Are Your Friendships Healthy?
by Cathy Wagner - posted July 9, 2019

We hear a lot of talk about healthy relationships in terms of our intimate partners, but these are not the only relationships we should be evaluating. You have a relationship with everyone you interact with regularly and none may be as important, or have as much impact, as your best friends.

Think about it. Most people tell their best friends things they wouldn't ever tell their intimate partner. Friends become the family you wish you had. We can be completely open and vulnerable with friends in a way that is impossible with anyone else. It's important that our friendships be just as grounded in mutual respect and acceptance as our intimate relationships.

We've all had a "high maintenance" friend. Perhaps they are constantly surrounded in drama and expect everyone around them to drop everything to save them whenever they have a crisis. Maybe they are "brutally honest" and use that as a license to say mean and hurtful things. Or maybe they are so easily "offended" that you have to be careful what you say around them so you don't upset them. None of these scenarios is healthy. In each case, one friend is setting themselves up as the controller of the relationship, leaving the other friend to adapt, if they value the friendship.

The "supporting" friend plays their own unhealthy part by accepting it. If you've ever held your tongue or reluctantly changed your plans in an effort to placate or keep the peace, then you have passively agreed to be disrespected by accepting those expectations. That doesn't mean you like it. Resentment builds and over time, you're less concerned about respecting your friend, and that's when you have become part of the unhealthy dynamic.

Unhealthy friendships are two sided.

No friendship starts off this way, just like unhealthy intimate relationships don't start off that way. They couldn't, no one would put up with that kind of crap from a stranger. But as friendships develop and hidden personality traits become revealed, the relationship devolves to an unhealthy state. For example, we might be eager to help them out of their first crisis and feel like we are doing a good thing by supporting them through their problem, but after a while, we have to admit that they are always in crisis and is seems they have learned to live that way. Then it becomes time to decide if we are willing to continue to accept their stressful expectations or if we need to step back and let them handle their mess on their own.

But, many of us miss this mark. It's important to remember that dropping an unhealthy friendship can be just as hard as dropping an unhealthy romantic partner. It's more than just fear of the drama one has to endure in ending a relationship; there is a strong attachment, a bond that has been built over time and a love that has been cultivated. We remain keenly aware of the things that drew us to them and mourn not just the loss of the person, but also the loss of the feeling of belonging and being loved.

So, we try to fix it, or make it ok, instead. We might think we are "too sensitive" and try not to let it bother us. We might try to talk about it, but see little change. We might try to set boundaries that are ignored. But at some point we have to realize that if we can't put an end to the disrespect, then this unhealthy relationship is doomed to continue, as is, and there's nothing we can do to change it, except end it.

The whole scenario is draining and more importantly, damaging. It makes us doubt ourselves for choosing to get involved, or staying, in such a unhealthy situation, and it also makes us doubt the trustworthiness of people in general. Some people carry around the pain of a bad friendship for the rest of their lives and have trouble making new friends for fear of being hurt again.

I think it would be much easier for everyone, in the long-run, to simply learn and talk about what constitutes a "healthy relationship." Frankly, everyone needs to look it up and maybe even print it out to stick to their mirror as a reminder. Our culture is so rampant with unhealthy relationships that most of us cannot point to an example of "healthy" from our own experience. And talking about it is important. If people became accustomed to open discussion on the subject, communication regarding boundaries, etc. would be much easier and less fraught with defensive posturing. Besides, if you can't talk to your friends about healthy relationships, then you may need to re-evaluate those friendships.

The easiest way to start is to talk about healthy vs. unhealthy relationships in terms of other people, particularly characters in movies and television. Face it, when we look at these popular media outlets, almost every relationship portrayed is unhealthy. It's a veritable hotbed of relationship case studies that can be used not only to discuss the various aspects of what's healthy and what's not, it's also a really great way to see where your friends stand, what they expect, and what they see as normal. You can even turn it into a game as you hunt for the elusive healthy relationship!

TV makes it really easy to say,
"Whoa, that does not seem like a healthy relationship! lol"

Once you are able to talk about these potentially hot topics in regard to other people, it becomes much easier to bring up the subject of your own friendship dynamics. You can open a discussion about a serious subject by saying, "In the interest of a healthy friendship I feel like I need to say this." Or when your friend is asking you to do something you don't want to do, you can says, "Pressuring me is not exactly healthy, you know." And when you say something like, "I need to establish this boundary," they will have a better understanding of why that's important because of all the other discussions you've had on the subject that didn't relate to either of you personally.

BONUS: As you engage in these kind of discussions, you will become much more clear about what's healthy and what you are willing to consciously accept in all of your relationships.

Our friendships can give us insight into all of our other relationships. If we accept or display unhealthy relationship patterns with our friends, it is unlikely that we will have healthy intimate relationships. If you are trying to learn new, healthier relationship patterns, your friends are a good place to start.