Identifying Toxic Friendships

 Wisdom Nugget: "Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go"
Why? First because they will make your life miserable & secondly because very soon you will start behaving like them because "evil communications corrupt good manners."

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"A friendship is between two peers," says Florence Isaacs, author of Toxic Friends/True Friends. "There has to be balance in a friendship for it to be healthy; not one person whose needs get met and another whose needs are overlooked."

Friendships permeate our lives, having an impact on our careers, marriages, families, children, health, and even our retirement. "Friendships are important everywhere, and they have positive things to contribute to all areas of your life," says Isaacs. "But that means they can also be toxic in any of these areas as well. A toxic friendship is unsupportive, draining, unrewarding, stifling, unsatisfying, and often unequal. "Toxic friends stress you out, use you, are unreliable, are overly demanding, and don't give anything back,"

You cross the line from helping a friend in need to helping a friend who is always needy when that friend is constantly mean and abusive.

Below are some signs to identify a toxic friendship.
(1) They always have to be the facilitator when friends get together/interact as a group. If they find out you and another friend have been talking or hanging out, they get angry.
(2) They have to be the first to know everything - and tell everything. God forbid you should tell another friend something first because she happened to call you first!
(3) They have rules to your friendship. When your friend tells you that if she stops being friends with someone, you can't be friends with them either, there's a problem.
(4) They always want to make sure no one looks like a better friend than them.
(5) They are negative about everything! The can always offer up a "but" or reasons why not. If you run a new idea or good news past them, they rain all over your parade. They are critical of everything: from your personal style to your life decisions.
Everything is a constant game of one-upmanship. A little healthy competition between friends is good but if your friend is constantly bragging or "putting on airs" and has to always beat you or be better than you - even to the point of making things up - they've crossed the line of healthy.
(6) You find yourself always spilling your guts to them but their personal life is "Fort Knox". This is a power play. They have all the dirt on you and you're left vulnerable.
(7) They talk bad about all of your mutual friends behind their backs and tell all of their personal business. More than likely, they're doing the same thing to you.
They manipulate people and situations. They lie, they cheat, and they always try to get over. As you watch them scheme and connive, it doesn't occur to you that you've been on the receiving end of this many times- but trust me, you have.
(8) The communication is one-sided (you always call, email, text) and you only hear from them when they want or need something. They always expect you to consider their feelings and think of them first and foremost but they definitely don't do the same.
(9) They replicate behaviors, attributes or other fragments of other people (introjection*). For example, whenever you tell a friend of yours about a new restaurant or great happy hour you tried, she would tell her other friend that SHE went to the restaurant or happy hour. The friend lived in another state so how would she know? Instead of actually going out and getting her own interesting life, she just replicated yours.
(10) They deny their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, and then ascribe them to others (projection*). Have you ever heard your friend describe the negative traits of another person and the whole time you're marvelling at the irony because your friend does the very things she's complaining about?

(To be continued)