Say goodbye to false friendships. Out of all the relationships I have been in, these friendships are the most frustrating, unfulfilling and wasteful.
Last semester I had a teacher in a science class tell me the more names something has, the more important it is. Following that line of reasoning, friendships are significant and valuable to us. We use many names to describe our relationships-from the early years of signing notes “BFF” to referring to our pals generically as household pets.
However, we also have names for people who shouldn’t get a listing in our buddy book. Of course, my most hated were the “cool” friends. Hopefully, most of us let go of them when we graduated high school.
These so-called friends leave you feeling unsure if they accept you, and instill a fear in you of saying something the rest of them won’t agree with. People like this are not worth your time; in fact, I think of them as a cunning form of an enemy rather than a friend.
These people usually get you doing things you normally wouldn’t do. They are the main source of peer pressure that plagues more young people than any other risk.
To avoid making more of these friends, you must be brutally honest with yourself. It’s never easy to think people don’t like you, but it’s much better than believing a lie about others and yourself that hurts you more.
Another offshoot of these pseudo-friendships is the “needy” friend. Watching these people in action is both fascinating and nauseating. These people cannot eat, sleep or go to the bathroom without their other half.
Forget being attached at the hip. These people have every functional part of their bodies in sync with the other, and if anyone dares to upset their physical harmony, they will promptly be put back in their place.
Another term for this type of person is the control freak. They want to have absolute power over their friends. They are selfish by nature and can’t possibly care about others as real friends should. Avoiding this relationship requires you to know that people who are concerned about who you are to them-rather than who you really are-can potentially destroy your self-esteem and your identity.
Another reason we’d be better off without these false friendships is their lackadaisical attitude toward your true needs and feelings and their readiness to label you a jerk if you don’t meet their expectations. We are most likely to make this error in clubs, groups or with coworkers.
While we have the potential to make close friends in these settings, these groups are also factories for producing artificial relationships: we are not around each other because of pure desire, only necessity in order to achieve a group goal.
Although we may feel strong connections with people, we may be fooled into thinking that we can be ourselves without being judged or rejected. I think this happens more to women than men partly because of the difference in our personalities. Women are the masters of putting on fronts, always wanting to appear polite and cordial but gossip and loathe in discretion. This habit adds to the confusion and makes it harder to locate our true friends.
However, honesty with oneself comes into play again. Realize that people who are ready to talk about you before they talk to you do not truly care for you. This realization will save you from turning your life into re-runs of betrayal, lies and miscommunication.
Our more casual friendships should not try to serve the purpose of our intimate ones. The freedom to be our complete selves, indulging in all our oddities and occasionally annoying antics, is a privilege only made possible through true friendships.