Not all “friends” are friends

I spent my whole life hearing the adults around me say things like “not everyone is going to have your best interests at heart,” and never taking them seriously. Of course, I knew there were bad people out there, people who had bad intentions and were not to be trusted - but I naively assumed that these kinds of people were nowhere near me, and that if they did come my way I would know in an instant that they were bad news.

I thought that it would be easy to spot the snakes in the grass, to weed out those who had less than my best interests at heart, those with ulterior motives who did not care about the people they might hurt in pursuit of their own selfish ends. But it wasn’t easy. I hadn’t considered the fact that people were very much capable of saying one thing, but meaning another. That people were capable of acting like they were a friend, when they were in fact anything but.

I had a “friend” who was not really my friend, at least not in the true sense of the word. But for most of our friendship, I had no idea that what had been going on, that the way she had been treating me, was not the way that friends treat each other. I couldn’t see that all of the “random” incidents were not just accidental, completely-unrelated moments of hurtful behavior, but rather a repeated and very much intentional pattern that painted a pretty bleak picture. A picture that I was not ready to actually see and deal with.

In hindsight the red flags were glaringly obvious, but it’s crazy what your conscious mind will choose to ignore or excuse when it does not want to face an inevitably painful truth.

I had a really hard time admitting to myself that this person, this person that I considered to be my best friend, would ever intentionally do something to hurt me. I made excuses for everything she did. I told myself that I was the problem for feeling hurt, that because she didn’t mean to, I was being dramatic or overly sensitive by taking it personally. I told myself that it was accidental when she cut me down when she spoke, that she didn’t mean to lace every sentence with subtle barbs and punctuate them with not-so-subtle sneers. That she didn’t mean to make me feel bad about myself and my interests and the person I wanted to become, the life I someday hoped to have. That that was just how she was. Of course she couldn’t be doing it intentionally - she was my best friend. Excuse after excuse after excuse.

I was stuck in a tough cycle of letting her hurt me, justifying why she didn’t mean it & then telling myself I was overreacting. And I didn’t even realize how much I was perpetuating her awful treatment of me until someone else pointed it out.

I started going to therapy, for reasons that did not actually include this friendship, and it was my therapist who finally pointed out how much this relationship was a problem. Every week, without fail, I would go to therapy and spend the majority of our sessions talking about this friendship. And I didn’t even notice how much of our time I was eating away talking about her and our friendship until my therapist said something. She pointed out the excuses that I would make for my “friend” and the ways I tried to justify the way she treated me. She pointed out the ways in which I was involuntarily invalidating my feelings because I had learned they could not be trusted, and that even when they could be trusted, they did not matter. She helped me learn how to set boundaries and how to stand up for myself in big and small ways. She helped me see that while I was in a bad place mentally due to factors outside of this, this friendship was not only making things worse, but it was also opening an opportunity to take advantage of me while I was at my weakest - something a real friend would never do, but something my “friend” did with no hesitation.

And while all of this was devastating to hear, it was also a huge relief to know that I wasn’t being crazy or sensitive or overdramatic. That the things that had been going on, like I had been starting to suspect, were not okay.

I felt really and truly seen for the first time in what felt like forever, and I wept on the couch in her little office knowing that the facts I had been trying so hard to ignore were no longer deniable. I couldn’t un-know the truth, not when it looked like my own teary eyed face, desperately begging me to do something about it.

So I did something about it. It started small - saying no to things that I didn’t want to do, speaking up instead of uncomfortably laughing when she did or said something hurtful. I thought that if I started slow and small, she would adjust. That our friendship would get better, because even when I knew she was the one in the wrong, I blamed myself for allowing it to go on. I figured that if I slowly started setting boundaries and asking her to treat me like an actual autonomous human being with my own life and wants and needs, that she would see that the way that she had been treating me like a sidekick to her life was unfair and change her behavior accordingly.

What I did not expect, but what I should have seen coming, was the ways in which things got much, much worse the minute I started trying to be better. The more I said no, the more I set boundaries and asked for basic human decency and respect, the worse her behavior got. The tone she took when she spoke to me, the things that she said and implied, the way that eventually she stopped coming around almost altogether, and only spoke to me or showed up if and when she wanted something from me.

The moment I stopped letting her control me, the moment I starting asking her to treat me like an independent person with wants and needs that were just as important as what she wanted from me, was the same moment that she was no longer interested in being my friend.

She was not interested in treating me like an equal. She had liked being my “friend” because she felt superior to me, because she knew that I trusted her and would never stand up to her, because she knew that she could control and manipulate and condescend to me without worrying that I would fight back. That’s why when I did start to fight back, even just a little, what little was left of the friendship facade faded away, revealing the true nature of our relationship - utilitarian. She was no longer getting what she wanted from me, so she no longer had use for our friendship.

And one of the hardest parts was that I believed so wholeheartedly in her goodness, believed so completely that she would react positively when I asked her to treat me better, that it was shocking when she didn’t. I really believed that deep down she did want the best for me, and that she just didn’t know any better. But she did know better. She knew better the whole time and did it anyway because she knew she could. And I had never known a heartache quite like the devastating realization that my “best friend,” the one person on the planet I should be able to unequivocally trust, did not actually care about me.

I tried talking to her, tried telling her everything that had been bothering me and begging her to treat me better, to just give me something. But she did what she had always done- she said one thing, and then did another. She faked apologies and used gaslighting to minimize everything she had done to me. She told me that it was my fault for “letting her treat me like that,” even though she “knew it wasn’t okay.” And she told me she would change and be better, only to go back to doing the same things the very next day.

I realized at that point that her words meant nothing, but her actions were screaming at me loud and clear, and I could no longer ignore what they were telling me. This “friendship” had to be over - I could not spend another day allowing her to abuse me or our relationship.

I wish so badly that I had stood up for myself long before her behavior crossed the line from generally toxic into abuse. But when both she and I focused our combined efforts on convincing me that I was the crazy one, it took validation from external sources and a lot of soul searching for me to see and admit how truly bad things had become.

It has been years, and there are still days where I feel uncomfortable calling it what it was - an abusive friendship. For a long time, even after the fact, I was still trying to make excuses for her, trying to tell myself that “real” abusive relationships are romantic, and this was just something that hadn’t worked out. But it was much more than that, and I am done minimizing what happened to make myself or her or other people feel more comfortable with it.

Getting through this friendship breakup, not to mention the dissolution of the entire life I had created, was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And even though it was hard, I am so grateful to have found my voice and stood up for myself, grateful I was brave enough to leave it all behind, grateful to have given myself the time and space to process the things that happened to me and grateful to be able to use the lessons I learned to (hopefully) help other people avoid my same mistakes.

I know that realizing ‘everyone is not your friend’ is a hard lesson to learn no matter what, but I also know it doesn’t have to be this hard. You don’t have to wait for someone else to validate what you’re going through. You don’t have to keep telling yourself it’s “not that bad",” because bad at all is bad enough. And you certainly don’t have to wait for it to get so bad that it takes therapy and years of processing to trust yourself and your judgment again.

I wish I had had someone who warned me about what to look for, warned me not to ignore the gut feeling I had that something was very wrong. I wish I had had someone tell me that the reality of being in an abusive friendship is that often, you don’t even realize you’re in one. That’s why I decided to write about it - to hopefully give the people like me out there, who make a million excuses for why the people who should care about them treat them like they don’t, a warning of some kind.

And while you may not relate just yet, (or ever if you’re lucky), I’ve compiled a list of some warning signs to watch for if you’re starting to get concerned your “friend” is not quite the friend they say they are.

Your “friend” may not actually be a friend if…

• They aren’t supportive. When you talk about your hopes and dreams and aspirations they laugh or tear you down. They make you feel like you can’t achieve these things, or that the things you want are not worth achieving to begin with. They try to make you feel dumb or stupid or immature because you have a different vision for your life than they do for theirs, and/or because you are interested in different places and people and things.

• They can’t be happy for you.  When something good happens to you or in your life, it’s almost a personal attack to them and their life. Your happiness is treated like a threat to their own, even if it has nothing to do with them. They make you feel like you don’t deserve any and all of the good things that come your way, that the hard work you put in to get there doesn’t matter because in their mind whatever it was was “handed to you anyway.” Instead of congratulating you, they belittle your accomplishments and take every opportunity to assert the superiority of their own life.

• They make everything about themselves. When you tell them good news or bad news or something important that’s going on in your life, they can only think or talk about how it will affect them and their life, even when it has nothing to do with them. The priority is always how things going on in your life affect them, rather than the other way around. You might feel anxious telling them things because you know you’ll have to manage their reaction and/or that you’ll end up apologizing for doing what’s best for you if it doesn’t benefit them.

• They expect a lot from you without giving anything in return. When they want or need something they expect you to be at their beck and call, but they never reciprocate when the roles are reversed. They place unfair demands on you, like expecting you to cook for and clean up after them, or expecting you to constantly take care of their pet(s), or expecting you to compromise your work and schedule to accommodate what they want from you, all while also refusing to acknowledge the true enormity of what they’re asking for and not giving you so much as a ‘thank you.’

• They make you feel like nothing you do is good enough. When they ask you or expect you to do things for them, instead of appreciating the fact that you went out of your way to do something you didn’t have to do just to help them, they’ll give you a list of all the ways that you did it wrong. Instead of thanking you for going above and beyond the call of duty, they might belittle you and argue that you could and should have done more, even though what you did was already more than what was necessary in the first place. They might try to make you feel guilty for not doing more, making it easier for them to ask (demand) more from you the next go-around.

• They get upset or angry when you try to set boundaries. When you don’t do the things they want or expect you to do, and/or when you won’t give them what they want from you, they get visibly angry and upset. They might question your judgment or maturity level, and try to downplay the importance of the boundary you’re trying to set. They likely resent you for standing up to them, and will try to make you feel bad about saying no or restricting their access to you, because it means they can longer control you. 

• They intentionally put you down or make you feel bad, especially in front of others. When you look or feel good, they might subtly or not-so-subtly attempt to make you feel bad about yourself to make themselves feel better. They’ll make snide comments about whatever they can - about your clothes, about your body, about the fact that you’re sweating or your face is getting red or you have a zit, and they’ll often use feigned concern as an excuse for their thinly veiled insults. They might intentionally make “jokes” about things they know you’re insecure about to establish dominance, especially in a social setting.

• They gaslight you when you try to talk about it. When you try to talk about their behavior, they tell you or imply that you’re crazy. They make you feel like you’re being over-sensitive or immature, and they minimize everything they said or did, even though you know that’s not the reality of what went on. Even if you have evidence of their wrongdoings, they will likely admit to being only partially responsible, and shift the blame to you for “letting them treat you like that.” You may find yourself feeling confused and apologizing to them for bringing it up, instead of getting the apology you deserve for their bad behavior.

• They make you question if the friendship is healthy. When your mind raises concerns about a friendship, or questions whether or not things that have been said and done should have been said and done, odds are it’s time to re-examine the relationship. It may not be time to jump ship just yet, but any doubts or concerns about a friendship means that there is a conversation worth having.

It’s worth mentioning that this list is not a comprehensive guideline to abusive or unhealthy friendships. It’s a good list of some warning signs to watch out for, but it doesn’t cover everything, and everyone’s experiences are unique. Whether you relate to some or all or none of these examples, you are the only person who knows the realities of your friendship. You are the only person who will know if something feels off, and it’s important that you be mindful of those feelings.

Your best bet is to listen to your intuition, trust your own judgment, and of course, remember that you do not have to settle for people who treat you like shit - you are more than deserving of the healthy, loving and supportive friendships you really want. And when you know you deserve better and act like it, better always seems to find you.