Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [47]
Clearly, Kate’s temperament was characterized by poor impulse control and a low tolerance for frustration. Although the warning signs were there from the start, Lily minimized them and focused on the positives because she wanted to keep the friendship going. After they each married, the vast discrepancies in their values of marriage, family, and friends became so stark that they could no longer be ignored. Lily finally allowed herself to see Kate as a total package: both the positives and the negatives. But letting go was more difficult than she would’ve imagined.
Setting Healthy Boundaries with a Needy Friend
• Change the nature of your friendship by learning to say “No.” (For example, “Even though we are both single, I don’t want to spend every Friday night together.”)
• Tell her that you have to tend to your own needs (or those of others close to you) and don’t feel guilty about it.
• Slip away and spend less time with her and more time acquiring friends who do not demand as much from you.
• If it’s that bad, simply cut loose!
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
As mentioned earlier, rarely is one person totally responsible for a toxic relationship. Like bacteria can only thrive in the correct medium in a petri dish, it’s the combination of two personalities that allows for a toxic buildup in a friendship. In the examples above, while you might point fingers at self-centered Joanna or Kate, Ellen and Carol functioned as enablers who were too nurturing and accepting. Perhaps if they had been better about setting boundaries, the relationships wouldn’t have derailed in the way they did.
If you are seeking to improve your friendships (or any other relationship for that matter), the place where you need to start is with yourself. As difficult as it is to recognize and escape from a toxic relationship that can be blamed primarily on the other person, the challenges are compounded when you are caught up in a consistent pattern of self-defeating attitudes or behaviors yourself.
You might say that Clare, a woman in her forties, has a case of foot-in-the-mouth syndrome. She always seemed to have problems keeping friends but she wasn’t sure why. It was easy enough for her to meet people and develop friendships, but none of them seemed to last. “I’m one of those people who is always trying to make a joke and throws out a lot of one-liners when the opportunity arises. Unfortunately, sometimes the jokes unintentionally hurt people’s feelings, and sometimes those people are my friends,” says Clare. Clare never realized that her humor came off as cutting. “I only recognized it when the friend who I had hurt was visibly mad or not speaking to me,” she says. “And even then, I have to wrack my brain to figure out what it was I said this time that pissed them off.”
She is frustrated that people take it so personally. “Honestly, I’m not trying to be mean. In fact, the idea makes me cringe. I would never in a million years want to hurt anyone, let alone the people who are closest to me. While my friends know this about me, it seems that it doesn’t matter; they get offended. I just wish people would lighten up a bit. I’m also frustrated that one bad joke can seem to nullify hundreds of nice things that I may have said or done. It doesn’t seem fair. When I’m confronted with the fact that I said something mean, I do apologize,” says Clare.
Recently, she had a run-in with a very good friend and colleague that made her feel awful. The two friends were at a conference where the speaker had not received his drink ticket for the cocktail reception. Her friend told another person within the small group in which they were standing, “I can give him mine.” Without skipping a beat, Clare jokingly said, “Oh sure, suck up to the speaker!”
That was pretty much the end of it. Clare could tell her friend was annoyed with her because she barely spoke to her at work the next day, or the day after that. Clare finally said something. Her friend angrily retorted that she said