You like them, you don’t. They are good as well as bad for you. They help you out and stress you out too. You don’t want them but feel you need them. Follow Shama Sheikh’s smart tips to get ahead of friends who you feel are your enemies too
Everyone has one of these. A frenemy. A friend you can’t get rid of, who is part of your everyday life in some way and is yet someone who gets your blood pressure to rise every time you have to deal with her. These are pals who may have your best interests at heart, or may not, but who may not be pleased for you when the chips are up, who may insinuate or try to sabotage your relationships, who may help you when you are in need but may talk meanly about you to other common friends or acquaintances when you are not around. How do you deal with such friends, if cutting off all dealing with them is impossible? How do you handle a complicated relationship with such a frenemy without losing your cool and your sense of sanity? And most importantly, how do you reset the settings on such a friendship so that it is positive and enriching for both of you and the negativity gets wiped out?
The friendly enemy
Frenemies are more common than we think they are. They are the friends you dread calling up and meeting, the people you prefer not to deal with and who always manage to get you stressed out about something they said or did. Frenemies keep making you feel you have to explain yourself to them or be on the defensive with them. While you can deal with negative comments and behaviour by folks you barely know, such comments from frenemies hurt more because they come from folks one knows well and who one considers close. Frenemies can cause more harm than good. They can be harmful to your physical and emotional health, send your blood pressure shooting high and reduce your immunity to illnesses. These are the friends who go shopping with you but always point out the negatives in whatever you try out, and worse, the flaws in your figure. Or the friends who always ditch you at the last minute. Or always dump their kids on you without asking, assuming that you’re good to babysit. Or go around telling others, things you have told them in confidentiality, twisting it around to paint an unflattering picture of you. While you may or may not be able to change the behaviour of your frenemy that bothers you, here’s what you can do to keep yourself buffered from their negativity.
Take stock of your relationship
First things first; if you have a friend who really upsets you, it would be good to consider whether you really need that person in your life. Human beings are meant to live as social creatures and having a friendless existence is not recommended. It doesn’t matter whether you have many friends or a few good friends; every human being needs friendships and social interactions in order to survive. Why does one hang on to an ambivalent friendship? The reasons can range from being used to that person’s presence in one’s life, having a long history of friendship and being there for each other, to genuinely needing the presence of the person in one’s life.
What you can do
Be the kind of friend you want: By example, deed, behaviour and word, be the kind of friend you wish the other person will be. Surely the person will get the hint and start behaving in a positive way.
Be aware of the situation that enrages you and avoid it: For instance, if your frenemy always cancels at the last minute, make sure you have some backup plan or group plan so you can proceed without her. Or if there is any topic guaranteed to get her angry or saying vicious things that have hurt you in the past, try to steer clear of them. If this happens repeatedly, point it out to her, and explain that it upsets you. If your friend really cares about your friendship she will be careful not to repeat the behaviour which so upsets you.
Analyse what it is that elicits a negative response or behaviour from your frenemy: Nasty statements that are made to sound helpful or actually putting you down can be from your friend’s own insecurity about herself. Frenemies thrive on making the other person insecure and lacking in self esteem and see themselves as offering the reinforcement. Be confident enough about yourself to know whether the criticism is deserved and valid or not relevant and born out of a need to make you feel insecure.
Address the issue straight off the bat: Don’t go via another mutual friend if you get to know that a frenemy has been speaking badly about you to another frenemy. Go directly to the frenemy and ask clearly if this is what she has been saying about you and if so, why she felt the need to do so. Don’t go via sms, email, BBM or Facebook; make it a telephonic conversation or a face to face interaction. Give your friend a chance to explain herself. If you can’t still excuse her behaviour or forgive her, end the friendship rather than hanging on to the toxicity.
Don’t be afraid to dump the friendship: There is no reason to hold on to the friendship if it is more cause for stress for you than positivity. Dump and dump immediately. Do so if you feel the relationship is beyond repair, if the negativity has seeped into every aspect of your interaction, and if being friends is way too stressful. If you don’t want to completely dump the relationship, cut down on interactions, make the relationship more casual but don’t go out of your way to interact. Slowly, the friendship can fade
away gracefully into the sunset without a big showdown.
