What to do with a Frenemy, and why.

We've all had people in our lives we call friends, and maybe who are friends, who meet the criterion of being supprtive and kind and truthful and there for us, and for whom we try to be all those things. Friendship of all relationships relies on mutual and reciprocal acts of generosity and affection. Stalwartness, steadiness are also part of the package. We like to think friendship, true friendship will last forever, but in the nature of things, it may not. People change, circumstances can unstick strong alliances. Misunderstandings can snowball into interpersonal tragedies. Friendships, like everything else in nature, often die.

Then there is "friendship". You know when you introduce the person to someone else as "my friend so-and-so" that the "so-and-so" may be more honest than the "my friend" part. These are the people who claim a friendship, who enter your life and basically screw it up. Who make you feel bad, even while protesting loyalty and calling you darling. Who trick you, manipulate you into doing things you don't want to do, and make you feel like you're a horrible person when you don't fall in with their nefarious schemes. The kind of person who invites you to Christmas dinner, then asks you to wash up all the pots and pans, and the glasses and gilded plates that can't go in the dishwasher. And doesn't even stick around to talk to you while you work. 

The word "frenemy" has been attributed to the columnist Walter Winchell, who used it in 1953 to describe th relationship between the USSR and the US. Myself, I only heard it around the year 2000, We've all had so-called friends who tell us when we look awful, who try to steal our lovers, who offer us things then demand much more in return than those things were ever worth. Who, in short, use us to boster their egos, their social status, to babysit their kids and dogs, to fulfill their narcissistic needs. I think you've got the picture--we are describing the anti-friend.

We tend to tolerate frenemies when our self-esteem has hit an alltime low and we can't imagine being friends with someone we can trust; or when the frenemy is so toxic or vengeful that ending the relationship will cause more destruction to our lives than seems worth the risk of breaking off the acquaintence. But it's unhealthy to maintain a frenemyship: at the very least, it further degrades our self-worth and creates stress.

What to do?
The main objective is to take the person off your friend list. There are two primary ways to effect the removal of a frenemy. You can do it in a slow fade, recommended for retaliatory types. Little by little, stop attending events with this person, be busy when they call, and have something else planned when they ask you around to, say, help them paint their kitchen. This strategy takes some duplicity and you may feel like a rat for being dishonest, but if all's fair in love and war, all is also fair when ridding yourself of someone who's happy to sacrifice your wellbeing for their momentary aims. 

The second way to drop a frenemy is like ripping off a bandaid. You tell them how you really feel about their latest egregious act, tell them this is their last strike, and that they're out. Go ahead, be brutal: if your frenemy respected kindness, they wouldn't be a frenemy. Use the language they understand, don't accept stupid excuses or get caught up in having to defend yourself against charges of being unreasonable, unfair or unkind. Those are all manipulative devices to try and get you back on the hook in a one-down position. 

(Here's a hint: Your real friends are never interested in putting you in a one-down position. They actually like it when you feel good. )

About that low self-esteem thing. If it feels like most of your friends are in fact not friends, getting them off your friend list will clear spaee for people who really want to be friends. Real friendship is the basis for a happy life. If you need a refresher on what friendship can be, Khalil Gibran said it more beautifully than anyone before or since.

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
    And he answered, saying:
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery us not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him always with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). 

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