Types of toxic friends… and how to handle them

It is easy to dismiss toxicity in platonic relationships. But the effects can be equally distressing as in romantic settings.

THE WELL-MEANING BUT OVERBEARING FRIEND

She is condescending, patronising, controlling and passive aggressive

Shalini and Edna have been friends since high school. Today, they are both 33 and their friendship has evolved. “Edna is the type of person who takes care of everyone,” Shalini says. “When we were in university, she was the one watching that the party didn’t get out of control, the one who took charge of organising things and handing out tasks. She is extremely responsible and put together.” Shalini is the complete opposite. She refers to herself as a free-spirited and spontaneous person. “When we were younger, our relationship worked because I didn’t mind someone figuring things out for me and keeping me in check.”

But Shalini says she has ‘woken up’ to the dysfunction in that dynamic. “She questions all my life choices, down to the things I buy. She finds a reason why it’s not a good idea. For example, if I tell her about a guy I met, her reaction is almost always ‘watch out for this and that about him’, even when she hasn’t met him. Or she will smile and say, ‘don’t sleep with him!’ when what she means is to add ‘…like you always do’. I know she means well, but sometimes when I share, I don’t even want feedback. I just want to talk. Nowadays I no longer share intimate details with her because she always makes me feel like a mess or a child.”

THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE FRIEND

Your relationship is ONLY about her drama

“Maybe this speaks about both our dysfunction,” Mercy laughs. She has known Elizabeth for close to five years. “I am a listener and Elizabeth is a talker. Then I noticed every time she told me we need to hang out, I automatically went into ‘What’s wrong’? Our relationship had ended up being about her complaining about her problems and me trying to resolve them. I don’t have a problem listening to my friends’ problems. The problem with Elizabeth is that she wasn’t interested in talking about the solution. Hanging out meant ‘let’s moan about this problem over drinks’.”

With time, Mercy pulled away from the relationship because it got exhausting. “For starters it was always about her. If I happened to turn the conversation to me, she would find a way to turn it back around to herself. Secondly, it was hard for me to be around all that negative energy. Sometimes you just need to be around healthy people.”

THE ONE YOU HAVE TO CHASE

Your interaction occurs at her convenience

Having one partner being more emotionally invested than the other is a sticking point in many romantic relationships. Is this experience as frustrating in a platonic relationship? 40-year-old Nungari says it is. “In fact I think it is worse because you expect it from men. When men do it, it is your girls who are supposed to be there for support, right? If you have to move mountains to see them, then they, like the man, are just not that into you” she shrugs.

28-year-old Sherry agrees. “I have this friend. We used to hang out a lot, but only because I would make the plans. Then when I realised it, I stopped. We went for weeks without speaking. Then she called me and asked me why I have been so quiet. I told her the truth – I felt like I was making all the effort to keep the relationship going. She apologised saying she hadn’t realised how I felt. So we arranged to meet for a coffee that Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning, she calls me and says she had to do something with her family. Then we chatted on WhatsApp and she said, ‘We have to do our coffee soon!’ A week later I asked if she was available and she said she had to work. After that, every time we chat, she says the same thing: ‘We have to do our coffee soon!’ But every time I schedule it she hasn’t been available. If someone is interested in you, carving out an afternoon off their week shouldn’t be so hard. And if someone is really your friend, they don’t meet you when ‘they are available’ – they make the time.”

Sherry says that at this moment, she is not upset that her friend isn’t available to meet. “What pisses me off is the pretence, the inauthenticity in the phrase ‘Let’s do coffee soon’. That is a polite line you throw at acquaintances. Now when we chat, I keep it at surface level. I don’t have the energy to invest emotionally with someone who will not go there with me.”

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It takes two to tango: Are you to blame too?

Psychologist and human behavioural sciences specialist Dr. Arti Agarwal explains that a toxic relationship is a relationship that is not favourable to either or both parties. “The interesting thing to note is that these two people often have something they feed off each other – they are often dependent. Even though it’s not obvious, the aggrieved party might be relying on the ‘perpetrator’ for approval, support, acceptance, validation, belonging or any other similar emotional need. It is the perpetrator’s failure or inability to meet these needs, and the aggrieved party’s demands for it, that causes the problem in the relationship.”

Examining the relationship

Shalini, whose friend Edna is the archetype of the caregiver-fixer, was letting her friend have too much say over her life, meaning that she (Shalini) wasn’t getting the space she needs to make her own decision and mistakes and therefore to grow. “The classic example is parents who don’t allow their children to fly from the nest and chart their own path. Those children don’t grow. It’s false safety.”

By her own accord, Mercy’s relationship with Elizabeth led her to notice that she (Mercy) had the knack to be a literal emotional dumping ground for a number of her girlfriends. “I discovered I am an empath – we have this extreme sensitivity and ability to feel and carry other people’s emotions.” Because of their ability to immerse themselves in someone else’s experience, empaths are known to attract narcissists and vice versa. Psychology texts often term the empath-narcissist couple as one of the most toxic mixes in the spectrum of relationships.

But Dr. Agarwal underscores that not all toxic relationships are caused by two unhealthy people. Similarly, not all toxic people are aware of their toxicity. “It takes the awareness of one party to resolve the situation.”

Walk away or work on it?

“Even healthy relationships are not neat,” Dr. Agarwal says, “so it is important to distinguish between a simply problematic relationship and a toxic one. Problematic relationships are not necessarily caused by either party’s unhealthy dependence but by the lack of boundaries and communication.” In both cases however, not being able to say ‘this and that is making me uncomfortable’ mostly shows a fear of the other’s reaction – be it a fear of conflict, rejection or abandonment.

“I’ll give you an example; I had someone tell me they wanted to break up with their partner because he was insensitive. I asked her if she had told him this and she said no. She just wanted out. What she was doing however was avoiding an unpleasant conversation. It was a fear of confrontation. So I gave her a script of how she could approach him. Don’t say ‘you made feel this or that’, say ‘this is how I am feeling.’ Take responsibility for your feelings. If there’s some level of emotional maturity, the other party will listen and acknowledge your feelings. In my client’s case, she said that once she had told him how she was feeling, all he said was, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’. He became conscious. They didn’t break up.”

A case for working on it

A UCLA study on friendships among women suggests that when females are stressed, instead of responding in the usual flight or fight mode, their stress hormones actually encourage them to tend (to children for example) or to gather with other women. Tending and befriending in turn releases more oxytocin, which has a calming effect. “This was a classic ‘aha’ moment among the women scientists in the lab at UCLA,” says Dr. Laura Klein, a professor of biobehavioural health and one of the authors of the study. “We joked that when the women were stressed, they came in cleaned the lab, had coffee and bonded. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own.”

A famous Nurses’ Health study by Harvard Medical School revealed that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, were more likely to lead joyful lives and were more likely to cope better after a spouse’s death. In fact, the results were so significant that they concluded that not having close girlfriends was as detrimental to health as smoking or being overweight! “Yet every time we get busy with work or family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women,” writes Ruthellen Josselson, author of The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s friendships. “That’s a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other.”

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Saving what is worth saving

1. Speak your truth

Good relationships are not about treading with care or avoiding expressing emotions that might upset a friend. They are about saying what you need to say, not what the other person wants to hear.

2. Be civil

The other party is likely to respond with the same attitude you approach them with. Compose yourself. State why you are feeling resentful and what solution you desire. Avoid an accusatory tone as this automatically turns the other party into defense mode. One way to do this is to start your sentences with ‘I’ instead of ‘You’.

3. Own your part

Before laying blame on the other, be conscious of the role you played in exacerbating the problem. It could be that your role is simply letting the ‘injustice’ continue.

4. Watch out for your motives

Watch out that you are not trying to fix, control, dominate, convince or change them.

5. Allow the other party to have their reaction

Allow them time to speak their truth. Try as much to listen without interruption unless you need to steer that conversation back to the matter at hand. Likewise, don’t be upset by their reaction; if for example, they choose to walk away, let them.

6. Don’t compromise just to ‘end it already’

This way the issue just goes unresolved and is sure to crop up in the future, if not with them, with another of your relationships.

7. Know when to fold up

If for example their reaction gets out of hand (e.g. way off topic or violent), detach from the situation. If the relationship is still worth holding on to, go back to restrategising. Your choices might be revisiting the conversation later, limiting your interaction with them or choosing to end the relationship altogether.