Toxic Friends
As the New Year and autumn roll in, let’s talk about shedding some of the baggage in our lives that drag us down. Let’s talk toxic friends. We’ve all got ‘em. We all know who they are; the ones who don’t do anything so blatant that you can actually call them on it…usually. The only real constant is that special way they have of making you feel slightly worse about yourself. You meet them for lunch or talk on the phone and when you’re done, the only thing you’re sure of is that you feel lousy. You can’t quite put your finger on it. So I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the extra sugary dose of happiness they lay on you at your lowest moment, the offhand description of some financial success when you are just scraping by, the mention of their child’s Harvard acceptance, (for the fifth time) when they know your child’s been waitlisted or outright rejected from their first choice. It’s insensitivity (theirs). And insecurity (theirs). And it’s a bigger problem than you know (yours).
You tell yourself not to be unreasonable. Or jealous. You’ve always thought you were the kind of person that feels happy for others, roots for others, and most likely you are. But the toxic friend has a way of making you doubt yourself, it’s what they do, what they’re good at it, and if you really want to know, what they need to do to feel happy. They learned the pattern long ago and no one’s ever been rude (or strong) enough to set them straight. Not that you need to either. Sometimes engaging in confrontation actually is more toxic than just avoiding it. Just remind yourself of what’s really going on and don’t feel bad. It’s like the Shakespeare line about ‘protesting too much’. You know the truth: really happy people don’t need glitzy press releases for the world and don’t need to undermine your happiness to secure their own. It’s not just that really happy people can afford to be classy and not brag. Really happy people are generous of spirit. Their self satisfaction is not threatened by your happiness. They know what your buttons are and go out of their way NOT to push them. They omit their good fortune until you are feeling better about yourself, not because they think you aren’t big enough to celebrate with them, but because they are too big to ask you to.
Good friends are like clean air and pure water. We need them to survive. The world is a tough enough place without having to decipher mixed messages and dodge emotional bullets from those who pretend to have our back. Good friends approximate the habits of really happy people. They try to help. If you need a job, they offer to network. If you need to lose weight, they offer to walk with you. If you need to bitch about your ___________ (husband, kids, life) they don’t act horrified but instead offer you some tidbit about how their (husband, kids, life) sucks too.
Faux friends are much more worried about these areas than you know. That’s why they need to put the perfect spin on and to make you feel insecure. They are under the mistaken impression that somehow you feeling bad will make them feel better, even though it never works for them, andeven though they continue to feel miserable inside. The pattern continues until one of two things happen: Either you continue to feed this dysfunctional dynamic, often for years, and you become someone you don't recognize or even like, or you see it for what it is; a negative and unhealthy relationship that you’re above, and take action
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As you can tell, I’ve had a little bit of experience with this and it’s still a raw subject for me. Is it the suburbs? The northeast? Is there a special type of unhappy and unfulfilled soul that flourishes here amidst the apple orchards and strip malls? Whatever the root, the problem is huge. We all run to the gym and buy organic and pop multi-vitamins but all of that can either be enhanced or neutralized by the subtle manipulations of our friendships. Toxic friendships can take their toll on your self-esteem, your sense of self, your sense of humor, and even your other relationships. They can teach you to mistrust and to be defensive. They infect. Sadly, sometimes you have to cut these people out of your lives. Kind of like cancer. If you’ve done the chemo and the radiation and the bad cells keep coming back, you’ve got to take extreme measures. Surgical measures. You can’t change them. You can’t divert them. Sometimes, you just have to grab your knife and run for the hills.