Before I begin this post, beloved readers, let me make this clear:
This is not a post about “Haters”.
Please erase that word and its connotations from your mind while reading this post.
I do not care for the culture that has sprung around that word.
“Frenemy” and its pop-culture connotations better fit what I am speaking to with this post.
Before I go any further, I should define what a Frenemy is for the purpose of this post and for those who may not know.
One humorous, but rather accurate definition is as follows:
“The type of “friend” whose words or actions bring you down.(whether you realize it as intentional or not) The type of friend you ought to cut off but don’t cuz…they’re nice… good …you’ve had good times with them. U know…they’re good people that you can count on to bring you down again sometime in the near future.The friend you may or may not have cornered about their quicksand like ways and keep around because “its in the past”…and so was one minute ago. The person that will continue to bring you down until you demand better for yourself.”
-urbandictionary.com
With that out of the way, let’s discuss a particular aspect of Frenemy-dom that I think is often over-looked in these sorts of posts:
How and why they are attracted to (and use!) certain folk.
This is worth noting, to aid us all in avoiding being a perfect target for them and for understanding why they may be flocking to your life. Knowing “why” they do so, can help you deal with their presence in your life. It also may be the key to eliminating them all together.
The Big “W”: WHY?
Please keep this in mind, when dealing with Frenemies:
THEY HAVE PLANS FOR YOU.
Frenemies, like con-artists, don’t waste their time on relationships that don’t give them something.
That “something” may seem worthless to you (example: negative attention), but it is of value to them, which means disrupting your peace and well-being is absolutely worth their time.
Notice something, beloved readers?
Your peace and well-being is a means to an end, in these relationships, for Frenemies.
You are a VEHICLE to obtain something that benefits THEM and them alone.
AND/OR
You also may have something they want or want to emulate. To obtain what you have (position, husband, social circle, tax-bracket, weight, features, hair, car, house, family, children, complexion, etc.) or to emulate something about you they like they must be close to you.
This is a problem.
Why? As we all know, beloved readers, Frenemies have a way of bringing a cloud of drama with them.
The kind of Drama-with-a-capital-D they usher into your life is only going to hurt you.
It is the kind of drama that is only going to serve their purposes and further their plans for you in their lives.
I want to reiterate one of the major points of this post:
It is important to know WHY you have Frenemies in your life.
There are two sides to this coin: Them and You.
As I discussed above, in short: They want something. You in some way are beneficial in achieving their gains.
That is the “Them” side of the coin.
There is also a role that you play in the “Frenemy Relationship,” the “You” side of the coin.
This leads us to the “How”.
The HOW: #imjustsaying
This beloved readers, is where I get to the cream in the pastry.
This is another issue I think is overlooked in many discussions about Frenemies.
We discussed WHY they may be in your life:
We know they have a plan. We know they see in you something they want or a benefit in being in close proximity to you (if only to suck your joy and peace from you because they are unhappy with themselves!!).
The next questions are: HOW do they get close enough to “plan their work” and “work their plan”?
The answer lies with you.
What I will type next, may be a hard pill to swallow. Your knee-jerk reaction may be:
“Little Golden Lamb, you’re cute and all, but, you’re just blaming the victim here. Good day, miss!”
Okay, maybe not so much, but, you may feel a knee-jerk reaction to click the big red “X” in the upper right portion of your screen.
I’m going to ask you not to, beloved readers.
Please understand, I AM NOT SAYING IT IS YOUR FAULT YOU HAVE FRENEMIES.
What I’m saying (or typing, rather), is that you are a part of the Frenemy relationship.
You are also the ONLY PART OF THE RELATIONSHIP YOU HAVE TOTAL CONTROL OVER!
This is FREEING!
This is where the ball is in YOUR court.
You may be wondering: “How so, Little Golden Lamb?”
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the answer is going to require some introspection on your part, beloved readers.
Frenemies, as I mentioned up-post, are like con-artists. They want a return on the energy they put into maintaining close proximity to you. They feel that they get something out of you that is worth their time. As absolutely asinine and childish as that “something” may be to you –it’s worth it to them to add their unnecessary drama to your life to get it.
They also, like thieves, take the path of least resistance.
This is best illustrated with an example (or three ^_^):
Your Frenemy feels (subconsciously or consciously!) that you have something she cannot achieve or at least not the way you have achieved it, which as far as she knows, is the only away to achieve this certain “it”.
Let’s say this “it” is self-acceptance and general peace-of-mind.
She desperately wants it, deep down inside. Who doesn’t want to be happy with themselves and have a life full of peace?
However, she is either too immature or too broken at the moment herself, to reevaluate what she is doing in her own life, that is hampering her own efforts of building peace and self-acceptance.
Instead of gaining control of her finances, kicking her own Frenemies to the curb, taking control of her health, accepting she really isn’t “just that fly,” or accepting she has certain flaws she needs to eliminate:
She spends her every waking moment with you…bringing her stressors into your life.
You unknowingly provide a well for her to dump her troubles into.
Which creates in her life -for just a moment- the peace and self-acceptance you have that she wants.
Unfortunately: there are no short-cuts to peace. Peace must be pursued and actively protected. Her actions create a cycle that defines your Frenemy-relationship with her.
So your “friendship” revolves around “cycles” like that outlined above.
How is this scenario an example of the path of least resistance?
She wouldn’t have called someone she knows would have deflected (not entertained) her emotions with logic and kind advice. Someone who would have wished her well and after giving her a bit of their time, promptly got off the phone with her!
Perhaps the “cycle” is like this one:
As per usual, she cannot make a payment for a bill. She has burned through your minutes telling you about all the reasons why over the last three weeks: her boyfriend, her job, her boss, etc. She reminds you that you’ve been friends for years and she would always “have your back” and is going through so many things (that you wouldn’t understand). Suddenly, you find it in your heart to help her financially…again.
Something doesn’t feel right. You tell yourself you did “the right thing,” but you can’t shake the feeling something is amiss. It plagues you, it follows you, and it begins disrupting your peace. You feel guilt, you feel apprehension, and you feel annoyance. Why? How? What happened?
Your Frenemy succeeded in her plan to get something from you. In this case: money.
Next week, you go shopping and have a good time.
Those minutes (or days) you spent –that you will never get back– venting online on your favorite forum or bottling those odd feelings in, are forgotten. They are forgotten until the cycle begins anew.
How is this representative of the path of least resistance?
She wouldn’t call someone who would ignore the emotions involved and in genuine concern steer her to a great accountant, give her the numbers of several benevolence ministries to call or banks that may offer her a small loan, and offer to aid her in solving her over-all financial issues sans offering money –when what she truly wants is cash.
Take this cycle for example:
You make a point to weed “toxic friends” out of your social circle (save for the Frenemy or two that manages to slip through the cracks).
Your Frenemy does not.
She constantly calls, e-mails, “Facebooks”, and texts you about her latest drama.
You care about her, so your heart bleeds for her. You offer the same advice again and again. You try to be available to help her talk. You shed new tears with her for the same old problems.
You are, in her words “such a good friend”.
You’re such a “good friend” that you spend so much time trying to mitigate her recurrent drama that the handle you have on your own issues begins to waver. You have less emotional energy for the positive people in your life. You may begin taking on some of her cynicism, depression, or anger. You may resent the fact that your advice is never heeded or that she refuses to change the behaviors that constantly put her in these situations, but you don’t articulate it. So it festers quietly inside.
She’s dumped her wave of emotions on you and now feels great (for a time) when she presses the “End Button” on her iPhone.
You, do not. Why? Your Frenemy succeeded in getting what she wanted. In this case: catharsis.
How is this scenario an example of the path of least resistance?
She would not have called someone who told her, kindly and gently, that they are noticing a pattern. Someone who will offer their usual advice, offer truly heartfelt prayers/wishes that she sees she doesn’t have to continue on this way. Someone who will then offer numbers to mentors, pastors, life-coaches, counseling services, etc. to help her stop these self-destructive patterns. Someone who does all of this while reassuring her he or she will be with her every step of the way; but, until she chooses to stop these self-destructive patterns, for his or her own peace-of-mind, he or she is not willing to speak about the issue; and hangs up. All she wanted was just to vent at your emotional expense. She was not seeking true help to nip the under-lying root of the issue in the bud.
PLEASE Note: I’m not saying don’t be a concerned friend who cares to listen to their friends troubles and help them through hard times. We all have or have had “that friend” who maintains particular patterns that he or she has been warned against, that cause him or her reoccurring trauma; particular patterns, they have no intention of changing. That is the context I am writing to, here, beloved readers. By all means, be a source of support to true friends in times of need!! ^_^
I’m sure you can think of countless “cycles” of your own, beloved readers.
These cycles aren’t true “friendship”.
They are damaging.
Enemies damage you. Friends do not.
Frenemies manage to be just enough of a friend that you can’t label them “enemies”; yet, they manage to be JUST as damaging, if not more so!
You may be thinking: Okay, great, Little Golden Lamb, but how does this get to the “How”? What does this have to do with “me”? You said the ball was in my court. I don’t see it.”
In the above scenarios, it is YOU who has the power to NOT answer the phone, direct the conversation elsewhere, or to NOT offer monetary assistance.
No one can take your peace. You have to give it.
The same is true with whatever else the Frenemies in your life are taking from you.
You are either denying them or giving them what they want -even if you don’t realize it.
“What is hard to swallow about that?” you ask beloved readers.
The reasons you don’t deny your Frenemy/Frenemies access.
They can be very simple or very complex.
They may go all the way back to things that happened to you in your childhood, past relationships, or you just honestly didn’t realize there were “cycles” occurring that are affecting you negatively.
They may have to do with your self-esteem and self-worth, and how you view yourself in relation to others.
They may have to do with your marriage, your singleness, your weight, your financial state, or your upbringing, etc.
The reason may be (worst case scenario): you’re birds of a feather, engaging in the same behaviors with one another, in a mutually-destructive, co-dependent relationship.
Honestly accepting that you may be nurturing negative relationships, because of holes in your own psyche never feels good.
Sometimes…it hurts.
I understand that. I truly do. I’ve had to do this exercise with myself less and less as I became more adept at keeping Frenemies out of my life.
That doesn’t make it any less painful when I do have to have this “chat” with my little, golden self.
Let me encourage you with this, beloved readers:
Acknowledging those “reasons” doesn’t hurt nearly as much, in the short term, as keeping Frenemies in your life will hurt you in the long term!
You have the power to look at yourself objectively and say “This is where I have a weakness,” or “I need to feel I have the right to usher damaging people out of my life. I AM WORTHY of doing so.”
You have the power to CHANGE those things and with them your relationships.
You may do it through prayer, or a make-over, or a year in the Peace-corps.
I have no idea; it’s entirely up to you, beloved readers, as to what works best for you. ^_^
However you choose to, YOU CAN DO IT! ^_^
This post, in short:
My little, golden point is when you take stock of the Frenemies in your life, think about WHY they are in your life (what are they getting from you) and HOW they are maintaining close proximity to you (What IN ME is causing me to allow them access to ME).
With those answers in hand, you can begin making the changes you need to make, to become less valuable to them.
You have the ability to see and make these changes.
You CAN mitigate if not fully eliminate Frenemies from your life.
Once you begin to make said changes, you slowly (or quickly) become “not worth the effort”. Often, in response, they will limit the amount of energy they put into you or they will find someone else to be a Frenemy to all together (this can be a not-so-fun process, much like getting over a virus, so expect some turbulence!).
By the way, beloved readers, being less attractive to potential Frenemies, is just another small part of How to Be Swell. ^_~
This was so true. I have cut a couple people out of my life on two seperate times. I just stopped cold turkey with them. And what’s sad is it took me years to see what was really going on. The last time I did it, it took a rare phone conversation where I was hurt about a boyfriend, for me to see. Not only did my “friend” not listen to me, but she told me to just get over it. But keep in mind I spent years listening to her problems about her boyfriend over and over. It hit me that she wanted me to validate her all the time, but she could not spare a couple of minutes to listen to me. It may hurt to push these people out of your life, because it was really hard, but its necessary in order to be a better you.
I’ve had many such “friends” myself. It does hurt; but, it is absolutely necessary.
This includes “family” members.
It most certainly does.