The 5 Worst Friends To Have
I was friends with all of them. These are their stories (dun dun).
This is the year I cut my friends off. Not all of them, just 5. That sounds like a lot, but these were relationships I’ve hung on to way longer than I should have.
I’ve never cut a friend off before. Drifted apart, yes. But never just definitively decided to cease pursuing a relationship with a friend and then acted on it. I’m soft and sensitive, and while that can be a strength in some respects, it has not served me well in relationships, romantically or platonically. I hang onto everyone and everything in the fervent hope and belief that they will grow and become better people. But they rarely do, and all waiting around has done for me is leave me feeling sad and isolated.
In writing this post, I immediately recognized that I was dealing with five distinct and well-known archetypes of “bad friends”. That’s the joy of writing. You can organize and articulate what’s wrong instead of just walking around wondering why you’re sad.
The Jealous Friend
My jealous friend is someone I have known for coming up on a decade. We have been through a lot together and have never once had a fight. Not because we’re amazing at navigating conflict, but because I felt that this was a relationship that wouldn't survive an argument.
I love this person dearly. However, they are ruled by crippling insecurity. It has held them back from pursuing their dreams in many ways. And that’s its own tragedy because this is someone who I think would have found great success if they had the courage to pursue their dreams.
But they don’t go after what they want. They stay comfortable, judging everyone else for going after what they want. Years ago, I walked in on them whispering to someone else about me. I didn't catch a lot, but I knew it wasn’t good. And they immediately walked off when she saw me- no apology, shame, nothing.
I put up with her for years because she was fun and we shared many interests. But this year, I didn’t hear from her for my birthday. This was a friend who always reached out on special occasions, and I did the same for her. I could have even understood if it was a day or two later and they reached out to apologize and say they missed it. But that didn’t happen either. They have reached out since, just without acknowledgment that I recently celebrated a birthday.
I was willing to overlook their shortcomings, but I draw the line at apathy toward me and the friendship.
The Insecure Friend
I met this friend in law school. We bonded over being older than most of our cohorts and what I believed at the time were shared beliefs about social justice.
Towards the end of law school, cracks began to form. This friend was heavily involved on campus and, as a result, was well liked in the school community and earned accolades. Some people can tolerate good things happening to them; this friend couldn’t. She let that shit get to her head.
She had a “believe women” sticker but then hung out with an alleged rapist at our school and posted photos with him to social media. She advocated for harm reduction but wouldn’t omit an ounce of sympathy when I went to her to say that it seemed a mutual acquaintance was going through a hard time with her mental health.
Her ego grew, and now she’s too big for her breeches. Like, you know how it’s a courtesy and a sign of respect to call professors by their title and last name? This friend would call every professor by their first name. Some profs did allow that, but the courtesy and custom is to wait for them to say you can do that. She did it as a default. She felt she had some kind of a right to.
Another more recent instance was even more flagrant. Where I live, lawyers must wear a prescribed uniform. A part of that is black pants and a skirt. Not hard to do, by the way - a lot of pants and skirts are black. Well, she showed up in the full outfit, with a black-and-white polka-dot skirt, and then posted it to Instagram, saying that several judges were divided about her skirt. This is the practice of law: a rule-heavy profession centered on following rules (regulations/laws). But instead of following the rules (and an extremely simple and easy one at that), she chose to thumb her nose at them and then publicly revel in the fact that sitting judges found her outfit inappropriate.
The final straw was a few weeks ago. I was going through a brutal time but had a wedding to go to. I truly made a Herculean effort to try to get there, but it just was not meant to be. When I reached out to my friend to tell her, she didn’t ask if I was okay or what was going on. Instead, she sent a lengthy message about how, in her opinion, skipping a wedding was bad form. That’s the snide comment a hater says under their breath. But this bitch had gotten so big for her breeches that she was fine to put that in a message and send it to a “friend”. To this day, I still have no idea what prompted her to say that.
I have peace about it though because I can feel in my soul that she shared a screenshot of that message with a bunch of our mutual friends and did not get the support she wanted. She sucks, but we had a solid friend group of emotionally intelligent women, and I know they hit her with a “Well, actually…” when she came knocking for validation.
When I’m done with someone, I just move on. But inevitably her ego will be her downfall. I’m interested to know how it will play out - I’ve always loved an epilogue.
The Male-Centred Friend
I grew up with Sex and the City. I was a latchkey kid, so to me, Carrie Bradshaw is a babysitter first and a writer second. I have had a pretty liberal view about women who date and have sex multiple men - at the same time or in shifts, whatever. It’s not for me, mostly because I just can’t manage a calendar like that, but kudos to the girls who can.
But there is a big difference between women who love men and women who prioritize men. I thought this friend was the former but, as time went on, I began to realize it was the latter. She started dating married men. She would continue to date while other men were under the impression that there was exclusivity. It was hard to make plans because she was always out with a man.
It became clear that this was someone who had some kind of addiction to male attention to the point where it was never enough. She would date six men at a time and would always have room for one more. This compulsive need to be surrounded by men and male attention became too much. I haven’t cut her off, though, just withdrawn. A part of me thinks it’s a reaction to a bad breakup. I admit I went through a little bit of the same myself after my breakup, but I caught it relatively early and then took a total break from dating and men. And I never dated a married man.
The Ex
I wrote a whole breakup series that documented my relationship with my ex and why we didn’t work out.
My ex was someone I genuinely had a wonderful friendship with. We broke up as a couple because his family was racist, but we continued to stay friends. We did it successfully for months, but then issues in the relationship, plus new things, crashed that plane too.
One was that he got a new girlfriend. Of course, as an ex-girlfriend, I had hard feelings about that. But then watching how he talked about his new girlfriend was a catalyst in pushing through the breakup pain - he was kind of terrible. One of the first things he told me about her, unprompted, was that she was short. This man loved tall women; he made that known even during our relationship. I knew exactly what he meant when he said she was short.
The second thing is that he would not read her book (she’s a published author). When I suggested he read at least one of her books, he laughed and said she didn’t care. I told him there was no way that was true, then had to really push him before he finally agreed to read the book. Also, they’ve been dating for 6/7 months now, yet I was still an active part of his life until last week. And it was me who cut it off.
A breakup is hard regardless of who you are. For someone as tender-hearted as I am, it’s been brutal. I knew I needed to cut this person off, but I so badly wanted to keep the friendship and find a way to keep him in my life. This is a person I love and care about deeply, and cutting him out of my life has been extremely difficult. But it’s also extremely necessary.
My ex had a hard life in many respects but never acknowledged and dealt with it. Even when I pointed out how his refusal to stand up for himself was actively harming him and his happiness, he just couldn’t deal with it. But his inability to look up and see how his behavior affected others was the last straw. He was also doing things that I told him made me upset, but he continued anyway. When I asked him why, all he could say was that he “genuinely didn't know”.
Boy, bye.
The Guy Who Was in Love With Me (Then Tried to Rape Me)
The summer after my second year of law school, I was working at a legal clinic. There was another guy who worked there, an alumna of the same law school I was going to. We became fast friends and spent a lot of time together. We grew close, but he grew closer to me than I was to him.
It became apparent that this guy was in love with me. I was still dating my ex at the time, so I began distancing myself. He didn't like that, so the few times we saw each other around campus were always weird and tense.
My ex and I broke up in September. At the end of the following December, I decided to go to Chicago. I stayed in a suburb 30 minutes north of the city. After I posted a photo from my trip on Instagram, my friend reached out to say that New Year’s Eve in Chicago sounded fun. I didn’t respond. And then he just showed up in Chicago.
I felt kind of isolated and alone at the time, so against my better judgment, my friend invited me out for drinks and I said yes. He himself had a long-time friend who lived in the city; a lawyer with no kids and a spacious apartment with a guest bedroom. We picked a spot and a time to meet.
As the time approached, I realized the drive was way longer than expected. I figured it would be 30 minutes, but the map showed 45+. I asked my friend if we could meet at a bar further north in Chicago to spare myself some driving. He reluctantly agreed, and we shifted venues. We had dinner; it was fine. Then we were on a walk around the city when he said something about how I was “constantly moving the goalpost”.
“What the heck does that mean?” I asked. He just stood there, stammering for something to say. Then he let me know that he was upset about the venue change. At first blush, I thought he was just being a baby and an asshole who didn’t want to drive. I drove 30 minutes, but it’s the end of the world for you to drive 15? Later, he revealed that he had gotten a hotel that night. Weird, because he had been staying with his friend, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
It was on the drive home that I realized why he had been so angry. It wasn’t just that the venue was changed. It was that it was 15 minutes away from the hotel he had gotten in hopes of having sex with me after a night of drinking. If you’re relying on intoxication to get you laid, yeah, those 15 minutes would piss you off. Oh, and also, that’s fucking rape.
I didn’t even tell him what I realized he had tried to do. I simply removed and blocked him from my social media and never responded to any other messages he sent me.
Anyway, as you can see, people that I should not, and shan’t, be keeping around.