It just so happens that I have introduced so many of my friends to one another that they have long ago formed various sub-groups and so forth. Even if sometimes people forget how they met a certain person, I frequently recall that I was a part of it, and it makes me very, very happy. Isn’t that what brings us joy in life - connecting with each other?

I am so lucky to have a friendship for 53 years . We worked together the year I immigrated to the USA. We feel that there was a mistake, she should have been my sister. Instead she was born a tiny Jewish person in Brooklyn and I ,tall towering over her Flemish Catholic. We talk at least once a week. We have lived in different countries and states over these past decades but we always had close contact. There is nothing she does not know about me and vice versa. We just love each other. Each one of us have other friends but this friendship is carved in stone forever.

I believe that any form of marking boundaries, ergo, being “territorial” about friendship is a potentially dangerous and toxic form of manipulation and co-dependence. Firstly, it stifles any possibility of laisse-faire growth in a relationship and translates into a form of insecurity that wearies the other. In fact, I believe that any time I set expectations of another, especially family members, should they not be fullfilled according to “my plan”, I can become resentful. Today my preference is to let relationships and, for that matter, life in general, take due course, thereby avioiding the Sisyphusian curse of pushing a rock up a mountain in perpetuity.

I’m not territorial, at all. Let’s party.

I was territorial about my friends as a child, but not anymore-guess I grew up. My friends have friends and I have friends and sometimes we know each other and sometimes we don’t and that seems perfectly healthy to me.

I’m curious as to whether the people who voted “no” read the CNN article before answering. The case presented led me to vote “sometimes” as I feel that if my friend married my ex, I would have been devastated, too. I do feel, as with others, that I have created a network of friends in my life with no territorial feelings.

I voted no and didn’t read the article and probably won’t read it :) I’m not territorial at all. I consider myself a networker. I have a large network of friends and aquaintances from all walks of life. The women I consider my best friends are all very different people who have all kinds of friends from lives that are filled with hobbies, jobs and interests I don’t necessarily share. My very best friend and I don’t even live in the same town. She has lots of friends I don’t know well and I have lots of friends she doesn’t know well. Although we talk about them all the time with each other…

In adult relationships, there is no territory. It is unconditional, period. I have 3 Best Friends. Been friends with Linda 42 yrs., Lil 27yrs., Abbe-30 yrs. There is no pretense, no manipulation, and we accept each other just as we are, we know and have suffered through all the stuff of the past, and present for that matter. We do not engulf or stifle, everybody has their lives, their other friends their kids. I have immense gratitude for them and they have for me, and that is how it has worked for so long. As far as the CNN article goes, these folks need to grow up and get a life already. They sound like a bunch of 8 yr. olds.

It has been my experience that narcissist are very territorial. That strong sense of entitlement lends itself to their belief that someone “belongs” to them.I strongly disapprove of that mindset and have had to explain to a narcissist that I have autonomy. I don’t subscribe to the term “poaching” because if a loyal friendship can’t survive more friends then it wasn’t a strong friendship to begin with.