10 weird friends we all have

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We all have amazing friends who are not comrades at all. The creator of the Wait But Why blog, Tim Urban, shares how these people entered your life and what to do with them now.

It's good to be a child, schoolboy, student. At a young age, you don't have to think about friendship and work on relationships. Friends just are, because it happened.

From birth, we live the life that our parents chose for us. This is how our friends live, and the differences are not so significant as to interfere with friendship. So friends always appear. During our student years, we find ourselves in an environment ideal for forming friendships. It is easy to observe all the necessary conditions for a strong friendship in it. Sociologists believe that there are three of them:

• Proximity (in a geographical sense).
• Constant unscheduled meetings.
• Something that allows you to relax in the presence of another person and start to trust him.

So the number of friends in universities and colleges is growing. Maybe they are real, maybe this relationship is not for long. But you don't really do anything to turn them on or keep them going. They add up by themselves, you are just an observer.

One day, student life ends. The people with whom you communicate take their places in your environment, each in his own circle of communication. It looks like this:

Imagine that your life is a mountain. You are standing at the top. In the green sector - friends of the first circle. Those who have become your brother or sister. These are the closest people: they are the first to know about all the events in your life, you love them with all their flaws, they make a speech at your wedding, you know them inside and out. This relationship is eternal. Even if you don't communicate for months, every meeting proves that nothing has changed.

Unfortunately, life is such that your worst enemies also enter the first circle. People who can ruin your day with one sharp remark, because only they know where to hit. These are people towards whom you feel burning irritation, envy, with whom you are competing. In the first round, the stakes are high.

Below, in the yellow zone, are the friends of the second circle. They are just good friends. Relations with them are much calmer than with brothers and sisters from the first circle. They may invite you to a wedding, but not a witness. If you live in the same city, you meet once or twice a month with great pleasure, but if someone leaves, you may not talk to each other for a year or two. And if something important happened in their life, mutual acquaintances will tell you about it.

Even further down the slope is the orange zone, where there are fake friends. You can sit together in a cafe for a cup of tea and decide that you need to meet again, but five years will pass and it turns out that during this time you did not drink any more tea together. Such relationships exist in a large company or on social networks. Even if someone from this circle suddenly inherits a million, you will not care much. Sexual partners appear from the orange zone for one night.

The third circle flows smoothly into the huge category of acquaintances. In it, people with whom you stop to exchange a few words if you come across on the street. You send them business letters, but you will not meet in the movies. If you hear that something has happened to one of them, then you can sigh sadly, although in fact you don't care at all.

Finally, acquaintances dissolve into a sea of strangers to you.

Depending on your personality and how you've spent the past 25 years, your mountains can look different.

For example, this is how the life of a person looks like who does not let anyone close to him.

Or a person who tries to be everyone's best friend.

Even the latest sociopath has its own mountain.

No matter how your mountain looks, when your youth is behind you, sooner or later (usually between the ages of 25 and 30) the day comes when you realize that making friends has become difficult.

Without a doubt, friends will still appear (work, spouse's company, children will help), but you are unlikely to add them to the first circle of relatives or even to the second circle. People who get to know each other in adulthood cannot spend all days with each other or chat all night long. And this is necessary for the birth of such a strong relationship. Over time, you realize that real friends appeared in your life by accident, spontaneously, and you did not do anything special for this.

You met them, firstly, not on purpose, but secondly, at a time when you still knew little about yourself. Therefore, the people closest to you are randomly assigned according to the graph below.

Over time, fewer and fewer people remain in squares 2–4. We grow up, we begin to respect ourselves more and set a higher bar in communication with other people.

But the fact remains: many of the relationships established during the formative years stick to us. And even if friendship is far from ideal, there are people among our close friends, communication with whom does not bring more joy and meaning to life. We'll talk about ideal friendship later, but for now let's take a look at 10 types of strange friends that we have in our environment.

1. A friend who doesn't ask questions

You will have a nice day. Or bad. You will be happy at work or quit. You will fall in love. Or catch your loved one cheating and kill both in a state of uncontrollable rage. It doesn't matter, because no event can be discussed with a friend who does not ask questions. Never, for anything, under any circumstances, he will not become interested in your life. Why is he acting this way? There are three explanations.

1. He is completely self-centered and wants to discuss only his persona.
2. He is afraid to get close to people and does not want to talk about personal (neither his own, nor yours), he agrees to support only an abstract conversation.
3. He knows that you are extremely self-centered. If you ask you a question, you’ll only talk about yourself all evening.

To make this friendship meaningful, take just two steps.

First, if you are bored with this person, remove him from the first social circle. This is your green zone, it is sacred, people fixated on themselves have nothing to do there. Move such a friend to the second or third level and enjoy rare meetings.

Second: keep communicating. Perhaps you will even use such a friend in the background. Meet every couple of months, just do not touch on personal topics in the conversation. Believe me, you can communicate with a person for many years without even knowing if he has brothers and sisters.

2. A friend in a common company, with whom you will not be left alone

In any company there are a couple of people who do not communicate one-on-one with each other. Not in the sense that they don't talk because they don't love each other. They get along great. They simply have nothing in common except mutual friends. As soon as they are left alone in a room, they freeze like stone statues.

There is nothing worse for them than being in the same car if the company gets somewhere by cars. Minor troubles happen all the time. For example, if such people were the first to come to the meeting place or when a third friend went to the toilet. It is not at all necessary that these people will never be able to make friends. Sometimes no one dares to take the first step and change the current state of affairs.

3. A friend who always laughs

This is a friend who is afraid of serious communication, so any meeting with him turns into a skit, and you should always be in high spirits when you talk.

Sometimes the skit is that you have to laugh all the time. And constantly joke, pour sarcastic remarks, otherwise the friend is overcome by fear.

Another version of the always ironic friend is a person who loses his temper, it is worth breaking through his shell and saying something honest. Such people hate sincere interlocutors, because they make them crawl out because of the armor of sarcasm and irony and show their true colors.

The third version: your communication is described by the phrase "you are cool, I am even cooler, why the rest of the world is not so cool." Of course, your friend doesn't think you are ideal. When he talks to someone else, he already dissects you. The trick is that you always have to be on his team. The only comfortable mode of coexistence is to stand on a fictional pedestal together and throw mud at the world around us.

You can play along with such a friend and everything will be smooth, even if, deep down, you despise each other and yourself. Or you can take the liberty of disagreeing with him. For example, to protect a person from criticism. It will destroy your fragile team and trigger a backlash. Your strange friend, most likely, will agree with you, say something like: "Well, yes, you are probably right." Congratulations, this is your first time earning that person's respect. It also means that behind your back he will criticize you five times more than before.

Whatever one may say, the mask of an always cheerful person is a wall behind which your friend is hiding so as not to let anyone get too close to him. If you have the strength to break the ice and calm such a sociopath, he can become a true friend. If a person is completely closed, then nothing can be done, such a friendship is doomed. Although if you like to scoff constantly, then why not.

4. Committed friend

Think of a friend you rarely meet. Before you make an appointment, you call and text for a long time to find a convenient time for both. But when you wake up in the morning and realize that there is a friendly dinner on your schedule today, you are not at all happy about it.

Maybe you don't want to be friends with this person, he even pisses you off. Most likely, you do not understand: this friend does not want to see you either.

Friendship with mutual obligations implies that both of these relationships are a burden. But everyone thinks the other person really wants to see him. Therefore, there is no way you can allocate a place on your schedule for a meeting.

When people want to communicate, they find opportunities and ways.

This friendship lasts because you don’t think at all that you don’t like the relationship. Or do you consider meeting this person as part of your life story. But even if you understand that you do not want to communicate, you do not know that your feelings are mutual. Heavy friendships can last forever.

5. Friendzone

This friendship could turn into a happy marriage, except that your boyfriend or girlfriend does not look at you as a partner. Just a little is missing. You may also find yourself in a situation where someone loves you. Whatever one may say, this is not the healthiest relationship in your life.

If you've gotten yourself into a friend zone, isn't it time to get out of it? Even if you have to stop communicating. Because as long as you pull with such a relationship, you destroy your self-esteem and look like a little crying seal. Take a step where is your self esteem? Perhaps it is a bold decision that will make the love object look at you with different eyes.

If you are a friend zone, then you should know: there is a person in the world who suffers, and you like it. Because every time you see someone else's pain, your vile ego is overwhelmed with pleasure. You are so pleased that you are even ready to specifically stir up someone else's interest and not say yes or no, in order to feed on the blood of a friend wounded in the very heart, like a vampire.

Go and do something else.

6. Historical friend

You were one of the first to have a historical friend, because you met when you were children. You've been friends for years, even though you were an odd couple. Many old friends fall into this category. But a historical friend is that person with whom you would never be friends if you met now.

You don't like who this person has become, and it's mutual. You don't fit together anymore. Alas. You have been close friends since you were four and there is nothing you can do about it.

7. A friend with whom you go in different directions

As a child and student, most people your age are on the same level with you. But when it comes to self-promotion, people go through different paths through life, so that recent friends suddenly turn out to be completely different people.

Everyone over 30 goes through this stage. Someone thinks about how they will live at 50. And someone remains 20 years old. To some extent, thirty is akin to puberty, only in a different sense.

There are also hidden situations in which the roads diverge with friends. Let's say Zhenya refuses material well-being partly because of the vocation of an artist, partly so as not to envy rich people. And Sasha despises all bohemia, because he considers creative people to be idlers or envies their freedom of expression. Sasha and Zhenya have problems. Maybe they still like each other, but they can no longer be as close as before. Each of them's life paths challenge the friend's path, which leads to awkwardness in communication. This also happens when your moral values do not coincide.

8. A friend with whom no enemies are needed

"Vrazhba" hurts you a lot. This is not about having a friend get a shot of pleasure, if you failed or broke up with your partner. And not even about those who are jealous of your success. These are poisonous emotions, but they can sometimes arise even with real friends.

We are talking about a real "hostility" - a relationship with a friend who sincerely wants to harm you. Just because he wants to.

Most likely, you have been communicating with your friend enemy for a long time, the problems did not start yesterday either.

Hate lurks complex psychological causes. It is generated from the inner pain of your friend-enemy, from his shortcomings and regrets. And you, by your very existence, hit the patient.

A slightly less dark, but no less dangerous situation arises when another enemy sees your weaknesses and sensitive points and constantly presses on them out of sadistic pleasure or to raise his own self-esteem.

Such a friend knows exactly how to hurt you, because you are somewhat similar or you are connected in some way.

Moreover, he will spoil your life all the time, at any opportunity, but so cleverly that you will not even always notice it.

Be that as it may, if such a person appears among your friends, immediately throw him out of your social circle. The cooler your relationship gets, the better. As the distance between you increases, the poisonous power of the other enemy dissolves.

9. Friend is the star of social networks

This person is not a star to anyone but you. Do you understand what I'm talking about. There are a few people whose social media pages you are all too familiar with. And these people have no idea that you are so interested in them. I must say that there are probably people who know when you changed your hairstyle, although you have not seen each other for seven years.

This is a friend from the third circle or just an acquaintance who got on the list of weird friends because you managed to make your relationship painful without even communicating with the person. It was necessary to be able to.

10. One-sided friendship

Friendship can be skewed in a bunch of ways. Someone is in your pyramid of friends in a higher position than you are in his pyramid. Someone wants to communicate more than others.

One of the friends in 90% of cases listens and only in 10% speaks, and when it comes to difficulties, then communication is more like a reception at a psychotherapist. In general, the balance is broken between what you give and what you take from the relationship.

Ideally, when friendships are invested equally. But if the ratio turns out to be about 65/35, that's okay too. Ultimately, the difference may be due to personality. Sometimes, even a larger gap in how much is invested in a relationship is not so bad. But only if it suits both sides.

There are several questions, the answers to which show who is who in friendship. When one person speaks longer than the other, does his friend interrupt the “talker”? Does one friend's opinion carry more weight? Is a friend sometimes allowed to behave abominably towards another?

Another test for lice is to find out who determines the mood in the company. Let's say friends meet, but they have a different mood. Sooner or later, the mood comes to a common denominator. Whose fortune usually wins? For example, Sasha is out of sorts, Zhenya, on the contrary, is on the rise, and Valya adjusts to Sasha and gets bored until Sasha starts having fun. But if Sasha is happy, and Zhenya is moping, then Valya even forgets about her unimportant mood and tries to smile in order to get on the same wavelength with Sasha. In this example, Sasha has the strongest positions among friends.

It's not all bad

You might think that everything is bad. But let's mentally return to the graph with squares. We discussed those friends with whom relationships are not enjoyable and beneficial. Therefore, they listed not the best options. But there is also a friendship that is worth the effort.

Nothing is perfect, but there are real friends. Such, from communication with which life becomes better on both sides. And if a friend falls into the first square of the graph and at the same time into the first social circle - this is one of the cornerstones on which your life is built.

Reliable friends make us happy, investing time and energy in such friendship is a life strategy for many years to come.

But closer to 30 we think that we have:

• no time especially for friends;
• the available time must be divided equally between people from the first and second circle of communication.

And we will fall into an eternal trap. When we don't see friends for a long time, we start talking about something supposedly important first. About career, marriage, family problems. Theoretically, after you have discussed important issues, you can move on to jokes, chatter and, in fact, friendship. In fact, if we do not devote time to friends, and then we start asking about all the news in recent months, then there is not even a minute left to actually enjoy the friendship and discuss something other than recent events.

So there are two items on the agenda:

1. Think of your friends who are not in the first square. Move them off your friendly mountain. Not in the sense to stop communicating with them altogether. Still treat them well, don't forget about them. But if something doesn’t suit you, you don’t have to be with these people all the time. In general, clean the environment.
2. Spend more time with real friends. If you are already in your 30s, then you are unlikely to find other true friends. They deserve to receive five, ten times more attention than other acquaintances. And just having lunch during the break is not enough. True friendship deserves an intimate atmosphere. Take it now and plan an evening with your best friend.