Sometimes friendships can leave you confused--you're not sure how loyal, supportive, and genuine your best friend is. If you have a feeling that your friendship isn't working as it should, it may be time to identify the person's intentions and goals and whether this friendship is worth keeping.
Step
Part 1 of 2: Looking for Unkind Traits
Step 1. Watch for opportunists
This person likes to take advantage of you because you have assets such as a car, apartment or private house, lots of money, or a vacation villa. Or, he uses you to get close to your best friend, lover, or relative. People like this will hitch a ride to eat at your house and even use your cleaning tools. However, when you confront him, he will get angry. He has no respect for you and your belongings.
- You may notice when his habit of borrowing things starts to become a problem. He will owe you and not pay his debt. He will borrow your clothes and belongings and will not return them. Or, when he returned it, it was already damaged. He will even let other people use/wear your belongings.
- He will also ask for your help but never pay his debts.
Step 2. Beware of selfish people
This kind of person has a mantra: “I am the most important”. He will always talk about himself. Besides, he won't care about you; he will not be interested in how you feel, how you feel, etc. You may also notice that he likes to brag about himself, the things he owns, his girlfriend, his wedding, or his vacations. He will always find a way to make himself look better than you.
People like this always seem to have their own opinion on everything. Opinion is a person's thoughts and ideas about something. In other words, opinion is an assessment, assumption, or evaluation of something. The selfish person has no theory of mind, cannot “feel what other people feel”, and believes that he sees what others see (or what he sees more than what others see). Apparently, this is more common among younger children. They cannot separate their own beliefs, thoughts, and ideas from those of others
Step 3. Stay away from self-pity
This kind of person always comes to you when you have a problem and asks for advice, and tells you about the difficulties he is having (sometimes he will tell you too much). But when you need advice or want to share your heart, he won't listen. So it wouldn't be fair if you don't mind spending more than 2 hours trying to calm him down – but he only gives you 5 minutes. You're not a therapist, and don't let him pour his grief on you.
This person will continue to feel angry at you when the two of you fight. This is because he only accepts his point of view
Step 4. Keep yourself away from spoiled friends
People like this do not want to "share" their friends with others. When he sees you with someone else, he will feel jealous because he only wants you for him. Plus, this trait has a weird hierarchy that will leave you when someone else is around – for example, this person probably won't take you to a movie when you're with their boyfriend because he or she is the center of life in their world. Even if the person spends a lot of time with their boyfriend, when he is busy, he will want you all the time. Of course this is a sign that this person can't stand being alone and to him you are just a caregiver. Surely this person will stay away from you if he already has a lover.
Step 5. Avoid fake people
This person will smile in your presence, but around other people, he will harass you by constantly humiliating you with his words. He can also do other things such as addicted to drugs but deny it. He may promise to call you back, but he never does. He always keeps you waiting and makes up excuses why he doesn't call you.
Step 6. Avoid arrogant people
This person never recognizes your ethnicity/culture. This type of friend will perceive you as someone else and will feel that it is normal to insult your culture using derogatory slang in your presence, even though they know you will be offended.
Step 7. Get rid of people who like to spy
No one wants to have friends dig up information about you. As far as you know, this "friend" may be asked by someone else to find out about you. This friend may use spying techniques because he or she is jealous, or wants to get back at you. Another reason may be that they want to approach your friends and acquaintances. He's not really interested in you, so try to get rid of this friend as soon as you find out that this person is very "toxic".
- You may notice that this person always wants to know everything. For example, you may be talking to another friend of yours about a secret and he or she is not in the room directly but pretends to walk across the room to find out what you are talking about. Well, that may not mean anything: don't be paranoid. This person may be your “close friend”, but a spy can do much more than that. Most of the time, he'll make great efforts to eavesdrop on conversations, secretly read your e-mails, and borrow phones and read texts between you and other people.
- Spies usually lie. He may fake your name, age, etc.
- Be careful with extreme curiosity. He will soon blackmail or oppress you.
- If you feel intimidated or threatened by this person, tell the authorities or a parent you trust.
Step 8. Leave friends who ignore you
This type of “friend” really makes your temper flare up. When you are out with him and your other friends, he is always talking to you and starting to socialize with your friends. However, when you are out with him and his friends, he completely ignores you and “forgets” to introduce you to his friends. Whenever you try to chat, he will ignore it and continue chatting with his friend. This is a sign of insecurity disguised as coolness; this trait is very unwholesome and undesirable.
Step 9. Be wary of meddlers
This person takes advantage of you and your ideas/intellectual assets, interferes with your social/professional relationships, takes over the conversations you are having with others, seeks to network and make friends with everyone you know, and uses what you have to be on par with you and not do it on your own. These “friends” seek promotions or have been promoted by taking advantage of other, more talented employees, manipulating bosses, making themselves look good by taking advantage of you, and often using your ideas and thoughts that they know of. You may get tired of trying to avoid this intrusive nature so that you can keep your friends and acquaintances undisturbed by him. He may have low self-esteem and have a hard time making friends so he'll let you do everything, then try to reap the fruits of your hard work.
If you say “I'm going to compliment [someone's] shoes”, he'll get ahead of you and act like he's thinking about it himself. If you say, “I think [someone] would be a good match for the job posting I just saw,” he will find that person and suggest that he apply for the job. If you work with someone like this, he or she will get all the credit for your ideas and let the boss know your latest and greatest by saying, “I think…” after you've said how you came to that conclusion. If you go to school with him, he will meet the teachers or professors and tell him all the great ideas you tell him and act as if he had the ideas. This person is very insecure and needs you to show them how; he feels entitled to share in all your relationships
Step 10. Avoid the “queen bee”
This kind of person really wants to dominate. He will not accept you if you have a different opinion from him. On the other hand, he will accept you only if you think so. Some people have this trait because they feel insecure but some are just jerks who feel like they have to dominate. However, the scary thing about a “queen bee” is her tendency to take advantage of friendships and can turn all of your “friends” against you all of a sudden just to destroy you. He could be just a despicable and evil person, so stay away from people like this.
Part 2 of 2: Finding a Way Out
Step 1. Determine if the friendship is worth continuing
If your friend is one of your “bad friends” and he or she is a constant drain on your energy, patience, and money, then you shouldn't consider him one of your closest friends.
Determine if the person is even worthy of being an acquaintance. This will depend on the context-if you have to work with this person or meet them at a family gathering, moving away slowly may be the best option. On the other hand, if this person has no formal ties to your life, it's best to sever all ties you have with him or her
Step 2. Don't keep contacting him
If you're always the one to call a friend and you're sick of not getting a good response, stop contacting them. If this person is really your friend, he'll call you if he realizes he hasn't heard from you in a while, and really, it only takes us a few minutes to text, email, or call someone. If he doesn't, you may want to be wiser in assessing the person's behavior and start spending time with friends who truly care about you.
Step 3. Tell your friend that the friendship is over when you feel it's appropriate to say so
If you can't stay away from him in secret and you refuse all his invitations to go out with him, then you have to be honest that you've cut off the friendship. The best way to do this is to face it face-to-face or over the phone and make it clear that you feel you can't continue this friendship for some reason.
- Don't blame anyone. Even if you don't want to say "it's not you, it's me," you should make it clear that you're talking about how you feel and what you think. Don't insult the person's character or blame them for how you feel.
- Remind the person of any other friends you both have if you have to.
Tips
- This article is not about staying away from friends who change over time. Allowing friendships to develop and change naturally is also very important. This flexible approach to friendship will make your friend as unique as you are, and allow you both to enjoy each other. Problems will arise when friendship is only done unilaterally and you feel you have been taken advantage of.
- Sometimes, your friend will cling to you because he doesn't have many friends or he loves you as much as his own sibling.
- If your friend turns out to be a bad person (used to really love you, but now completely ignores you), distance yourself from them. This way, you can be friends with him again if he changes for the better, or leave him if he becomes a worse person.
- Watch out for hypocrites or people who always make you do what they want. This person may think of friends as belonging, not people.
- Never feel like a loser in a friendship relationship. If you're being taken advantage of and he's acting fake when you're both around people he's trying to impress, that's a serious problem. Stay away from that person to get closer to people you can trust.
- True friends will not lie to you.
- A true friend should be by your side.
- Create boundaries. Know how you feel when you are away from that person. This step will give you time to reflect and think about whether he or she is a good friend to you.
- Look at the way your friend behaves when the two of you have a fight. If he's angry, but still wants to be friends with you, he really does love you. On the other hand, if he wants to break the friendship because you don't comply, he's not a real friend.
- A true friend will never embarrass you in front of others.
- Be prepared to have the power to end the friendship, if there is no more agreement between the two of you. The friend who bullies you is not a friend. True friends want to admit there is a problem, and work to solve the problem.
Warning
- When dealing with opportunists, remember that he'll befriend you first, then he'll take advantage of you and dump you when you're done.
- Don't make too many expectations and rules. It will only trap other people into your dimension.
