Mine is evaluated based on how many of them were there for me when I was at my lowest. It’d be unfair for me to evaluate them based on communication, because then that’d mean that everyone would be gone, so that’d be unfair. I also don’t think evaluating people based on what they gift you or do for you is adequate either. So, yeah, I think the clear line basis of me removing a friend is about sheer balance.
I don’t like friendships that are just unrealistic. Where they want only and nothing but the best from you and for you. Friendships are about enduring someone’s worst and figuring it through too. If you just push someone away all of the time and leave them in dormancy where their mind tends to wander into places it shouldn’t. That’s one of the worst things a friend can do and it can also include up to things like not talking to them just for a check up every now and then.
So again, if more friends have let me down or dropping the ball, then that’s probably my reason.
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I had some “friends” that ended up being two of the most toxic people I’ve ever known. They intentionally try and learn dirt on other people in the group to soak drama. They were also new swingers and they were constantly trying to sleep with everyone in the friend group by initiating in the creepiest way not taking no easily as an answer.
I had a “friend” who turned out to be a super aggressive bully any time he didn’t get his way. I worked with the guy and he got super hostile and weird at work when I couldn’t solve an IT problem for him. No apology, ever. He just kept doubling down.
I have more stories but learning that you don’t have to put up with everyone is an amazing tool in your social toolbox that no one teaches you.
Mine is pretty simple. If you do something with the intention of harming someone else (self-defense excepted), I will not be your friend.
If you are the aggressive, proud, vengeful or petty type, I’m not going to wait for me to do something that you find justifiable to use that same energy against me. If they did it to someone else, they’re capable of doing it to me.
This is really solid advice. Sometimes, I see people with rose colored glasses and always give them the benefit of the doubt that things are accidents. Eventually, they’ll so something that is so blatantly not an accident, I can’t see them the same any more. Now, rule of thumb, I can’t be friends with someone capable of malice.
I had a friend I loved so much, it took me forever to see the real her, granted she was careful for many years to only show me what I wanted to see. When she revealed who she was, it took me a few years to come to terms with it. At first I thought she was going through a hard time. It wasn’t a phase.
I wish I had your advice then, because I took a lot of hurt before I finally gave up. She is who she is and loving someone a lot and being patient won’t change that and I was just getting clobbered like a fool in the process.
Don’t be a cunt.
That’s my measure.
I don’t need constant communication or whatever, but I do require them to be kind. And, yes, that sometimes means holding each other up when the other can’t stand on their own.
Basically, just be kind.
To use your example: not being there when I most need you (barring certain circumstances, of course), is a dealbreaker.I had a kid I met when I was homeless for a while. He was a regular fixture in my life and a ton of fun to be around. But about 5 years later he had his wife and a girlfriend pregnant at the same time. He already had two children with the wife (and when the first one came along when they were dating I had told him “Don’t get her pregnant”), couldn’t hold a steady job, possibly had other iligitimate children, and was living in a crappy nasty motel but he had a game console (can’t remember if it was a PS3 or Xbox 360) and a TV to game on so he didn’t care.
I told him I couldn’t have that in my life anymore, every time something went wrong he would do something stupid. Last I heard the girlfriend was going to move back to get family in Florida, he ended up going who knows where for a while then ended up back in town for a little bit around the time I was moving away. The wife had family there so is likely still in town. I kinda Facebook stalked him a couple months ago (through my other half as I don’t actually use Facebook) and found he is likely living in Georgia and working for a traveling carnival.
He was probably the last person I knew and called a friend. It’s been a little over 15 years.
