Many years ago, I stood speechless one day while a
friend barged into my house unannounced, wandered over to my china cabinet,
pulled out a crystal tumbler and wandered over to the sink to help herself to a
glass of water. She did know where the normal glasses were kept, and she knew I
only used the crystal ones for dinner parties and other special occasions. I
guess she forgot. As she filled her
glass, she told me for the hundredth time how annoying her kids were, how her high-earning husband
didn't understand her need to have a spa weekend away from the family, how they’d
made a mistake buying such a big house, how much she wanted to throw in her
part time job, how angry she was at her parents who had given up their whole
established lives and flown half way around the world in their mid seventies to
live closer to the grandchildren but who had decided to buy their own flat and
not invest in her house as she originally expected them to, and what a pain it was
to be her. Then she asked me if I would
have her kids (yet again) the following afternoon in the gap between school
ending and her being able to pick them up after work.
I wanted to remind her, nicely of course, that we were
renting a small uglyish house, my husband was establishing a new business and
cash was incredibly tight so a spa weekend for me was a pipe dream, her two
sons were healthy, happy and beautiful, I had just one useless parent (who didn’t
give a damn about me at all), I was trying to find a rare part time job myself,
I’d had her kids six times in the past fortnight over what was to have been a once
a week arrangement, and I’d really have liked to tell her what a pain it was,
right at that moment, to be me.
Did I say any of it? No. I
didn't say a word, because she knew all of that. She already knew that her life was so much
better than mine on almost every possible level. She was my friend, after
all. I suddenly felt a bit sick, so I invented a
headache and asked her politely if she wouldn't mind leaving. I knew right at that moment, while she stood there disrespecting me and my
property and my life, that she was a toxic friend.
For a long time now, there have been a lot of
resources available to help us understand what abusive domestic relationships
look and feel like, and there are, thankfully, plenty of support systems in
place to help us transcend them. But a different type of
abusive relationship that has been flying under the radar for as long as humans have been talking to one another is now emerging as a bonafide hotbed of hurt and confusion . Friendships can ALSO be portals to abuse of
various kinds, principally emotional and exploitative, and while toxicity
within these relationships has historically never enjoyed the same level of
public discussion, attitudes to what should be kept behind closed doors are
thankfully changing and it is becoming increasingly more obvious that abusive
friendships are, sadly, just as prevalent as “romantic” or domestic ones.
Until relatively recently, most of us have simply assumed
that our friendships would not be portals for abuse. Whether or not that’s because we’ve
traditionally always assumed ourselves to have invested less in them
emotionally, or whether our own levels of vulnerability have precluded us from
analysing the reality of how our friendships really function, its only since
people have started identifying the phenomenon of “toxic friendships” and
openly speaking about them, that the rest of us feel legitimate in acknowledging
that to be involved with toxic people WHATEVER the relationship, is
unacceptable. It’s a great step forward
and personally I give thanks to those pioneers in pain for their courage in
speaking out and helping, though that process, to turn this taboo subject into
a table topic.
We all know about the guys who beat their wives,
and the women who psychologically torture their partners. “Hen-pecked husbands” used to be a subject of
ridicule, but not anymore. We also know
about people who beat or starve their own kids to death, workplace bullies, and
the power-hungry’s victimization of the vulnerable. But our friendships have traditionally been
regarded as our “safe harbour”, a safety net, where the same sense of responsibility
and serious work that keeps a relationship healthy doesn't apply. Traditionally,
it has taken some form of monumental betrayal of one party to a friendship to
convince the other that a parting of the ways is warranted. But a far more insidious form of betrayal or
disloyalty can infiltrate a friendship, take root, and cause untold damage to a
person’s self esteem, prospects or opportunities and it happens and ends up
being perpetuated because the person who experiences the misery simply (but wrongly)
feels less justified or validated in terminating the friendship.
Well, newsflash, everyone: If you’re feeling
unhappy, anxious or resentful about spending time with someone in your social
circle, it doesn’t automatically mean you’re wrong, paranoid, irrational or
deluded about the true status of the friendship, even if voicing your concerns prompts
others to denigrate them as such. You
may be a little over-sensitive, but you’ll know that about yourself already,
and if that’s all it is, it’s probably time for a conversation with the person
concerned, to clear all that up. But, in
reality, if there are people in your friendship network who have a negative
impact on your mood and/or view of your own life, it’s time to take a step back,
reassess that relationship, consider the value of it to your life, and walk
away if necessary.
As true as all this is, it’s also important that we
look at our own role in a toxic friendship.
If we’re in the habit of picking bad partners, it’s a pretty safe bet
that we may also not make the best choices of who to have as friends. Many of us have been involved with the bad boys in
the hope that we could change them, and ended up heartbroken as a result. Just as many of us have picked up the lame
ducks in the hope that we could fix them, and ended up just as heartbroken as a
result. But here’s another newsflash:
in real life, the frogs are simply frogs in our garden. They don’t turn into princes, no matter how many times we
kiss them.
Consider too, the charismatic, successful, glittery
person that everybody loves and wants to spend time with – we might want to be
that person’s friend because we think that some of the success, glitter and popularity
will rub off onto us and magically transform our own lives. Since it’s the normal human condition to want
what we don’t have, the target of our affection (even as a friend) very likely possesses
qualities we wish we had ourselves. We
are naturally drawn to people we perceive as being in a position to fill our
lack. Newsflash Number Three: Such people
are often simply a glittery wrecking ball to our self development and sense of
self worth. All too often, those princes and princesses we gravitate towards because
they have the qualities we wish we had ourselves are actually narcissistic prima
donnas; wolves in sheep’s clothing, absorbing the adoration and indulging in
the exploitation of others in whatever way works best for them in shoring up whatever
they lack for themselves.
None of this is to imply, however, that a toxic friendship
is always our own fault. Nobody goes into a friendship expecting or deserving to be
treated badly, disrespected, made to feel inadequate or unworthy, or abused in
any other way. Making a mistake is one
thing. Failing to acknowledge it and
remaining miserable is quite another, and that is something we DO have to take
responsibility for. Its a common thing that people who don't "pull the pin" sometimes feel that they can't face doing it. The thought of being without that person is simply too awful. We maybe clinging to the hope that things will improve, the toxic friend will see the light, its "just a phase" that will pass. There are endless justifications for remaining in these destructive friendships, but the reality is that over time they are incredibly dangerous to both our self esteem and our view of our place in the world.
We’ve all had at least one friend in our lives who
has perpetually reminded us that they’re better, or better off, than us in some
way. We’ve listened to them banging on about
how great they are and how wonderful their lives are compared with our own, or what’s
preventing them from being happy despite their current blessings. We’ve had friends that have “teased” us in a
crowd, with an underlying lack of awareness of how hurtful that can be, or an
actual streak of menace, with either disregard being a simple lack of respect
for us as people.
We've also had the “poor me’s” whose lives are like
an endless soap-opera of the worst kind of drama, chaos and negativity, who soak up our positive
energy like sponges, leaving us dry and depleted. There’s a great story about the tree and the
vine, that I’ll share with you here.
Generally speaking there are two types of people – trees and vines. Vines will find trees, wrap themselves around
them and leach all the goodness out of them for their own survival. Then, when a tree is dead, what happens to
the vine? Does it die? Hell no!
It simply goes and finds another tree. Even some of the most successful people are vines, when it comes to their friendships. Their own needs and desires simply eclipse anyone else's - even the people they regard as friends.
These are all people who are obsessed with their
own real or perceived status: be it success, attractiveness, wealth, power, as well as ill-health, ugly appearance, lack of social interaction,
financial destitution, and various other areas of powerlessness or dysfunction.
These people are true toxins. They don’t want to know about us - not really! They just want us to empower
them to stay where they are in life. Our happiness is irrelevant to these people. In no way can we class them as friends!
If a friend is genuinely struggling with issues
that are overwhelming them, being the best friend we can to them at that time
is critically important to ourselves as well as to them. Knowing the difference between
a person who is genuinely in need of our support, and one who’s simply being manipulative
and exploitative of us in their own self absorption is critical to yanking out
a toxic weed from our lovely garden of friendships and keeping ourselves intact in the process.
When friendships matter to us we absolutely do invest in them: emotionally, financially, practically and with genuine desire to have and be a
really good friend, and the thought of losing any friendship we've invested in can be incredibly sad. But the question to ask is whether or not
being in that relationship actually makes us happy. We’ve all muttered to ourselves in the past “I’d
rather be on my own than in a horrible relationship”, when a romantic one goes
bad. Newsflash Number Four: FRIENDSHIPS
ARE NO DIFFERENT!
People who take away our joy or positive sense of
self have nothing positive to offer our lives.
Friendships that don’t enrich us are not worth having. Nobody has the right to make us feel less
worthy, less capable, less optimistic – especially not someone who’s in our
lives wearing the label “friend”.
Dealing with toxic friendships can be tricky. If the
problems have gone beyond being able to talk about what’s upsetting us, or the
energy to do so is just no longer there, it’s ok to walk away. I did that once with someone I went to university
with who used me for a long time and gave me nothing in return for my time,
money, energy or support. I lent her some
books that she knew were hard to replace, and I never got them back. I just got fed up with her in the end, and
stopped communicating. She never chased
me up, which proved how irrelevant I really was to her, once I’d fallen off her
radar of resources. Another "friend" did something really horrible to me, including attempting to play me off against
one of the loveliest friends in my garden, at a time when I was dealing with a
lot of scary stuff. Instead of offering
me support she tried to shaft me in her own self interest. I tried to communicate with her privately about
it and she responded in the most savage way imaginable. I had truly loved her, so it was a heartbreaking thing to find out what she was really like. And that I guess is one of the biggest
hazards. Sometimes toxic “friends” won’t
reveal their hand until ALL the chips are down.
We won’t see it coming, and that makes it all the more devastating when such
parasites show their true colours.
Sadly, toxic friends (whether obvious or not) are a
reality that most of us will have to deal with at some point in our lives. There are a lot of damaged people out there
who are actively seeking to have their needs met, and they won’t care who they choke,
sacrifice or step on in the process of making that happen. But we all need our
own blood for our own survival. We can’t
afford to be giving it to those who wouldn't do the same for us.
Friendship should be mutually enriching, encouraging,
uplifting, positively challenging, affirming, kind, respectful and FUN. A person
who brings none of those qualities to your garden of friendship has no place
there. It really IS better to be alone
than to be in a bad relationship that chokes your chances of finding a good one. Even if it hurts, pull the weeds out. Know that who you have in your gorgeous garden of colourful, fragrant friends are beautiful birds, butterflies and blooms who truly deserve to be there!
No comments:
Post a Comment