Multisitez
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
People have different types of friends according to the different communities they live in. 2021 was a year with different highlighted incidents related to pandemics and politics. I’ve seen a lot of relationship breakups everywhere. There were different articles titled “I ended a friendship because … ”. As I went through them, I found that there are different reasons for them.
So I started thinking about what I have missed in my own broken relationships? What could have been the reasons for an entire system to crumble for me? What were the red flags I might’ve missed? As I did my research, here’s a collection of 5 types of friends that are secretly sabotaging you.
The Serial Texter
These types of friends send texts at all hours, weekends, holidays, vacations, etc. There are no limits to when this friend fires a message. Even though we have the ability to silence our phones, still our brains don’t know the difference between real-life and virtual reality. You will feel like they’ll get upset if you don’t text them and you will text them. They will keep texting and texting on and on.
If you have a friend like this, he clearly doesn’t have respect for you and your time.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
The Drainer
This type of friend always changes plans, and always has a negative attitude. They usually complain about everything. Drainer friends will steer the conversation over their lives and talk over the top of you. They can even make you feel as if you are walking on eggshells around them. Every friend should offer support and understanding, but dinner is a one-way street.
The Tone-Deaf Friend
Every person has a different emotional capacity. Good friends should match yours. If they don’t match your emotional capacity of yours, you find yourself with a tone-deaf friend. Tone-dead friends will always leave you hurt and resentful. With a friend like this, you will be the one who always does the emotional work.
The Gossiper
This is the type of friend that has negative things to say about everything and everyone. This is a result of their poor self-image and insecurities. The worst of this type of friend is that we celebrate it in our society. Cute memes featuring teacups and popcorn emojis in the comments and on social media. You’ll never know if they are willing to tear you as well as tear others.
Image Credit – Quora.com
The One-Upper
We all have competitive friends. The one-upper is a competitive friend that somehow finds a way to make the entire relationship a twisted game. They have difficulties regulating their emotions and keeping a cap on their insecurities, in turn, they will try to compete with you. They will always try to make you feel inferior. Not only that they are also incapable of hearing about your life or of celebrating any of your accomplishments.
Why does it matter?
You may wonder why it is important to identify these kinds of toxic friends in your life. The main reason is that you will also pick habits and bad behaviors from the company you keep. It is because social circles are a reflection of who we are. They reflect what we will, what we won’t tolerate, and how we are willing to be treated.
The only way we can evaluate this is to evaluate our social circle. Even though it is not common, I strongly believe it’s important to take stock of relationships every now and again. Most of us run checkups on everything else in our lives, why not our friendships too?
