What Can I Do About a Destructive Friendship?

Question: What Can I Do About a Destructive Friendship?

For many GLBT teens, friendships are what sustain them. But not all friendships are positive ones.

Answer:

What would we do without our friends? They listen to us moan about crushes, giggle over inside jokes no one else gets, and give you a much need boost when you are feeling down.

Mostly.

As we all know, friends don't always make us feel good about ourselves.

Many people have been betrayed or ditched or disappointed by a friend. But often things are not just one sided. Sometimes people are in friendships where both people hurt or betray each other pretty equally.

Sometimes this is referred to as being a "frenemy." The Guide to Friendship explains that frenemies "involve two people who are best friends most of the time but seem to dislike each other immensely the other part of the time," a dynamic that more than a few of you are probably familiar with.

As one teen writes of a frenemy situation he is involved in:

"Last year I started my first year at this international high school. I happened to become really close friends with the gossip queen of our class. I was sleeping over hers and at 4 am, she proposed that we could make a bet. Losing condition for me was that I was obligated to tell all the secrets I knew to her if she knew what to ask. I lost. She asked me a question about another friend and I gave her a short reply that indicated that there had been something between that girl and another friend of ours, but that they ended up kinda breaking up. When my friend found out about this, she was mad at me for what I had said. She said that I had ruined her reputation and that she had been trying to make people see that there had been nothing between her and that one boy. She said I couldn't have done anything worse than that. Our friendship ended there that night. It's been three or four weeks from that now, and it still has an effect on me. She thinks I've been manipulating and playing games with everyone all along. The truth is I could have put a stop to the whole thing from the beginning. I could have said that I'm not going to do it. The thing is I didn't. I kept on with the game, playing with the trust my friend had placed on my shoulders. Why? I guess I was tired of the gossip queen asking about secrets all the time. And I thought it was fun."

So why do teens end up hurting their friends and sticking around when they get hurt themselves? There are a lot of reasons. This kind of dynamic may be all someone knows of friendship and it might seem normal.

Alternately, a teen might have really low self esteem and think that they deserve to be treated poorly or low self esteem might cause them to lash out at a friend to make themselves feel better.

Some GLBT teens maintain friendships that are harmful simply because the friend is queer and they don't know any other GLBT teens. As the teen above explains, "The gossip queen and I became really good friends, even though we were like night and day. The major factor was that I'm gay and she's bi, so she had someone with whom she could share thoughts she couldn't share with others."

So how do you deal with frenemies? About's Guide to Friendship offers these tips:

• Pull back from your frenemy to see how you feel. When you're too close to a situation, you might question your emotions.
• Spend more time with people who make you happy. You don't need to over-analyze why a friend is making you feel bad. By surrounding yourself with people who are truly supportive, it may prompt you to permanently walk away from your frenemy.
• Clarify your frenemy's remarks. If the frememy mixes a compliment in with a nasty remark, stop and ask for an explanation.

And of course, some friendships just aren't worth maintaining. If a friendship is making you feel more bad than good, ending it might be the best thing for everyone.