Toxic Friendships: Six Types of Friends to Avoid
Did you know that the people in your circle influence the decisions you make? Taking time to inspect your environment and how it is feeding you is crucial, and your relationships form a large part of your environment. In this episode I share, some of my experiences with friendships that have had a limiting effect on me. The stories are true but the names are fictitious. You may find some of these rates in a relative, co-worker or even yourself- as I did. Toxic Friend #1 Passive-Aggressive Porsha My first Porsha was in secondary school. The day the friendship came to an end was when she borrowed my shoes and refused to give them back. I demanded that they are returned and she threw them at me in anger. In all fairness, we were only 12 or 13 so you can just imagine these little people squabbling 🙂 I was made to feel guilty for requesting that which was rightfully mine. Emotional manipulation is one of the traits of the passive-aggressive friend. The second Porsha had a habit of putting me down in public, and she would do so with a joke. She would wrap an insult neatly inside a joke so that everyone else saw the joke and laughed, but I felt the sting of the insult. So it wasn’t obvious to anyone that she was hurting my feelings. I was in my thirties and we had been friends for a long time. Toks you need to be more gracious. I told myself. More accepting. More mature. The friendships that had been modelled for me, were simply beautiful. My mum has always had strong, kindhearted and admirable women as friends and I was only ever exposed to healthy friendships. The loyalty and love between them filled the space they were in. I have never heard my mum get into a verbal exchange with her friends. Her friends were my aunties and I felt safe with them. So when Porsha number two started her antics- usually in front of a crowd of mutual friends, I thought I simply needed maturing. But life and its challenges can have a clarifying effect on our mind. The day my mind cleared up was the day I ended the friendship. I had been through my storm and was making my way out when I thought, I have enough attack coming from situations I have no control over, and you, I can control. So no more. I wrote a poem and posted it on my blog- I used to write a blog back then called Pawpaw and Mango which was a puree of crazy funny life as a mum and hopeful entrepreneur. So long dear friend. Its been a long ride but the bus stops here.It’s the toxic fumes of constant sarcasm. The poisonous gases of derision and ridicule.Then there’s the pungent smell left after a jibe meant to embarrass.I hope I didn’t bore you during our ride. I hope I was a blessing and in some way positively impacted your life.I hope when we do meet again time would have bred respect in place of familiarity.I hope when we meet again we can still be friends. That part about familiarity was one that stood out. I believe she was taking me for granted and had no respect for me because she knew me too much- and not because I had secrets that I didn’t want to be revealed, but it was because if you have insecurities and you get close to your target, you notice the ordinariness of them and your goal becomes to tear them down so you stop feeling less. People like Porsha carry a sense of insecurity and they use others as a step stool to lift themselves higher. In other words, they have a mindset that tells them they are inferior to others, so they try to level the playing field by bringing others down so they can feel superior. It would be years later before I met a third Porsha. This one, I didn’t see coming. I would go as far as saying she concealed that aspect of her character until I got comfy enough to let my guard down. Smart girl, but soon the jibes started. It looked eerily familiar and this time, I wasn’t here for that so I ended the friendship. I did some research into this particular type of toxic friendship and came across an interesting article by Professor Preston Ni. One of the traits he named was Disguised Verbal Hostility. Sounds very much like my second and third Porsha. Here’s a real example- “wow Toks, your hair looks nice today, what’s going on?” Or, “Are you okay? You look stressed.” One day I got a phone call- she’d seen me in town but we missed each other. It was a wonderful day. I was having a good one. And her conversation was; “I just saw you, you looked worried. What’s the matter?” I was actually happy. But those words caused me to feel so uncomfortable. Another trait that Prof. Ni mentions is victimhood. This surprised me because I wouldn’t have named that a passive-aggressive trait. Once, I spent two hours listening to her woes. I was frustrated because she rejected any suggestions to think or see things differently. All my encouragement didn’t help. She didn’t even let me get a word in. She was incredibly draining and I felt she had vomited over me. I still dodge when I see her in my local Tesco. In line with my father’s belief that people are basically good, I believe there are people who can be really good friends with these women, and even help them overcome their insecurities, but I wasn’t the one. So I never dismiss people who are toxic to me, I don’t see them as hopeless, or bad, I just let them go so that the persons meant to connect with them can find them. Toxic Friend #2 Opinionated Olivia Since friendships are made up of two
