Happy Halloween folks, hope you had a spooctacular evening! So what better time to discuss the dark side of friendship? Friend. What is a friend really? A friend is a person you like who also likes you. Simple really. But until you met them and got talking, they were just a stranger. You didn’t know they would become a friend. Once they are a friend, you mentally separate them from the pack and put a little more emphasis on their good points. This is all very normal behaviour. But what about the rest of the people in the world who are not friends. If they are not friends, does that make them enemies?
Maybe not to the extreme, but many of us seem to carry a level of distrust and hesitancy about people we do not know. And you can quickly find yourself judging someone else unfairly with someone who is a friend.
Let’s pretend you’re working in an office, and you are sitting with your work wife, (or husband) and a new person walks in. Your partner in crime makes a snide remark about the new person’s hair, and without thinking twice you chime in with a similar tone about their shoes. As time goes on, you find yourselves bonding over this common enemy, without stopping to question if it is warranted. Each of you watches the new person with eagle eyes, picking up mistakes or character flaws, and can’t wait to have a laugh and report back to each other on the latest encounter.
Such a thing happened to a friend of mine recently, and then there was a change around of the office structure, meaning herself and the newbie were put together on a team without work wife. And as my friend got to know newbie, she actually grew to like her and understand her a lot more. It was only then that it had dawned on her that she had been really unkind initially (secretly) and it weighed on her conscience that she could be so judgmental and find sick pleasure in disliking someone for no valid reason.
It got us talking about other times this had happened, and it was something to which I could relate, or times I could remember when I took a disliking to someone based on someone else’s opinions and dealings with a person, without knowing them myself. And what was even more alarming, was that in that instance my friend at the time later did get to know that common enemy and actually quite liked her, it turns out her opinions that she shared with me had been sparked by someone else. So this false negative image of someone was spreading wide and far, and was totally unfair and unfounded.
I am really pleased that my friends tend to be people who are self-aware enough to catch themselves in these sorts of behaviours and challenge themselves to be better, to be fair, to not judge people so quickly next time. I too do try, as I recall starting work at an office and being warned to stay away from a certain colleague and thanking that person for their concern and proudly telling that person I prefer to judge someone based on my own experiences with them and not on the hearsay of others. In that instance, I think I probably would have been wise to listen, but at least I did end up forming my own negative judgements after learning the hard way!
So what is it about the common enemy factor that we find so bonding in the first place? Why do we engage in this toxic high school behaviour? I have to go ahead and imagine that it stems from some form of insecurity and the targets of these unwarranted attacks are in some way a threat to those of us hating on them. In some ways I suppose it serves to tighten the bond we have with our friend so that this interloper cannot penetrate or destroy said bond, and it makes us feel better than them, without directly saying so.
There is also something motivating about having a common enemy, you become a team hoping to take down a common target, united, which feels safer and more secure. American professor, author and podcaster Brene Brown calls this common enemy intimacy.
If you find you are the instigator of negative comments, you have learned to look for negatives in others, to categorise yourself and other people in a negative light, almost as a defense mechanism to getting hurt. These people tend to avoid vulnerability and love to bond over negative things. If you are talking about your favourite restaurant they may tune in with how much they hate a certain menu item or bad service they received there, as it feels less vulnerable. If you agree with them, you bond, if you disagree, it isn’t seen as a personal attack, you just have different tastes in foods.
If you are the friend who joins in this negativity after someone else starts it, then you are the sort of person who alters yourself to fit in, in an effort to belong. It feels so confronting to say to your friend when they judge someone “that is unkind, we don’t even know that person. Let’s give them a chance.” We risk alienating ourselves from a friend if we do this, and we want to fit in to feel like we belong.
But as Brene Brown says herself “If we alter our true selves to fit in, then we belong to others and not to ourselves.” What we need to be willing to do is to stand for what we believe in, even if it means standing alone, and encourage others to stand with us.
That’s not to say your negative friend isn’t a good person, they probably are, they are just driven by fear. You have to accept that they see the negatives as a default and ask if you want to be like them, or if you want to try to gently help them be better. This is done by setting a positive example, but also by trying to encourage them to share what they love and enjoy, to find the more positive side of them that they are reluctant to share.
That is where the real bonding happens and it is powerfully positive.
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
