The first sign was the knot in my stomach every time her name popped up on my phone. Not excitement. Not curiosity. A drop in my gut that told me to brace myself before I even opened the message.
For a long time I told myself I was overthinking, that she was just going through something, that real friendship meant showing up for the hard stuff. But the knot never went away. It only got tighter. When we hung out in person it was worse.
The mood could be completely fine—nobody arguing, nothing bad happening—but I’d still sit there tense, watching my tone and my wording and even my pauses, because one small thing could set her off. She’d suddenly go cold, or offended, or dismissive, and I’d have no idea what I’d done. I’d watch my face for the wrong expression. I’d reread my texts five times before hitting send, wondering if they were too dry, too excited, too blunt, too needy.
With my real friends I could just respond with the first thing that came to mind. They knew me well enough not to assume the worst. With her, every simple conversation felt like a test I didn’t know I was taking. I thought that was just normal conflict or me being too sensitive.
Eventually I realized I wasn’t relaxed around her. I was managing her. And that’s not friendship. Some friends are good to you one-on-one but put you down around other people.
That’s usually insecurity or jealousy. They get uncomfortable when the attention’s on you, so they change the subject or make a little jab. They act like they can take constructive feedback, but then they take it out on you in small ways the rest of the day. They’re super friendly with new people in that desperate, I-want-to-be-liked-the-most kind of way.
And when you confront them about it, they twist the situation so you end up feeling like the problem. Then there are the jealous and possessive ones. I say this as a jealous person myself. When my jealousy flares up because my friends are hanging out with other people, I would never let them know, because I don’t want them to feel bad about living their lives.
But some people try to box you in because they want you all to themselves, and they act like that’s proof of love. It’s not. Love—in any kind of relationship—means respect and letting the other person have free will. I thought my best friend and I were tight, but I found out she was pregnant on Facebook.
Found out she was engaged on Facebook. Weird, but okay, maybe she likes making announcements online. Then this new girl I didn’t even get a good first impression of started hanging out with our circle, and she asked me, “Did you know she had a pregnancy scare? ” Turns out my best friend and this new girl were really close.
My best friend hadn’t texted me in weeks. I don’t mind her making new friends, but being ignored like that stings. It just causes jealousy, and I feel like crap. Then there are the friends who only talk about their own success.
They hype themselves up for hours, every win, every compliment, every little thing that makes them look good, and you listen and celebrate because that’s what friends do. But the second something good happens for you, the energy changes. They go quiet, or they change the subject, or they give you a dry “that’s nice” and bring it right back to themselves. And if they do acknowledge your win, they only do it in a way that keeps you beneath them.
You got a good job? Theirs pays more. You got into a relationship? Their partner does more.
You accomplished something? It somehow sounds small when they’re done with it. They’re not openly mean enough for you to call them out, but they make your happiness feel like something you have to downplay. You start sharing less because you know they won’t really celebrate unless they can compare and still come out ahead.
A real friend doesn’t need your life to stay smaller so they can feel bigger. I had a friend who was great at being there when I was sad but went quiet when I was happy. If I got praised at work, she’d say “Nice” and change the subject. If I was excited about an opportunity, she’d find some small negative thing to point out.
But the second my life fell apart, she was right there, calling me, texting me, asking what happened, acting like the only person who truly cared. I thought that meant she was a real friend. Then I found out why she was so interested. She wasn’t checking on me because she cared.
She was collecting information. Every time I opened up to her, every time I cried or told her something private, she was taking those details and spreading them to her group of friends. Things I’d told her in confidence became their discussion topic. People I barely spoke to suddenly knew pieces of my business.
When I finally stopped giving her drama to report back, she suddenly had way less interest in being close to me. Some people don’t want to see you happy. They just want a front row seat when you’re struggling. A friend who dismisses all your interests and achievements while treating everything they do as amazing is another red flag.
I’d sit there listening to her talk for hours about financial spreadsheets she made to decide which car to buy. But when I brought up something I cared about, she’d say, “It’s hard for me to care about something I don’t know about. ” And if I pushed back, suddenly I was being sensitive or erratic or emotional. I sure was glad I’d listened to all those spreadsheet stories.
There was also the friend who constantly called me for advice but never took it. Every time something went wrong, it was the same situation with the same people doing the same things. I’d listen for hours, give her honest advice, help her think through what to say and what boundaries to set. Every time she’d say, “You’re right.
I’m done this time. ” And two days later, she was right back in the same mess, calling me again like we’d never talked. After a while it stopped feeling like she wanted help and started feeling like she just wanted an audience. I can be there for my friends, but I can’t keep emotionally babysitting a problem you refuse to leave.
Another friend always managed to put the blame on me. It made me so frustrated that I snapped one day when a common friend experienced the same toxic behavior. She found out and got super mad at me for trash-talking her. But it was just the truth.
An inability or unwillingness to apologize when you’ve done something wrong is symptomatic of an ego problem that eventually infects everything. I had a high school best friend who once specifically requested that I post a picture of us for National Best Friend Day. I asked if she’d post one too. “No,” she said.
“I have a lot of best friends, but I’m your main best friend, so you should post a picture of us. ” The next couple years were full of backstabbing and gaslighting and occasional fallings out until we finally stopped speaking. Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. Some friends only talk to you when all their other friends are gone.
They disappear whenever their main group is around, leave you on read, act too busy. But the second those people are busy or fighting with them, suddenly you’re their favorite person again. They message you like nothing happened, want to hang out, act super close. For a long time I made excuses—maybe they’re bad at texting, maybe they’re overwhelmed.
But eventually I realized I wasn’t their friend. I was their backup plan. Real friends don’t make you feel like the emergency contact for their boredom. And then there are the ones who always ask for favors but are never there when you need one.
They’re suddenly super warm and chatty, calling you their best friend, saying how much they miss you—right before asking for something. A ride, money, help moving, someone to listen to their drama for three hours. The second you help them, they disappear again. When you have a bad day or need someone to show up for you, they’re suddenly busy, tired, broke, or unreachable.
The friendship only exists when they need access to your time, your energy, your kindness, or your resources. A friend doesn’t ask about you either. They turn every conversation into a competition about themselves. You talk about exams, they talk about how they did.
You say you didn’t sleep well, they tell you how much worse they slept. You break up with your partner, they start talking about theirs. Sometimes people think that’s how you show empathy—by showing you have similar problems. But it becomes a real problem when it’s combined with always having to top you.
“I slept awful last night, woke up at three and gave up. ” “Me too, I never even fell asleep and just laid on the couch all night. ” I struggled with this in my own friendship, thinking I was empathizing when I was really just making it about me. It takes actual work to stop talking about yourself and just listen.
Some friends push other people out of the friend group. My group had five of us. She joined and basically bullied three of them out—not obvious bullying, just a lot of small changes. Next thing I knew, I was being treated like crap to the point that I hated myself.
Me and one other friend managed to leave and make friends with the original group again. The one who kicked everyone out is very social, but nobody really likes her because she’s not nice. Now she’s the one with no friends. I knew a guy in high school who kept trying to get other people to leave our group and manipulate the rest of us into hating them.
He tried it with every single person. He actually managed to get one person to leave, but the rest of us wouldn’t listen. I knew him since sixth grade and wanted him gone for years, but I never knew how to say it without sounding as toxic as he did. After he graduated early, the rest of us all admitted we couldn’t stand him either.
We shared stories about the awful things he did, and we were closer than ever in our senior year. After that, he tried getting in touch with all of us at one point or another. None of us ever answered. Funny enough, he later pulled one of my friends into a group chat with people from his college, and they clearly hated him just as much as we did.
He got what he deserved. There are friends who don’t let you have any other friends and require all of your time without giving the same back. They get jealous when you’re with other people, make comments like “I guess you like them more than me now,” and act like you’re betraying them anytime you make plans without them. If you don’t reply fast enough, they ask who you’re with.
If you had a good time with another friend, they go quiet and make you feel guilty. You end up hiding perfectly normal friendships just to avoid drama. The worst part is they expect all of your time while giving you only whatever they feel like. They can be busy, distracted, out with other people, and you’re supposed to understand.
But if you do the same thing, suddenly you’re the bad friend. Some friends adopt a “good vibes only” mentality. That’s fine for yourself, but you can’t force it on others. My best friend did this, and whenever I came to her for support, she’d cut me off and say, “Uh-uh, good vibes only, remember?
” Because I was bringing her down. I put up with it for a long time because I thought she was right, that I was burdening her. Then I finally realized that’s not how real friends act. They’re supposed to support each other.
One of the most draining kinds is the friend who’s always there when you’re sad but only because they want the drama. I had a friend like that. When something bad happened to me, she was everywhere—calling, texting, asking for every detail. I thought she really cared.
Then I found out she was taking all my private moments and turning them into gossip with her group. I stopped telling her anything real, and once I wasn’t giving her material, she lost interest in being close to me. That told me everything I needed to know. There are friends who make you feel worse about yourself every time you leave them.
They make little comments about your looks, your choices, your job, your personality. When you call it out, it’s “I was just joking” or “You’re too sensitive” or “I didn’t mean it like that. ” But somehow every joke leaves you feeling smaller. I used to come home from hanging out with her drained and embarrassed, like I needed to fix something about myself.
She always knew how to say things that sounded harmless on the surface but had a little bite. If I reacted, she had an explanation ready, so I ended up feeling guilty for being hurt. She’d demand things from me—fast replies, long calls, emotional support, rides, favors, attention—but when I needed her, she was busy or tired. If I asked for a small favor, she made it sound like I was asking too much.
A real friend shouldn’t leave you feeling worse every time you see them. If every hangout leaves you drained and every favor only goes one way, that’s not a friend. That’s a full-time critic with benefits. There’s also the friend who corrects your personal preferences like they’re training you out of being yourself.
“You actually like that? ” “You’d look better if you wore this instead. ” “That music is embarrassing. ” At first you laugh it off because you think they’re being honest.
Then you realize they’re not just giving opinions—they’re trying to make you into a different person. I had a friend like this. Every time I liked something, she had to comment on it. If I wore a shirt I liked, she said it wasn’t really me.
If I played a song in the car, she’d skip it. If I ordered food she didn’t like, she’d make a face and ask why I always pick weird things. It was always framed like she was helping me become better or less embarrassing. But it was control dressed up as advice.
Friends are not dolls you get to dress up. A real friend might tease you sometimes, but they don’t make you feel stupid for liking harmless things. They don’t slowly chip away at your personality and call it helping. And there’s the friend who always steers everything toward what they want.
When you’re getting to know someone’s likes and interests, it’s easy to miss at first. But once you know them, it becomes clear you’re just an accessory. A guy friend of mine was like this. He always did what he wanted and was never interested in what I liked.
He’d just rope me into whatever he wanted to do. Progressively, I felt more and more used. Then one night, after we’d been drinking, he pressured me into sleeping over. I laid on the couch, but he took my keys and said I’d get them back in the morning, and told me I was sleeping in his room.
When we were in bed, he asked if I wanted to cuddle. I politely declined, but that’s when it clicked: I was only there to fill a need for him. He wasn’t interested in me for me, only in what I could provide—emotional or physical attention. I peaced out early the next morning and distanced myself from him after that.
It took me a while to work up the courage to tell my girlfriend about it because I felt stupid for being in that position. But the lesson stuck with me: respect yourself enough to watch out for your own interests and needs. Just because you want to be a friend to someone doesn’t mean you have to be. Some friends only respect you when there’s no audience.
When you’re alone, they’re sweet and supportive and make you feel like one of their closest people. But the second you’re in a group, it’s like you’re someone they barely know. They make jokes at your expense, leave you out of conversations, act embarrassed of you. Then when you’re alone again, they go right back to being nice, like nothing happened.
A real friend doesn’t only respect you when nobody’s watching. They don’t switch personalities depending on who’s around. There are friends who push you aside once they get a significant other. Spending more time with your partner is normal to a degree, but there’s a point where a friend has no free time for you ever—can’t even bother to text for weeks.
I’ve been the abandoned friend before. It hurts terribly to feel invisible and irrelevant to someone you used to call your best friend. I never want to make my friends feel that way. There was a friend who made fun of nearly everything I liked or did.
She’d meet my other friends or my partner and immediately find something wrong with them. I’d listen to music to get pumped up before going out, and she’d say it looked stupid. I’d tell her about a goal, and she’d call it unrealistic. It was annoying at first, then it started making me doubt what I was interested in.
That’s when I realized I had to cut her off. And there are friends who have a problem with you but never talk to you directly about it. Instead, they tell your mutual friends and disappear or act off. Then your friends have to tell you what you’re doing wrong while you’re sitting there wondering what the hell happened.
I bailed out of a pretty big friend group for exactly that reason. There was a severe lack of proper communication, so nothing ever got fixed. There are friends who always have excuses for why they can’t put in any effort. They can’t drive because they already drive to work all week.
They only want to hang out close to their house. They complain about the spot everyone chose until people give up. They speak down to others in a group to seem like the smartest person in the room. Cutting someone like that off clears the fog.
You finally see them for who they are. Another red flag is when they want to be contacted through everyone, but they never validate or compliment you even once. You’re not asking them to worship you or throw a parade. You just want them to say “Hey, that’s really cool” or “I’m proud of you.
” But every time you share something you’re proud of, they reply with what they did, but bigger. You saved money? They saved more. You got good feedback at work?
They get that all the time. You finally stop sharing good things because you already know they’re going to make you feel stupid for being happy. A friend who can only stand beside you when you’re small is not really standing beside you at all. If you’ve had a friend for a long time but you only seem to talk about the past—”Remember in high school?
” “Remember that time when? “—it might mean you’ve grown apart. Fondly reminiscing is fine. Inside jokes are the foundation of a solid long-term friendship.
But if that’s the only extent of your communication, it’s a sign. If having an intimate conversation about future hopes and goals feels forced and awkward, you probably can’t relate to each other anymore. There are people who say everyone is their best friend. My high school best friend started calling ten different people her best friend, including me, and that’s when I knew I was just an accessory.
She was surrounding herself with people who would love her. Some people genuinely have a lot of close friends and that’s fine. But if their best friends cycle out constantly, that’s a different story. And when you always have to be the one to start conversations and make plans, when the other person has plenty of free time but never for you, when they cut visits short or invite others to things you planned to do together—that shows they don’t respect you in the friendship.
It’s a two-way street. Then there’s the friend who only reaches out when they want something. They’re suddenly super warm, calling you their best friend, saying how much they miss you—right before asking for a favor. A ride, money, help moving, someone to cover for them.
The second you help, they’re gone again. When you need them, they’re suddenly busy, tired, broke, or unreachable. I had a few “friends” like this. They didn’t last long.
Once they stopped being useful, the friendship ended by itself. That told me everything I needed to know. There are also the ones who pressure you into doing things their way and then act like you were on board the whole time. They say they’re holding you accountable to something you never wanted in the first place.
And when you get angry because they won’t respect your boundaries, they play the victim and take the high road. And there are friends who constantly need you when they’re sad but disappear when things are good. That’s the one that took me way too long to understand. I thought she was the friend who showed up when things were hard.
But she wasn’t checking on me because she cared—she was collecting information to spread around. Once I stopped giving her material, she was gone. Some people don’t want to see you happy. They just want to watch you struggle.
There are friends who are always the center of every conversation, so much so that you make a game out of it. My friends and I had one for a guy in our group who loves to talk about himself. We’d drink every time he started a conversation about himself. It made hanging out more tolerable.
And before you say anything—we told him about it plenty of times. He knows. He’s aware of the game and will even catch himself doing it now. He’ll laugh and say “Ah, crap,” and we’ll all drink together.
He’s not a bad guy. That’s just how he is. And then there are the boundary-breakers. The one who touches you or tries to tickle you when you’ve explicitly said several times that you don’t like it and want them to stop.
Then they tell you you have no sense of humor. The depressed one who keeps you up all night with threats and then disappears from the chat, only to come back smug and say they were outside smoking. The female friend who tells you you’d look better with surgery and acts like it’s a fact. The one who always has drama in her life, never listens to good advice, and tries to remove good things from your life because your attention should be on her.
She’ll block you, your life gets nicer, and then she comes back when she needs something. But not all of this is about cutting people off. Some friends are the kind you call when there’s a party, and some are the kind you call when there’s a problem. It’s about knowing the difference and setting your expectations.
A friend you can’t expect to be there when it isn’t fun isn’t necessarily a bad person. Just not a great friend. And there are people who, if they called me for anything, I’d be there. There are people who only invite me to fun things.
Both kinds of friends are okay. It’s about knowing which one you have. And a counterintuitive one: beware the rescue martyr. The person always rushing out to help, giving everyone their all whether it’s needed or wanted.
They’re good people, well-intentioned, generous to a fault. But sometimes it goes too far, and it becomes a toxic cycle where they only get meaning and self-worth from saving someone. Or they keep swooping into other people’s lives to fix things, hoping someone will do the same for them. They don’t have good boundaries.
They get over-involved in your life, take on too much, make everyone’s problems their own. Then they end up overwhelmed and resentful, and they become the martyr. The problem is you’re not in an equal friendship with this person. You’re a project.
Everyone’s a project. Once you stop being a project, you become support for their other projects. I once had a friend who was all nice and attentive when we were alone but completely different around other people. It confused me for a long time.
When it was just us, she treated me like one of her closest people. The second we were in a group, I became someone she barely knew. She’d make jokes at my expense, leave me out, act like I was below her. Then when we were alone again, she was sweet, like nothing had happened.
Don’t make excuses for that. A real friend doesn’t only respect you when there’s no audience. There’s also the friend who makes fun of everything you do, so much that you don’t realize how much it affects your self-esteem until you get properly angry and stop considering them a friend. I knew someone like that.
For years she made fun of whatever I said or did, even when I was serious. Then I finally snapped about something else and cut her off. She’s mentally unstable, and we did want to help her, but she never gave us a chance. She just flipped her crap and expected everyone to adapt.
The real problem was that she never changed. The same thing had been happening for years, and she wasn’t trying to work on it. I also had a friend who would put the blame on me constantly. It made me so frustrated that eventually I snapped when a mutual friend experienced the same toxic behavior.
She found out and got furious at me for talking about her. But it was true. An unwillingness to apologize when you’ve done something wrong is a symptom of an ego issue that will eventually infect every aspect of the friendship. But not everything is a red flag.
Nobody is perfect. We’re all complicated messes. You have to accept people in their entirety or not at all. One red flag doesn’t necessarily make someone a bad friend.
It might just be one thing about them that doesn’t fit your taste, while they have other traits that make them a wonderful friend. And it’s not all about the bad. It’s also about being a good friend yourself. Tell your friends you love them when you’re done talking.
Love is an important part of friendship. I tell all my friends I love them, guys and girls. They’re the family I chose. Text or call them whenever you think of them.
Root for them in their personal and work lives. Tell them they deserve the promotion. Help them get hyped about their projects. Be honest with them when you need help, and be there when they ask.
Remind them of their goals. My best friend and I have known each other since kindergarten. Now we’re both twenty-six, and I’m incredibly grateful for his friendship all those years. Help your friends.
Love them. Be kind. Challenge them. Introduce them to new things.
Don’t give up on them. Some people don’t want to see you happy. They just want a front row seat when you’re struggling. But a real friend?
A real friend celebrates you and stands beside you when you’re small and when you’re big. A real friend doesn’t need you to lose so they can feel okay about winning. A real friend doesn’t make you feel like opening a message is stepping into a trap. A real friend doesn’t make you feel like you have to shrink yourself to make room for them.
When you find those people, hold on to them. And when you’re around someone who makes you feel worse every time you leave, every favor only goes one way, and every conversation leaves you drained—that’s not a friend. That’s someone who’s using you.
And you deserve better than that.