people.

Then, when you're in a relationship, suddenly the person who you spend your time with is no ordinary friend. It's someone who you're hanging out with in ways that you've never done with anyone. You go closer. You go much closer. It becomes standard procedure to stand really close to that person when your cooking or washing dishes, and when you're watching TV you crawl really close again. You're allowed to touch, and you feel like doing so too, so you touch their hair and caress their hands, stuff like that, it just happens. You get used to this way of human interaction.

However! Every once in a while it so happens that you need to meet other people. Hang out with friends, uh? Then you realize, and it's painful, that you cannot go as close as you naturally would. You realize just how used you are to being close to another human being. You need to remind yourself not to go so close. Keeping hands off their hair? Super hard. And I'll tell you, I had no urge to touch my friends when I didn't have a boyfriend. It's just... the way I roll, now, I guess.

So. Boundaries, bitch. That's what I tell myself.

Who knew...