Please note that this post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.
What is a Healthy and Positive Friendship?
A great friendship with another person can be one of the most rewarding feelings you’ll ever have.
A friend is there for you to understand you when no one else can or will. They’re the first one to text or call you to congratulate you when you land that job, when you get engaged, or to wish you a happy birthday. They’re someone that will send you the perfect, comedic relief text when you’ve had a sh*tty day. They’re there to remind you that you deserve better when someone treats you poorly. And they’re there to remind you that no matter what happens, everything will turn out ok.
A healthy, positive friendship is unlike any other relationship you can have with someone. One of my favorite quotes sums up my point here:
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
But what happens when a friendship sours and you lose that freedom to be yourself? Or when they betray your trust, time and again? Or when they begin to take you for granted? What happens when a friendship stops being healthy and positive?
One of my friendships in college came to a halt for several of these reasons mentioned. This friend and I had met as we lived right down the hall from each other in the dorms, and we were taking the same classes.
We got along beautifully at first: we had the same interests, we wanted to accomplish the same things in life, we loved trying out new restaurants, talking for hours, and everything just clicked. But as time went on, it was clear that I was the only one putting any effort in.
When she needed a shoulder to cry on for a break up, I was there. When she didn’t get into medical school the first time, I took her out to dinner. When her dog died, I was there trying to cheer her up. When I would go home for the summer or for winter break from college (about 4 hours away from where she lived), I would make all the effort to come and visit her every few weeks, driving the whole 4 hours both ways, but with never a thank you or an attempt to reciprocate.
Often, I could never get her to respond to my texts when I would invite her to come with me to an event, or go out to a party, or to let her know I had a bad day, that I needed help or advice, and calls or texts would go unanswered. Strangely enough though, when we would meet up in class, there would be no mention of my texts, and she would be so happy to see me, expressing interest in hanging out again soon. She would say, “Let’s grab coffee or lunch tomorrow!”
When this happened, I would make excuses for her, thinking she may have just been busy. But, when it came time to planning out that lunch or coffee, she would never respond back, making me feel cheated and worthless. I couldn’t understand why only I was putting in all the effort and emotional investment, but with simply no return on her part.
Things really came to a head when I brought my fiancé back from Australia to visit a couple years post college. We had grown a little apart by then as I had been living abroad, but she had sent me texts (finally!) expressing how much she wanted to meet him, and how I had better come visit her.
Like a fool and hoping things were looking up for our friendship, my fiancé and I drove the 4 hours to see her. When it came time to plan out where exactly we were to meet, she never responded. I can still remember that hopeful feeling I had when I was so excited to introduce my friend to my fiancé. I felt like an idiot, telling him all about this supposedly wonderful friend who refused to answer a text, just like she did in college.
Following that event, I knew it was time to end the friendship. The antics had gone on long enough, and I was emotionally dried up from the constant disappointment from her.
It’s a sad fact of life, but friendships come and go throughout every person’s lifespan. Not every friendship is meant to last a lifetime, and the ones that do are truly special relationships.
Knowing when it’s time to end a friendship is almost more difficult than actually ending a friendship. You can spend hours, days, weeks, even months wrestling with the question: is it time to end it?
It’s important to know when it’s time to end a friendship, as things can go from bad to worse fairly quickly the more time that you spend mulling over the question, making the separation that much more difficult, and the ability to move on that much harder.
So how do you know when it’s time to end a friendship? Read on to learn the 11 signs.
How to Know When It’s Time to End a Friendship
1. The friendship is one-sided. Firstly, what is a one-sided relationship? A one-sided relationship is where only one of the two people is putting in the time, energy, and investment of resources into the relationship, and the other one simply takes without giving. Balance is essential in all relationships. When a friend is consistently reliant on you to do all the work, and never reciprocates your efforts or thoughtfulness, it’s time to move on.
2. Your friend doesn’t support you. A friend is someone that you can look to for support, no matter what. For example, say you both just graduated with your bachelor’s and have started the job hunt. However, she lands her dream job straight away, and you take a few months to find a job you actually like. Does she support you throughout the job hunt and tell you that you’ll be ok? That you’re going to find the right job for you at the right time? Or does she rub it in your face or remind you of how she landed her dream job right away? A friend that isn’t genuinely proud or supportive of you and what you’re doing is one that you don’t need.
3. You’re both choosing different paths. While you and your friend don’t need to have everything in common or be in the same phases of life to remain friends, it’s normal for friends to grow apart over time if they choose widely different paths to follow. Perhaps your choices in careers are completely different and your interests have diverged as a result, or maybe he or she wants to start a family right away but you want to keep moving up in your career. Whatever the reason, friendships can begin to drift apart when people choose different courses for their lives.
4. You’re holding each other back from being who you could be. Healthy or unhealthy habits tend to both circulate and proliferate amongst close friends. Even psychological habits, like complaining or putting each other down, can become habits between friends when practiced enough. If your friend is like this, or reinforces negative habits such as these, it’s a definite sign that you need to move on. Look to friends who reinforce positive and healthy habits to spend your time with instead.
5. They’re emotionally or physically abusive. Passive aggressiveness and other toxic behaviors are a telltale sign of a friendship that needs to end. If your friend is giving you backhanded compliments, insulting you or what you do, making you feel like you’re never good enough, or worse, physically abusing you, it’s definitely time to end the friendship. Friends are there to support you and help you be the best version of yourself, not make you feel bad for who you are or what you do.
6. They’re overly dependent on you. A great friendship means that you can count on that friend to come through for you when you need them, and vice versa. But what about when your friend relies on you for everything? An overly dependent friend comes in many forms. They may always expect you to be the doormat. Or they may expect you to skip class so that they can vent to you about their awful date. Or they easily get their feelings hurt when you hang out with anybody else besides them. Whatever the situation, an overly dependent friend can quickly create a volatile relationship.
7. They talk about you behind your back. A good friend is someone who will stand up for you if they hear anyone talking smack on you. While it’s normal to sometimes get frustrated with a friend, a friend should never talk badly about you when you’re not around, even if it’s just venting.
8. Spending time with them is draining. One of the best things about friendships is that they have the ability to energize and invigorate you, not bring you down. While some friendships can have chapters that are more serious (e.g., having a lot of heart-to-hearts), chapters like this shouldn’t be draining. Rather, they should instill a sense of warmth and comfort in you. However, if you find that all the time you spend with your friend leaves you feeling worse than you did before, it could be that the friendship is just too draining.
9. They’re flaky. Everyone experiences a flaky friend at some point who always cancels last minute, or always has an excuse to not see you. A friend that does this doesn’t respect you or your time, and it’s not worth you investing yours with them.
10. You can’t trust them. Trust is the foundation of all relationships, so if you can’t trust a friend, it’s not worth the friendship. While it takes time to build trust between two people, if this person betrays your trust and makes it difficult to trust them, the friendship won’t last.
11. You can’t be yourself around them. Remember my quote from earlier? “A friend is someone that gives you total freedom to be yourself.” Friends are there to accept you and support you, not judge you for who are you are. But, if you feel unable to express yourself around a friend because you know they won’t like what you say or think, it could be time to move on. No true friend should make you feel ashamed for the way you are, and you’ll be far happier and better off if you can find friends that do accept you, quirks and all!
