Recently I’ve been reflecting on many of my past interactions with people. I feel like there were a significant amount of years where the majority of my friends were toxic in my life. I had attachments to unhealthy relationships in my life and felt pretty drained as a result. As a result, I had this unhealthy belief that I wasn’t deserving of normal and happy friendships since I couldn’t seem to maintain positive friendships consistently.
To aggravate the situation I had no boundaries. I’d let a friend disrespect me and I would deliver no negative consequences for their behavior. Some of my friends would be critical of me and make negative and harsh statements about my personality. The manipulation with toxic friends was present but I seemed to be unable to see it. I recall having a friend who would always forget whenever he said something hurtful to me. I would repeat to him what happened and he would conveniently forget and deny that’s what happened in the first place. However, if I said anything wrong or chose my words badly, I’d never hear the end of it and would be expected to remember the incident years later. Many of these friends were victims and complainers. And although they would say how much they need me or thought highly of me, they were unable to offer me support, love and would be the ones who were most often critical of me. Some of the friends even admitted to feeling jealous of my life and as a result made me feel guilty for my successes in life.
The good news is that now I’m surrounded by pretty positive people and have healthy friendships. Sure, not every friendship is perfect and there are times when issues with friends arise but overall nothing that isn’t healthy. But I’ve been reflecting on what it was about myself that caused me to attract negative people and toxic relationships in the first place. Why did I choose to hold onto these toxic friendships?
Below are 12 reasons on why you have toxic friendships and 12 solutions so that you can get out of these toxic relationships immediately.
1. You have a pattern of not letting go of bad experiences. In the past, I had a very hard time of letting go of my negative experiences. By not moving on from these horrible experiences where I felt like a failure, loser, unattractive or not worth loving, I felt myself attracting people who enhanced those negative feelings. Thinking back on prior friendships, I put up with a lot of things that I would never put up with today. Because I couldn’t let go of past pain, I was putting myself in a position to accept further pain from people who didn’t have my best interests at heart.
Solution: Learn to let go of the negative bad experiences. Before we can move forward in our lives and in our friendships, we have to let go of past pain. This may involve you forgiving yourself and others. You may need to cut off friendships so that you can completely allow yourself to let go. When you hold onto toxic friendships, you’ll keep yourself in a negative space. As hard as it may seem, you may need to go out and make new friends. Pursuing hobbies or joining social groups through sites like Meetup may be a great option for you to meet new people and develop positive experiences. You have the power to make your life better and create positive experiences in your life.
2. You are a good listener. Many of my friendships in the past were parasitic. I would spend countless hours hearing someone vent about their life. When things went badly, I was the go to person for negative details about their life. Even when I didn’t ask about their life and tried to stray away from the negative, the person would have a negative twist to everything and easily wind their negative experiences back into the conversation. If you are a good listener, you likely have had friends who love to have one-sided conversations about their lives and have very little interest in being a supportive friend to you.
Solution: The good news is you don’t have to give up your amazing listening skills. Being a great listener is a positive trait and will do you well in many areas of life. However, toxic people don’t deserve your amazing ability as a listener. Limit your time to these people to a few minutes at a time. If these people try to get more of your time then let them know you have other priorities going on such as work or have other things to attend to. It can be tough at first but once you develop the habit of limiting your time with these people, you’ll naturally get in the habit of exiting a conversation when things become uncomfortable.
3. You feel sorry for people. The majority of my toxic relationships had the common factor of me feeling guilty or sorry for my toxic friend. A couple of my friends were struggling with suicide and I felt like I always had to be there for them otherwise they might kill themselves. Many of these toxic people had issues with anxiety, insecurity and even undiagnosed psychological issues that I felt like I was responsible for. The situation was draining my energy and the impact I had on their positivity was minimal.
Solution: Empathy is great and having compassion and kindness for fellow human beings is a great thing. But you also need to accept that you are not responsible for anybody’s life. Being a supportive friend does not mean you take on the role of a therapist and allow someone to regularly vent to you about their life. Allow yourself to accept that you are not responsible for your friend’s life and only your own. Step back and allow this person to get the help they need without you. This person should be seeking a qualified professional and not you as a source of help.
4. You are vulnerable. Negative people can be drawn to you if you are vulnerable and going through a tough time. You may have just been through a traumatic event such as losing a loved one, getting laid off, a rough breakup or being completely broke. As a result, you might be more open to allowing anyone in your life as a distraction from your pain. This happened to me once after breaking up with an ex. The situation was very difficult for me and I found myself meeting a couple of new people who ended up using my vulnerability against me.
Solution: When feeling vulnerable, gravitate towards the people who are your true friends. This doesn’t mean you can’t make new friends but put your trust with the people you know are reliable and are your supporters. When feeling vulnerable I often try to take time to visit old friends, catch up over the phone or exchange emails with long-term healthy friendships. You can still meet new people and make friends but be wary of spending too much time with someone new when you are in a vulnerable place.
5. You believe you can’t find better friends. Often times toxic people stay in our lives because we believe that is what a good friend is. Some toxic friendships have been in our lives for years. You may have toxic friendships from childhood that you have simply accepted and believe is what normal friendships are like. When you believe that these types of friends are the ones you deserve, you will attract people in your life like this.
Solution: Identify what you actually want in a friend. Once you figure out the type of friendship you want, then believe that you deserve that friendship. Great friendships do exist. Once you recognize what a great friendship is, you’ll look and only accept those traits in the people that you meet.
6. You are an open person. Your heart is worn on your sleeve and you love to share your ambitions and life stories with anyone who would enjoy listening. People often view you as social or easy to talk to because of your openness and willingness to trust someone else with the happenings of your life.
Solution: You can continue to be an open person but start being less open to people who show they are toxic. At the first sign of a red flag, start being less open. A couple of years ago I was friends with a girl who seemed great and I was open with her as usual. However, signs of toxicity started to show and I gradually just stopped sharing information with her. I’ll still give her a generic breakdown of my life out of politeness but I won’t go into the specifics at all. Another great solution is to be open with people that share your values. When you limit your openness to people who share your values, then you’ll minimize the want to share with people who are toxic. If you find yourself feeling a pull to be open with negative and toxic friends, then focus on making new friends who will add positivity to your life.
7. You have no boundaries. When someone hurts you, you don’t stand up for yourself. Instead you feel miserable and angry but you never actually give the person boundaries. You willingly put yourself in toxic situations. A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me for advice about a friend who was recently being disrespectful to him. She was saying unkind things to him and didn’t apologize. I asked him how he responded when she said these things, and surprisingly he never even asked her to stop being disrespectful to him. He didn’t even tell her he was hurt by her words. His belief was that she should have realized on her own that her words were hurtful and have willfully stopped.
Unfortunately the world does not work like that. You need to set boundaries and stick to your boundaries so that your friend knows how to treat you.
Solution: Set boundaries with your friends. Be consistent with what your boundaries are and be willing to cut a friend out of your life if they disrespect your boundaries. The beautiful thing about boundaries is sometimes a toxic friendship can be saved. I had a very toxic friend with someone years ago. As difficult as it was at the time, I had to completely cut him out of my life for several years. We rekindled our friendship a couple of years ago and we have a good friendship now. He knows my boundaries, respects them and completely understands that I will cut him out of my life if those boundaries aren’t respected.
I also have a friend that used to always vent to me about his problems nonstop for several years. The issue became out of hand and I told him that I felt like he was venting to me too much, had no real interest in my life and I asked him to stop otherwise we couldn’t be friends. Since that conversation several years ago, things between me and him have been great. He still talks to me about his problems but he limits the amount he vents. He also actively makes an effort to be supportive of my life. The friendship is balanced, healthy and I don’t walk away from our conversations feeling drained.
Setting boundaries can turn a toxic friendship into a healthier one. Sometimes a toxic friendship doesn’t have to end and can become a good friendship once you set boundaries. Setting boundaries is also a great indicator of a friendship that needs to end. If a friend can’t respect your boundaries, then you have to let go and move on.
8. You aren’t being yourself. When you live an inauthentic lifestyle, you will not attract the people who are right for you. In the process of figuring out who I was, I ended up letting in people who are not people I would surround myself with today. Because I wasn’t accepting myself, I ended up attracting people who were dissimilar to me. These people were attracted to my energy initially, because this energy resonated with them but they experienced jealousy and anger when I was being myself. For instance, in the past, I didn’t realize how much I desired to grow and experience new things. However, I couldn’t accept this part of me and would portray someone who felt stuck and was a dreamer (not someone would actually make my dreams a reality). I’d attract similar people as a result, people who felt lost, alone and had limitless dreams but were unable to take any action to make those changes in their life. But when I was able to be myself and reached out to achieve something more, these toxic friends would often feel anger or jealousy towards me.
Solution: Accept who you are and live authentically. When you live an authentic lifestyle, you’ll attract people who relate to your lifestyle. Sure, you may not know who you are all the time and you may not always portray an accurate image of yourself, but do your best to be the person that you are. When you allow yourself to be yourself, you’ll find people who share your core values.
9. You love to feel needed. In some ways toxic friendships can be unhealthy because we lack self-love and crave it in the person who is negative and toxic in your life. When you invest so much of your energy into someone who seems to need and thrive off your positive energy, you may end up neglecting yourself. Because you are too scared to love yourself, you look towards a toxic person to give you their love. As a result you take on the role of a permanent giver. You constantly give your kindness, empathy, time and effort into people who are negative and leave nothing left over for yourself.
Solution: When you feel you actually love the attention you are getting, then this is a huge sign you need to limit your contact to toxic people in your love. Working on self-love will help you break away from people that take too much energy away from yourself. In friendships, we naturally invest some amount of energy and time into another person but a healthy friendship leaves plenty of energy to give ourselves. A healthy friendship gives positive energy as well as takes positive energy. Toxic friendships constantly take your positive energy and will take more and more until you have little to nothing left for yourself. When you work on self-love you can cut the dependency of this situation and focus on you.
10. You are negative too. Sometimes positive people aren’t the only ones who attract negative energy and even positive people can have negative habits that infect their friendships. When you are expressing negative emotions, you’ll only attract like-minded people or end up creating toxic friendships unintentionally. You might have an unhealthy dependency with some friends as a result. I have been guilty of attracting toxic friendships and having a couple of friendships where I was the toxic and negative person. Life isn’t always black and white. When you are susceptible to toxic relationships, you might end up being a toxic person to a fellow kind and positive person who can’t help themselves by always being there for you.
Solution: Try to be on the lookout for negative words and habits that you have in your life. Do you like to always complain to the same friend about your issues? When you feel negative about life, do you tend to avoid positive people and navigate towards people who share your negative world view? Everyone goes through days where they feel negatively but when this negativity starts to infect your life and helps you latch on to toxic relationships then you need to cut out the negativity and focus on being positive.
11. You are too chilled out. When someone asks you for something you quickly offer your help. If your friend calls you at midnight, you’ll eagerly volunteer to talk with them for hours. You’re probably really good at managing your anger. When something bad happens you are the type to keep calm and put the people in your life at ease. Don’t get me wrong, these are amazing traits but they are also things that negative people are attracted to. In the past, I’ve found myself always being the one to offer help and to be the one who is reliable. If someone asked me to do anything, I’d go the extra effort to assist.
Solution: You don’t have to give up your kind and easygoing ways because of toxic people. However, you can be aware and look out for any red flags of people who are users. When you identify the people who take advantage of your chilled out attitude, simply just stop giving them your time and energy. Don’t offer to assist. If they say something like, “Oh man, this week has been so stressful and I have no time to clean or cook for myself” don’t offer your services. Another great way to measure if someone is taking advantage of your easygoing attitude is to ask them to do something for you instead. Work on making the friendship balanced. If they resist doing something for you or always have excuses, then that’s a good sign that the friendship is unbalanced and toxic.
12. You believe their words but not their actions. Have you ever been in a situation where a friend tells you how much they care about you but their actions remain the same? Are there times where you stand up for your toxic friend and tell everyone that you know this person cares about you? Although truthfully, your friend hasn’t followed through on their promises and you can’t remember the last time they made an effort with you. I remember being at a birthday celebration and the birthday girl had a friend completely disrespect her at her own birthday. Afterwards she told me how her friend really does care about her even though it doesn’t look that way to everyone else. That friend continued to abuse her and be disrespectful to her. However, her friend’s words saying how much she admires, cares and loves her makes her stay in the toxic friendship.
Solution: Hearing someone say they love or care about you is an amazing feeling. But an even more amazing feeling is knowing that someone does care about you from the way they treat you. Good friends are capable of making mistakes and hurting you, but what differentiates a good friend from a toxic one, is a good friend takes action to remedy any harm they have caused. A great friend is more likely to show you how much they care about you than by giving you empty phrases.
Removing toxic people from your life is a long process that requires patience and trust in yourself. Cutting people out of your life isn’t easy and setting boundaries may make you realize that a friend was never really a friend to begin with. Eventually you’ll come to a place where you don’t have any toxic relationships or toxic people that are taking too much of your energy. What are some strategies you use to remove toxic people from your life?