3 Signs of an Insalubrious Friendship

In this article, I am going to share what I learned throughout my life with some bad friends I made and with some situations, I had the opportunity to witness. Everybody will at least once experience a relationship that may drain you, even without realising it. When you perceive it, at the end of the day, at least you learned a pattern of bad demeanour towards you. These are things I wish I knew when I was younger, and I wish they would be helpful, especially if you are a teenager or young adult. But I must add that this content is not going to victimise yourself. I will be utterly frank and realistic.

You are not good enough

Have you ever shared your tastes with that cool friend, and they demonstrated subtle signs of non-approbation? And then you felt the necessity of hiding what you genuinely like? Or have you ever started forcing yourself to like something or acting in a specific way, just because you wanted to be agreeable to someone? This is actually a natural phenomenon; you might have experienced it to some degree. It sometimes occurs unconsciously.

People who cause this effect are not friends because deep down, they do not like you; they like the persona you created to please them. In the long term, it gets unhealthy and moulds you. Valuable people will not judge your nature; they will like you the way you are. It may sound cliché, but it is realistic. Moulding yourself in order to fit an expected persona shows a lack of self-respect, which is an essential feature that must be developed to find valuable people to be around. Do not hide what you genuinely like, and be coherent with your true self; that is liberty.

The flatterer, the hidden foe

This one is the most interesting, and they will affect you depending on how proud you are. Everybody has some degree of pride. The flatterer is that very pleasant person to be around because they know exactly what to say to get you contented. I could classify these friend into two types: The Genuine and the Manipulative. The first type is not intentionally bad-intentioned, and I will detail them more in the next paragraph.

The Genuine is accurately depicted by Jane Austen through the character Harriet Smith, from the book Emma. Harriet is a kind-hearted, humble and naive girl, but not too intelligent. She became Emma Woodhouse’s friend, the main character, who presents many attractive characteristics. Being “handsome, clever and rich”, quoting what the author said. Emma had unconsciously chosen Harriet as her friend because she was disposed to glorify every one of Emma’s actions. Emma, being so proud, loved being around Harriet, but their friendship was vapid, being based just in the flatteries, which were such a pleasure for Emma. This flattering stimulus, masked Emma’s flaws, making her think about herself even more highly, deifying her character, and consequently leading her to caprices and even hurting people. This friendship was unwholesome for both because Harriet believed she had to do Emma’s will. The point is, being a friend of a Genuine Flatterer ends up in ruin. They are never going to be that person who points out your errors, which is necessary sometimes in order to help you deal with your flaws. They will just massage your ego. And the truth is, if you have a friend like this, you do not love them; you love the image they projected of you. Just like Emma did not love Harriet. Being a friend of a Flatterer shows much more that you are being more defective than the person themselves. And additionally, stopping hanging around with a person like this is better for both.

The Manipulative friend, on the other hand, is utterly and intentionally bad-intentioned. I could even say that having a “friend” like this, there is the possibility of hanging out with a psychopath. This person will always know exactly what to say to get you happy. Initially, they will be endearing, enchanting you. Then gradually this type will manage to manipulate you to reach their purpose, without any scruples. Sometimes people like this pop up in someone’s life so suddenly that one can do nothing about it. The only thing to be done is to have a guard up towards such flatterers.

You are just a listener

Yes, being a listener is actually something good; it is actually an art I will not detail right now. But the point is, there are some people who seem not to care about you; they are authentic and the worst type of chatterer, who will either just talk about themselves or about trivialities incessantly. This type will never be disposed to truly like you; you are just going to have unmeaningful conversations. This type of friend differs in one point strikingly in comparison with the others mentioned: these people are evidently disagreeable. You see that the other types are considerably easy to be trapped with once they might seem harmless at first. So you may be wondering: why is this type of bad friend valuable to mention once they can be plainly detected? The thing is, you might be a person like this without even perceiving it. You can spot this trait in others fairly easily, but maybe not as easily when it is you.

In conclusion of this article, I hope I managed to provide profitable content. As I said at this debut, it would not be something to induce the victimisation of the reader. My purpose was not only to enable people to spot potential bad friends but also to make the people question whether they are a good friend as well. Every type of person is going to read this, and everybody presents flaws. I hope I proposed good reflections.