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You felt deep satisfaction to be valued by someone you held in such high regard: These are the friendships that fill our souls, and bolster and shape our identities and life paths. They have also been squeezed into social science labs enough times for us to know that they keep us mentally and physically healthy: But even our easiest and richest friendships can be laced with tensions and conflicts, as are most human relationships.
They can lose a bit of their magic and fail to regain it, or even fade out altogether for tragic reasons, or no reason at all. Then there are the not-so-easy friendships; increasingly difficult friendships; and bad, gut-wrenching, toxic friendships. The pleasures and benefits of good friends are abundant, but they come with a price. The first cold splash on an idealised notion of friendship is the data showing that only about half of friendships are reciprocal.
This is shocking to people, since research confirms that we actually assume nearly all our friendships are reciprocal. One explanation for imbalance is that many friendships are aspirational: So much for friendship being an oasis from our status-obsessed world. You have many positive and negative feelings toward these people.
You might think twice about picking up when they call. These relationships turn out to be common, too. Friends who are loyal, reliable, interesting companions — good!
In addition to annoying us, these mixed-bag friendships harm our health. A study by Julianne Holt-Lunstad from Brigham Young University and Bert Uchino from the University of Utah asked people to wear blood-pressure monitors and write down interactions with various people.
Blood pressure was higher with ambivalent relationships than it was with friends or outright enemies. This is probably due to the unpredictability of these relationships, which leads us to be vigilant: Will Jen ruin Christmas this year? Ambivalent relationships have also been associated with increased cardiovascular reactivity, greater cellular ageing , lowered resistance to stress, and a decreased sense of wellbeing.
If you get the sense that your friend is regularly keeping things from you, you may need to reevaluate confiding in them. Give your friend time to think and then ask to talk with her one on one. Is there anything I can do to show you I really mean it? Even though the churning and pruning of social networks is common over time, we still somehow expect friendships to be forever. If you feel frustrated by her inability to forgive you, think about how hurt you would be in her position. She may also have some ideas about how you can begin retraining her trust.
One research team, though, found that ambivalent friendships might have benefits in the workplace. Also, because ambivalent friendships make you feel uncertain about where you stand, they can push you to work harder to establish your position. Plenty of people have attested to the motivating force of a frenemy at work, as well as in the realms of romance and parenting.
Susan Heitler, a clinical psychologist in Denver, and Sharon Livingston, a psychologist and marketing consultant in New York, have studied the issue, and found some typical qualities: In , a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh found that, as the amount of negativity in relationships increased for healthy women aged over 50, so did their risk of developing hypertension. Negative social interactions — incidents including excessive demands, criticism, disappointment and disagreeable exchanges — were related to a 38 per cent increased risk.
For men, there was no link between bad relationships and high blood pressure.
This is likely because women care more about, and are socialised to pay more attention to, relationships. Negative interactions can lead to inflammation, too, in both men and women. Jessica Chiang, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a study showing as much, has said that an accumulation of social stressors could cause physical damage, just like an actual toxin.
Some of our most hurtful friendships start out good, but then became bad. Among teens, for example, the rates of cyber aggression are 4. Strangely enough, it is your act of kindness that unbalances everything. People want to feel they deserve their good fortune. The receipt of a favour can become oppressive: There is almost a touch of condescension in the act of hiring friends that secretly afflicts them.
The injury will come out slowly: Good people do attract more friends though being a high-status good person helps.
In gross cheating, the cheater fails to reciprocate at all, and the altruist suffers the costs of whatever altruism he has dispensed without any compensating benefit… clearly, selection will strongly favour prompt discrimination against the gross cheater. Subtle cheating, by contrast, involves reciprocating, but always attempting to give less than one was given, or more precisely, to give less than the partner would give if the situation were reversed. But the issue is not whether we are cheaters or altruists, good or bad, but to what degree are we each of those things in different contexts and relationships.
Recall that half of our friendships are non-reciprocal, half of our social network consists of ambivalent relationships, and — to dip into the adjacent field of lie detection — the average person detects lies right around 50 per cent of the time. We evolved to be able to detect enough lies to not be totally swindled, but not enough to wither under the harsh truths of white-lie-free social interactions.
As the seesaw wobbles, so do our friendships. Should this sound like a complicated business to you, Trivers agrees, and in fact speculates that the development of this system for regulating altruism among non-kin members is what made our brains grow so big in the Pleistocene. Many neuroscientists agree with his conclusion: The psychologist Jan Yager, author of When Friendship Hurts , found that 68 per cent of survey respondents had been betrayed by a friend. Who are these betrayers? We somehow expect friendships to be forever. Friendship break-ups challenge our vision of who we are. Laying out the events to someone else could help you get a different perspective.
How has she seemed to you lately? Stay calm, call out the lie, and ask them to explain themselves. I heard you on the phone with Sarah. Can you help me understand why you lied? Play dumb and ask for more info. Continue the conversation by querying them for more info.
Ask clarifying questions that help uncover the truth. Josh said he saw you down at the creek on Saturday. He must have been mistaken, huh? Act as though the lie were funny.
Playfully deflect to get your friend to admit the truth. As hard as it may be, sometimes lies aren't worth the effort.
There's no use creating negative energy between you and your bestie over a little white lie. It can be hurtful to watch your best friend frequently lie for no apparent reason. Instead of lashing out in anger, show compassion for them and tell them that you're concerned. Let them know that you don't want to deal with dishonesty, and ask them if they feel like they can be honest with you. Do you want to talk to me about it? If you don't confront it directly, it may just get worse. If your friend lies compulsively, one option for dealing with their lying is taking away your attention.
Don't make any remark of any kind. Simply stare at them with a blank face.
With Emphasis on Friendship Tom McCollough Tom McCollough iUniverse LLC Bloomington I Lied, There's More with emphasis on friendship Copyright ©. But some people get so accustomed to lying that they do so even when there is They may be putting undeserved emphasis or pressure on themselves, or on Some people lie more than others, but even frequent liars are actually honest most even though I'm very uncomfortable not being allowed to tell a friend that his.
Limit what you share. If you get the sense that your friend is regularly keeping things from you, you may need to reevaluate confiding in them. Take a step back and refrain from giving your friend intimate information about you if they aren't returning the favor. Talk to someone you trust. Some people who lie are unable to control it. Pathological liars may need professional help dealing with the problem. If you suspect your friend lies without even thinking, it may be a good idea to confide in someone who can help.
See if this person has noticed your friend's lying problem. Put your head together with this person to determine the best course of action for helping your friend. They may need to see a professional mental health counselor to understand what's at the root of their lying. If you have witnessed the destructive consequences of your friend's lying, use examples to convince them to get help.
For instance, you might say, "You've gotten fired from two jobs in the past month due to your lying. It hurts to see you this way. It will make me feel so much better if you saw a counselor. A big part of being a good friend is a willingness to grant forgiveness. Try to forgive your friend if you realize they had good intentions.
Boundaries are necessary for strong, healthy friendships. If your friend knows that you value honesty, then they will be more likely to tell the truth. I don't want to be around people who lie and manipulate others. I'm sure you can understand that. Get some distance if the lying is destructive. Although some lying is common, too much lying can be toxic to a friendship.
If your friend's lying regularly hurts you or gets you into trouble, you may need to reconsider the friendship. I don't want to be around that sort of behavior. My best friend lied to me about her love life for months. She made up all kinds of details. I told her how much I hate lies, how they complicate things. What do I do? I have a "friend" like this as well. They either want to see how you react or they're insecure about the truth. If you asked her to stop lying and she said she wasn't lying or kept making up lies to cover the truth, she is a bad friend.
If she still lies to your face, consider distancing yourself from this friendship.
Not Helpful 0 Helpful I have a friend and she lies to me and my best friend. She gets us into trouble and everyone thinks we are the liars. Everyone defends her because she claims that she does not lie and cries when it is proven she did lie. How do I deal with her? She is a little bully and this is clear cut bullying behavior of throwing other people under the bus, then crying her way out of it. Call her out on it by explaining exactly to her face what you see her doing, then telling her that the next time she does it, you will explain how she manipulates you and your friend and then uses crocodile tears to wriggle out of her misdeeds.
That will keep her worried for a bit, but also cut ties with her and tell her that you're no longer friends with her. Don't waste your energies on someone who has learned to manipulate instead of communicate with others. It's a lesson she needs to learn too. Not Helpful 8 Helpful I lied to my friend, expecting she would never speak to me again. Why do I still feel guilty?
You feel guilty because you know you did something wrong, and probably haven't done enough to compensate for it. If you can, apologize to your friend and try to make it up to her somehow. If you deliberately lied to make her stop talking to you, you could just admit it to her, or if not, you'll probably just have to deal with the guilt.
Not Helpful 6 Helpful Think of the good times and the bad. Think of how to prevent the bad things from happening again.