Cover image courtesy of Pixabay
Good friendships are very important for most of us to live happy and fulfilling lives. Recently, the idea of a “toxic” friendship has been discussed quite often in the media, and when you Google about toxic friendships, you’ll find a bunch of articles about how to spot the negative friends in your life and cut them out.
While it’s important to be able to spot and cut out a toxic friendship, sometimes our friendships are more nuanced than that. Think of a specific person that might pass the “is your friendship toxic?” test – but, you still aren’t sure where you stand with them. How would you go about figuring out if this is a real or fake friend? What standards do you go by, and what should you do about it?
The Ambivalent Friend
Behavioral investigator Vanessa Van Edwards takes a look at the concept of the ambivalent friend in her article “The Science of Frenemies”. The idea of an ambivalent friend is itself kind of ambivalent, but Edwards’ article provides a concise “quiz” to measure it. The gist is that an ambivalent friend is somebody with whom we have no idea where we stand in our friendship, a kind of half-friend or “frenemy”. We might not find ourselves caring about their wellbeing, or thinking that they care about ours. We occasionally see each other, but don’t always go out of our ways to make an effort to build the friend. But, we don’t hate them, or actively sabotage them, and vice versa. Therefore, the ambivalence of the friendship stresses us out.
Edwards ultimately suggests that we cut out our ambivalent friends in order for our own mental health. She finds that the most exhausting friendship of all is the ambivalent friend. Looking at studies conducted by researchers found people who had more ambivalent friends tended to be unhappier than their counterparts.
Image courtesy of Pixabay
But even if the idea of the ambivalent friend doesn’t clear things up, it might be best to develop your own “theory” of friendship. An Australian woman, Mobinah Ahmad, did just that, leading to a six-category theory of friendship popularly known as “The Moby Friendship Theory” or “Friendship-Acquaintance 6-Stage Theory.”
Ahmad was led to creating her theory herself after questioning her own friendships and where she stood with people. My friend and I had a great conversation over how the theory fit into our lives, and with a little personal tweaking, it helps make things easier to understand when navigating interpersonal relationships. You might even want to create your own theory using Ahmad’s as a model in order to figure out if a friend is a “real” one or not.
There’s nothing wrong with questioning friendships – in fact, it’s important that you do, so that you’re not suffering through a friendship that you never realized was negatively impacting your life. Not all “fake” friends appear toxic on the surface, so it’s important that you can recognize when a friendship is not really a friendship.