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Growing Up

A Guide to Trying to Spot Toxic Friendships

By Letitia-leighPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Most people, at least once in their life, have gone through a period of time where for some reason they have been affected socially. If you haven’t, let me tell you, you are the anomaly, you are the 1 percent. For the rest of us, things that happen with our friends can affect every other aspect of our lives. Sometimes this is not anyone’s fault, or it is equally both parties fault. However you want to look at it, some friendships are toxic. Sometimes it is because both people have different sets of values, and because your values are different, it's hard to understand one another, especially when one party is upset with the other. Sometimes, the person(s) is just nasty. Today I’ll to try and outline the signs of a toxic friendship; the first sign is that:

They don't care.

Some people who may make you feel particularly uncared for and have a bad approach to understanding you (and in my opinion are the worst form of toxic friends) are the people who not only show that they don’t care through actions, but are also rude when you approach them about being upset. For example, you and your friend may have a different set of values, but the bottom line is: if you approach a friend with a genuinely upsetting situation, they should be there to support you, or at least try to show some support. If they don’t, and that makes you uncomfortable, then you are allowed to feel upset about it.

The relationship is 99 percent your effort.

When you try to make plans with them, they seem generally disinterested and rude. Some people it seems like regardless of any effort you make, it's never quite enough. Sometimes it seems like the most effort in the world consists of them just showing up. Now this is not a reflection of you, or what kind of a person you are, but these friends often need extra care from their friends. It’s ok if you feel like this person does suit your needs, simply because you don't feel like they care about seeing you, so why should you care about seeing them, and if being friends with this person make you feel uncared for, then it’s perfectly rational for you to confront the issue and explain how you feel. If this fails then by all means decide that this person is an unhealthy addition to your life, and that it is possibly best for you to not make as much effort as you have previously.

Things just happen.

Sometimes, things just happen that get in the way of you being friends and no matter how hard you both try to explain your points of view, and no matter how hard you both try to understand each other’s point of view, both parties keep getting hurt and upset. These friendships are in ways the worst, because they aren’t being malicious, they just genuinely didn’t consider that what they were doing would upset you.

They manipulate you.

Most people would try to deem themselves a nice person, and most are. But every once in a while you will encounter a friend that regardless of what you do, you are wrong. They undermine you as they may have a different skill set to you and sometimes they are just rude. When asking you for a favour, they pressure you into doing it for them, and then portray the situation as them doing you a favour instead. These kinds of friends often shrink you and your confidence to the size of a pea and it often takes other people observing the friendship and the situation for you to notice that it isn’t just you noticing how you are being treated.

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