In this Week’s Musings, I take a closer look at what I call the “cemetery” of my platonic relationships—those friendships that didn’t make it. I ask myself, “Could I have handled that better?” And by that, I don’t necessarily mean the friendship itself (that we’ll get more into in the following weeks), but the breakup of that friendship. Putting to one side whether you have a legitimate reason to break up with your longtime friend (I have no judgment on that), I do think there’s a “right and wrong way” to handle a breakup. What I think can be frustrating or even confusing is the notion that so much of what I would consider to be “wrong” behavior is now characterized as “boundary setting.” People can get away with just about anything these days by calling their actions as “healthy boundary setting” or “protecting my mental health.” But what happens when the boundary setting or other protective measures cause damage to the other person’s mental health? Are we not supposed to think abou...