When Friendship Becomes Unhealthy

As we all know, humans are social creatures. We socialize, interact, and help each other in daily life. At certain times in life, we will find ourselves in a new environment, meeting new people, and trying to connect. However, we cannot deny that in life, the people whom we thought were good for us, turn out to be not. 

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Neither so my past self. I had never thought that I would be stuck in a toxic friendship, nor expected that the unhealthy bond would have a big impact on my life. It started as a promising friendship, I thought I had found myself a new friend. As time goes on, it gradually becomes unhealthy. The friend seemed supportive, encouraging, and celebrating, but then they suddenly became competitive out of nowhere. When this friend tries to compliment me, I can sense and tell, considering all the context and what we know about each other, that their words carry a different meaning. It is a backhanded compliment. Not only that, sometimes it is outright sarcasm. This friend talks in a passive-aggressive way. Over time, facing these comments left me feeling devalued.

There are many little things that made me think, “Oop, okay, that was weird…” then I brushed it off, but as it continued, I started to feel uncomfortable and uneasy. One day, I noticed that this friend was keeping an eye on me, looking at me all over. Imagine a person besides you secretly giving you a side eye, looking all over up and down. When I turned my head, curious and felt like someone was looking, this friend immediately looked away, as if they never turned their head or even moved their eyes an inch. I also noticed that this friend tries to mimic how I talk, how I make jokes, how I take my notes, and other things that are too many for me to tell here.

They mostly only come to me in hardship, but never really give the other way. I gave a lot until it felt like I was the only one giving and working on this friendship. I felt sad. The thought of “Why? Why is this friend like this?” kept appearing in my head. I tried to put myself in this friend’s shoes, even reflecting on myself, “Maybe I’m too sensitive, isn’t that what friends do? To help their friends?” I had the thought to communicate this, telling them how I feel, but considering the situation, their attitude and demeanor, it is hard. I felt every time I told something personal to this friend, they would use it to twist it when they needed to. There are a lot of risks that I’m afraid to face. It’s complicated at the time.

But I have had enough of it. I have to look for other solutions to free myself, at least so I can keep my distance and keep my sanity, because of how complicated it is, it is driving me nuts. So, I tried to keep my distance from this friend slowly. First, I tried to change my seatmate and seat far enough from them so that they couldn’t take advantage of me. Then, I learned to not keep saying yes. At first, it was hard and I felt guilty for saying no. However, in short, I could socialize with more people. It was so refreshing to meet new people after all of that happened. I learned a lot about friendship when hanging out with these new people. After hanging out with them, I realized that this friendship kind of keeps me isolated. We still had some short talks and interaction after that. I tried not to spend my time too much around this friend, because after interacting with them, I always felt exhausted.  

Long story short, we all went our separate ways to pursue college. I’m still in contact with my other friends, but I have stopped talking to this one friend. This experience has made me rethink and change the way I set boundaries in my daily life. I think we both have our own mistakes. I do not admit that I’m completely innocent. Because I really believe that no one can make you do what you don’t want to. To be honest, looking back right now, I regret not being brave enough to set boundaries earlier. All of that time, at that young age, could be used to enjoy and explore lots of things, instead of letting negative things fill your life. As of now, I’m still learning what a healthy friendship looks like while trying to maintain my boundaries and know where to draw the line early. Making this past mistake also taught me to be more careful about oversharing my life with others. After all, even with good intentions, not everyone can be trusted. Wouldn’t want to have one again though. But life happens, we can learn from our past mistakes and handle it better in the future. (Dika)